I've also been shocked by the censoriousness around gambling in particular on HN recently. I feel like this is filtering in from some culture war that I'm not exposed to as a part of my information diet.
Hmm.. I've had some customers be gamblers. It's kind of sad to see. These are like middle aged dads of various economic classes that are desperately chasing a high when they should be focused on their families. To me, gambling and porn are yet more strains on the most important social institution: the family. It's fun, but it's bad for society, for those who care about that
If it's not gambling, it'll be something else: video games, alcohol, drugs, religion, work... Anyone can turn anything into a vice to the detriment of their family.
There's been a spate of articles on left leaning sites about the harms of prediction markets and gambling over the last 6 months or so, along with a tie to the current admin to glaze the article among anti-Trump and anti-corruption people.
One thing I've noticed about HN in recent years is if publications (right or left) start posting about something, the topic turns quickly into flamewar territory. What used to be subtle debate turns into slogans copy/pasted from these articles along with hyperbole. Hard to avoid I guess with how big HN has become.
I've come to the conclusion that nostalgia is almost never about the objective quality of something. It's about the associations we make between a certain time in our lives and the media/technology that surrounded us at the time. It's also filtered through selective memory, emphasizing the positive while ignoring the negative.
We're all afraid of dying and we all wish we were 25 years younger. That's how I translate nostalgia when I read it. By any objective metric, the world is better than it's ever been, technology is better than it's ever been, and it's all continuing to get better.
I think the world really sucks in developed countries right now in a way that's hard to put your finger on. Optimism and enthusiasm is very low in young people right now. People's attention spans are shot. Kids in high school and college are less social than ever, barely date, and spend more and more time doomscrolling. Rising inequality, rise of far right politics, etc.
I get that the world is doing great by some basic metric like 'number of people starving', and that is fantastic. But the world really feels off to a growing number of people - me included - in modern America.
You can always point at bad things happening, no matter what time period you're in. You need to look at the graph over decades/centuries. Poverty, child mortality, literacy, standard of living, access to healthcare, etc. etc. are all better than they have ever been, even in the poorest places in the world.
My favorite recent thing from Tim Heidecker was him interviewing Fred Armisen in the style of Bill Maher. The parody is uncanny. I could see him doing a really good Alex Jones.
> don't trust advice from people who have never actually done the thing you're trying to do
Probably one of the most important heuristics to have in the age of self-help gurus and influencers. 99.999% of them haven't accomplished anything other than profiting off of desperate and gullible people.
The Human Rights Index for the United States dropped from 0.93 to 0.83 in 2025, which is concerning. Meanwhile, China scores 0.18, which is significantly worse. For comparison, countries that score higher than China include Iran, Russia, and Venezuela.
Globally, China is 6th percentile on the Human Rights Index. The United States is 65th percentile. That puts the U.S. well below most developed countries, but it's nowhere close to "just as bad."
I would expect China limiting the movement of their rural populations from moving into cities might be a big factor.
Also it seems to end in 2025 before Iran started killing protesters in mass. Glancing around the index in question is very focused on civil liberties vs financial and life attainment in others.
Iran was not a haven of freedom before 2025. Women could get stoned for not wearing a burqa or attending men’s volleyball matches. Scoring Iran higher than China at any point in the past couple decades is ridiculous.
- The detention of 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities, forced labor, and mass surveillance in Xinjiang. The destruction of Tibetan society and culture. The only comparable violation of human rights on this scale in the other countries is potentially Russia's war in Ukraine.
- China does not have competitive elections or an independent judiciary. The other countries do have these institutions to some extent, though deeply flawed and authoritarian.
- There is no freedom of religion in China or Iran. Russia persecutes some religious minorities, but tolerates different religions. Venezuela has constitutional protections for freedom of religion.
- There is no freedom of association in China. Independent trade unions, NGOs, and professional organizations are heavily suppressed and censored. These exist to a greater extent in the other countries.
- There is no freedom of speech in China. Political dissent is forbidden. All major media outlets are state-owned. Large parts of the internet are censored. Private conversations are monitored proactively. The other countries persecute speech, but in a less comprehensive, more retroactive way.
What you describe as "single-party government" is in fact a democracy where one party is more popular than the others. Or are you trying to imply that California's elections are not free and fair? If voters want to hold politicians accountable, they can vote out the incumbent.
I see it as a problem primarily with education and public opinion. Regular citizens routinely support bad policies across the ideological spectrum. Often we have to live with the fact that bad policies are popular; that's democracy in action.
It's also a problem of having no good alternatives. There are historical reasons, going back to the 1960s, why the Democratic party is perceived as the lesser of two evils when it comes to civil liberties.
It doesn't matter how a single party came to run the government, but being the case that it is, there's few checks and balances on the party, so it makes bad decisions it wouldn't have made if it had competition.
Chances are it will eventually be run so poorly that it is no longer unopposed, but the system doesn't guarantee that it is quick.
> Or are you trying to imply that California's elections are not free and fair
Among other issues California is extensively gerrymandered, and recently voted to temporary disable the anti-gerrymandering constutional provisions to allow it to make changes that would have been unlawful under the state constitution and become one of the most gerrymandered states in the nation for congressional districts (in terms of ratio of party seats vs party registrations).
While departing from California deregistering from both health insurance and my drivers licensed triggered voter registration even though I'd specifically indicated that I was no longer a California resident. Vote by mail makes it easy for someone to drive a neighborhood and steal ballots, makes it trivial family members to coerce votes out of each other or simply take their family members votes.
The freeness and fairness of California elections are not difficult to take issue with.
> There are historical reasons, going back to the 1960s, why the Democratic party is perceived as the lesser of two evils when it comes to civil liberties
The democratic party of today is a very different one that the party of the 1960s or even 1990s and is much less well aligned with civil liberties than it used to be, lesser or not depends on what aspects you prioritize but whichever way you slice it today it's a party which is generally opposed to civil liberties including the most critical of them: freedom of expression.
> Often we have to live with the fact that bad policies are popular; that's democracy in action.
The US was constructed as a democratic republic specifically to avoid the tyrany of majority rule.
> If voters want to hold politicians accountable, they can vote out the incumbent.
Or-- more effectively-- move to a state with more competent policies.
You don't follow politics in CA very closely if you think that. The way it works in CA is that the party makes sure that only 1 candidate runs in the Dem primary. Then they gerrymander the districts to make sure that they know which party will win in which district. The result of this is that the party insiders choose the politicians, not the voters.
PS Nobody in their right mind thinks the Dems support civil liberties. You just wish that was true and/or live in a bubble.
According to the Princeton Gerrymandering project, California's districts are better than average, with some bias. You can see a map of the entire U.S. on their front page.
Before the recent wave of gerrymandering started by Texas, California had an independent, non-partisan redistricting committee.
Could you provide a source for the claim that before 2025, there was significant gerrymandering in California?
As I said about civil liberties, there is a perception that Democrats are the lesser of two evils, given the realignment of the parties around segregation and civil rights in the 1960s. The Dixiecrats who were in favor of segregation left the Democratic party, while Republicans who favored racial integration joined the Democratic party. Then the Republican presidential campaigns of Goldwater, Nixon, and Regan shifted the party line to appeal more to the former Dixiecrats in the South. I'm agnostic about which party is better on civil liberties in 2025; I'd be interested in any research on the topic.
I've felt increasingly politically homeless over the past few years. Neither major party appears to care about the two largest problems facing the U.S.: the national debt, and the inability of Congress to assert the powers delegated to it by the Constitution. Though the problems become obvious to one party while the other is in power, they end up doing nothing about it when the pendulum swings back.
Getting rid of the filibuster, adding more seats to the House, and states adopting some form of ranked choice voting, would be a good start. Ultimately we will need a broader cultural shift back to the values of the Founders: rule of law, federalism, and limited government. Unfortunately with the rise of populism on the right and left, it doesn't seem like we are headed in the right direction.
> Neither major party appears to care about the two largest problems facing the U.S.
Forget about national politics and parties. Focus on the races in front of you. Irrespective of consequence. Local, primary, pre-primary informal caucusing, et cetera. It’s tedious. But there is a shocking amount of power that even small amounts of civic engagement away from general elections brings.
Unless the only issues you care about are hot button, there is a good chance you can individually sway policy outcomes in a meaningful way. (I have.)
Can someone explain to me why the debt thing is an issue?
The US can inflate it away over time, with the main cost being the US standard of living staying flat or going down (which is annoying but very much tolerable given current American living standards). Moreover, paying for the debt by inflating it is a lot more politically palatable, as people don't usually think in inflation adjusted terms. Plus, you can take measures to fudge the official inflation numbers anyway.
Now compare this with climate issues, where no amount of financial engineering or political cost is going to fix environmental damage.
I'm not an expert but I can tell you why I think it's an issue.
The national debt has to be continually refinanced as parts of it become due. That works when investors are willing to give you money. But if investors think you are no longer a good investment they will continually ask for higher interest rates and then eventually they will stop giving you their money altogether. And if that happens then we're going to be in be trouble because we will have no means to pay what is due and we'll default.
The problem is the interest payment on the debt is starting to become a large fraction of the income of America and we are starting to look like an increasingly bad investment. And that shows in the rates we have to pay. I don't think we're in any immediate danger but spending goes up every year which means we need to borrow more and we move more toward that risky place.
And if history is to be any guide, when you hit the bad spot, everything falls apart fast in a very uncontrolled way.
So IMHO, we should ramp down spending slowly, in a controlled way to avoid having it ramped down for us in a rapid uncontrolled way. Either way, I suspect eventually spending is going to come down whether we like it or not.
I think you're just wrong though. For one, the debt is not our top problem. It's a big one, but not the top. Climate is tops. Dems care about it somewhat and pushed a huge bill through during Biden's term. Republicans don't care at all. Healthcare is another big one. Dems do an ok job, Republicans are terrible. In terms of rule of law, again, Dems do ok and Republicans just wipe their ass with the Constitution. Dems are not strongly asserting their role because they are in the minority. There were many votes to curb tariffs and war powers and they were shot down on party lines. It's also very much the fault of the conservative supreme court who have been ridiculously deferential to Trump and are allowing him to seize unprecedented power. The same conservative justices who voted to allow unlimited corporate campaign spending, who declared the president immune to prosecution, who basically nullified the emoluments clause. And it's not just a question of failed institutions, it's voters who decided to just forgive Jan 6 and reelect a traitor. There's absolutely no "both sides" to this. The right are killing this country. The left are just not saving it fast enough.
I'm not sure I agree with you about the debt. If you don't manage the debt, eventually you'll loose investors, which means you'll loose the funds to do anything. Including fix the climate. We now spend more on interest (14%) than we do on national defense (13%).
There’s also no indication that it’s not right around the corner. But it’s true, no one really knows where that threshold is. But it’s also the kind of thing that you really don’t want to know the “right” answer to, because by then it will be too late.
If you honestly think think both sides are "abusing the same power", you clearly are oblivious.
Which your proposal to abolish the filibuster further proves: it would make governing even more a "winner-takes-all" game. Or ranked choice voting: you can't even stop Republicans from gerrymandering. (And no, gerrymandering is not done by "both sides". California did it as reprisal and put provisions to get back to a fair system when Republicans stop gerrymandering. And gerrymandering is the official strategy of the GOP from bottom to top.)
Your quote "abusing the same power" appears nowhere in my post. I am saying that neither Democrats nor Republicans, when they get into power, do anything to bring the deficit down to 3% of GDP as is recommended by economists, or to constrain the military actions and executive orders of the President on their side. I'm not making a "both sides are equally bad" argument, I'm saying that neither side is doing what it would take to fix the problem.
I'm willing to go either way on the fillibuster; that was just one example which the article talks about. In particular, they talk about filibuster reform rather than abolishing it, so I may have worded it too strongly in my original post. Still, I think there's a legitimate argument that the increase in use of the filibuster over the past few decades has had the practical consequence of delegating legislative power to the Executive branch.
> I'm not making a "both sides are equally bad" argument, I'm saying that neither side is doing what it would take to fix the problem.
Close but it's a feature, not a bug - both sides are equally good at not fixing, and not even acknowledging, the problems which leads to relentless beating around the bush, like wrangling about the filibuster, gerrymandering, etc.
> In particular, they talk about filibuster reform rather than abolishing it
These are systems completely designed to prey on vulnerable people, addicts who can't control their impulse to gamble. That's their purpose. I think it's worth regulating intentionally predatory and harmful industries.
When making decisions like this, one should consider not just the desired consequences of the policy, but the difficulty in actually implementing it. Alcohol and narcotics prohibitions fall short here.
It's hard to fully prohibit gambling (because you can play poker around a table, and it's better if that's legalized). It's much easier to prohibit banks from interacting with casinos and TV networks from letting them advertise, as those are large businesses who want to be compliant. That doesn't make gambling itself illegal, but cuts off most of its oxygen.
The problem though is that technically, legally most of this stuff is no longer classified as "gambling". It's now a "prediction market" of which team will win the game.
That's a specific problem of corruption in the current administration. It's not even clear whether this obviously absurd theory of classification will hold up in court, Arizona is already fighting it.
I don’t really gamble. But I agree with you. Prohibition is never the answer.
Our current regime, however, is one where bartenders face zero liability for their patrons’ drunk driving. Making gambling companies liable for problematic gambling is a good start. Banning gambling ads, within apps and without, is a great end. I’d also argue for a cap on bet sizes, but I’m open to being talked out of that.
You actually want to ban bet maximums. Regular people get destroyed making small stupid bets on nonsense like freethrows for benchwarmers. Apps only offer those because they put a low max bet so they have little risk on a wager that is impossible to price accurately. If they couldn’t set such a low max then they couldn’t offer those nonsense wagers.
prohibition
noun
pro· hi· bi· tion ˌprō-ə-ˈbi-shən also ˌprō-hə-
Synonyms of prohibition
1
: the act of prohibiting by authority
2
: an order to restrain or stop
Let's combine the idea of hyper-targeted advertising based on mass data collection with custom tailored addicted substances.
If I design a chemical that will specifically make you fasterik so dependent on it that you'll do any sexually depraved things that a line up of random strangers want so that they'll give you pocket change so that you can get another hit of that chemical should it be illegal for me to surreptitiously give it to you in a product that you buy from me?
There's a fine line between prohibition and all-out attack, everywhere all at once, from TV internet and sports, trying to get everyone addicted to gambling, from 9 to 99 years old.
Like... cigarretes aren't prohibited. But you're hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't agree that we're MUCH better off now with full advertising bans, indoor smoking bans, bans on sales to minors, steep tax, etc, than what we were in the 70s with disgusting cigarrete smoke everywhere.
That's quite a straw man. Drunk driving is and should be illegal because it puts the lives of others at risk. Alcohol is legal because it only puts the health of the drinker at risk. Generally in a free society we accept that adults should be free to make decisions that harm only themselves.
It's interesting to be arguing that gambling doesn't put others at risk in the comments to a post about a broad trend of collective harm associated with loosened controls on gambling. Do you think these people exist in a vacuum?
On top of that, sports betting inevitably leads into match fixing, threatening of players etc.
I believe most of the negative impacts you're referring to are covered by existing laws concerning fraud and consumer protection. I'm in favor of making truly fraudulent and predatory behavior illegal. I don't see any evidence that the "collective harm" you mention from the article is anything other than individuals making bad financial decisions.
I believe that I, as a responsible adult, should be allowed to gamble for entertainment if I want to, and my right to do that shouldn't be taken away because a small minority of the population has low impulse control.
> I don't see any evidence that the "collective harm" you mention from the article is anything other than individuals making bad financial decisions.
Legalized gambling establishments do very little besides extract money from visitors and project negative externalities into their surroundings.
> I believe that I, as a responsible adult, should be allowed to gamble for entertainment if I want to, and my right to do that shouldn't be taken away because a small minority of the population has low impulse control.
You can believe that, and be correct in theory. In practice, the "small minority" doesn't appear to be small enough under the current regulatory regime.
It's no different than the regulation of controlled substances and other vices. Or do you have an issue with that as well, and feel you should have the right to consume as much heroin as you want?
I'm pretty liberal when it comes to drugs. I think it's a case by case basis, but I do believe that heroin and most other drugs should be legal and regulated. As long as there's demand, prohibition just leads to black markets, funnels money to cartels, and consumers ultimately get a less reliable and more dangerous product.
I don't consider those off limits for recreational consumption in safe doses. If fentanyl were legalized, I would see a strong argument for restricting the sale of large amounts of pure fentanyl. Fentanyl lollipops with small doses, I think would be fine.
Regardless, I don't think we should stretch the metaphor between gambling and drugs too far. They are fundamentally different things.
They aren't that different, in that they are addictive, provide no value to society other than entertainment (which is not worthless by any means, but not something that is very heavily weighted in a cost/benefit analysis), and the resulting behavior of addicted individuals is highly negative and has an impact well beyond the addicted individual.
You are on an extreme fringe to put it mildly. It is your right to hold that opinion, but it also means that there's no real point in discussing this with you from what I can tell.
And yet you can't do a quick Google search to understand that "expecting adults to act like adults" is a ridiculous idea when 80% of people have NPC agency
Prohibition was a mistake and it goes a long way of sorting how people will act stupid regardless
The distinction doesn't matter in this case. The fundamental question is whether a government can compel a decentralized open-source project to change its codebase. If you believe code is speech, it's a violation of the right to free expression.
Even if you think adding "age indication" to a project is harmless, you have to consider the precedent this is setting for compelled speech in the future, potentially by regimes that you are not politically aligned with.
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