Take my poker but let penny auction sites live...BAD

tydas

Golden Member
Mar 10, 2000
1,284
0
76
I can't believe the government cracks down on all my poker sites but lets these scam penny auction sites alone...I have no problem with people being retarded and wasting money on these scam sites (like Skoreit) but if they can be around so should my poker sites.


total CRAP!!!
 

bfdd

Lifer
Feb 3, 2007
13,312
1
0
It is absolutely retarded that we have outlawed gambling in any form anywhere federally.
 

DominionSeraph

Diamond Member
Jul 22, 2009
8,386
32
91
Yes, penny auctions are a scam designed to take advantage of the way humans react to sunk costs, but it is commerce. The endpoint is the reception of an item of discrete value that you can measure against the acquisition cost. So eventually you will have all the information you need to make the decision as to whether the system is right for you.

Gambling, OTOH, has no such endpoint. "Just one more spin," might result in the "big win," so it leads to people throwing good money after bad in a system in which nothing of value is created. The only one who truly profits in gambling is the one taking a cut of the action.
 
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the DRIZZLE

Platinum Member
Sep 6, 2007
2,956
1
81
Holy crap I'd seen the commercials but never knew that's how penny auctions worked until I just googled it. I'm sure they will be banned soon. I love game theory and these are a great example of a war of attrition.
 

DominionSeraph

Diamond Member
Jul 22, 2009
8,386
32
91
Why is America cracking down on poker sites? What's wrong with them?

Gambling is a fight over what people have banked rather than the creation of new wealth.

Take a woodcutter and a furniture maker. The furniture maker needs wood. The woodcutter happens to need a chair.
The woodcutter happens to have a tree he felled yesterday. The furniture maker has a chair he made yesterday. So... do they gamble? Is it an efficient use of time for them each to spend days trying to one-up each other, both in an attempt to get the other's small cache of wealth for no cost to them?
If the woodcutter would just fell another tree, and the furniture maker would make another chair, and they were to trade, they would both have their original bankroll plus exactly what they want.
Work allows for sustainable gain. Gambling is nothing but net loss and can even set things up for a downward spiral -- what happens if the loser now has to sell the tools of his trade just to eat? Now he can't work. It is a significant loss to the system when a person loses the wealth required to create wealth efficiently.

Gambling screws with the market's disbursement. Instead of wealth movement showing a preference for movement supporting the creation of more wealth, you have wealth movement that prefers nothing, taking away from the pool finding its "best fit." (To the winner it's "found money", leading to splurging behavior, not wise investment. So what you have is an blip in luxury demand with no sustainable backing while the real market is crashing.)

We have ample evidence that unregulated gambling causes serious problems. It's not something that people self-regulate particularly well, and even small fluctuations in disposable income can have profound effects.
 
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the DRIZZLE

Platinum Member
Sep 6, 2007
2,956
1
81
Gambling is a fight over what people have banked rather than the creation of new wealth.

Take a woodcutter and a furniture maker. The furniture maker needs wood. The woodcutter happens to need a chair.
The woodcutter happens to have a tree he felled yesterday. The furniture maker has a chair he made yesterday. So... do they gamble? Is it an efficient use of time for them each to spend days trying to one-up each other, both in an attempt to get the other's small cache of wealth for no cost to them?
If the woodcutter would just fell another tree, and the furniture maker would make another chair, and they were to trade, they would both have their original bankroll plus exactly what they want.
Work allows for sustainable gain. Gambling is nothing but net loss and can even set things up for a downward spiral -- what happens if the loser now has to sell the tools of his trade just to eat? Now he can't work. It is a significant loss to the system when a person loses the wealth required to create wealth efficiently.

Gambling screws with the market's disbursement. Instead of wealth movement showing a preference for movement supporting the creation of more wealth, you have wealth movement that prefers nothing, taking away from the pool finding its "best fit."

We have ample evidence that unregulated gambling causes serious problems. It's not something that people self-regulate particularly well, and even small fluctuations in disposable income can have profound effects.

I'll play devils advocate. Many goods and services in the economy don't have a true tangible value. Companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars making movies that only provide entertainment. Gambling is just another form of entertainment therefore does create economic value.
 

DominionSeraph

Diamond Member
Jul 22, 2009
8,386
32
91
I'll play devils advocate. Many goods and services in the economy don't have a true tangible value. Companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars making movies that only provide entertainment. Gambling is just another form of entertainment therefore does create economic value.

Other forms of entertainment do not masquerade as something other than expenditure.
If my car breaks down and I need money for repairs, I may be tempted to go to the casino to risk what I have for the possibility of monetary gain. I will not be tempted to go to the movies. It's obvious that what the movies are selling (entertainment) is not what I'm in need of (money).

Gambling for pure entertainment is perfectly legal. Let's play now:

I'll flip a coin. Y'all post whether you think it's going to come up heads or tail. If you're right I'll quote all the correct responses and reply with, "You're a winner!"

We can play this all day long.

If this takes off perhaps I start charging $8.75 for entry and $10.25 for a bucket of popcorn...

Anyway, good devil's advocate. I always like it when somebody comes up with a challenge presented well enough that it can illuminate some of the vast extent of my positions.
(Now if somebody could only pose a question that I haven't already posed to myself and wrung through the wringer. It's been a long time now since I've been faced with a situation that required a mind expansion, and I miss the flurry of activity and the joy of discovery that goes along with it.)
 
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Jhhnn

IN MEMORIAM
Nov 11, 1999
62,365
14,681
136
Heh. Too bad the govt doesn't ban other forms of gambling, like synthetic derivatives... capital tied up in that is diverted from productive enterprise...
 

the DRIZZLE

Platinum Member
Sep 6, 2007
2,956
1
81
Other forms of entertainment do not masquerade as something other than expenditure.
If my car breaks down and I need money for repairs, I may be tempted to go to the casino to risk what I have for the possibility of monetary gain. I will not be tempted to go to the movies. It's obvious that what the movies are selling (entertainment) is not what I'm in need of (money).

Gambling for pure entertainment is perfectly legal. Let's play now:

I'll flip a coin. Y'all post whether you think it's going to come up heads or tail. If you're right I'll quote all the correct responses and reply with, "You're a winner!"

We can play this all day long.

If this takes off perhaps I start charging $8.75 for entry and $10.25 for a bucket of popcorn...

Anyway, good devil's advocate. I always like it when somebody comes up with a challenge presented well enough that it can illuminate some of the vast extent of my positions.
(Now if somebody could only pose a question that I haven't already posed to myself and wrung through the wringer. It's been a long time now since I've been faced with a situation that required a mind expansion, and I miss the flurry of activity and the joy of discovery that goes along with it.)

I would argue that the majority of population does view gambling as entertainment. Most also know that gambling at a casino has a negative expected value even if they have never heard the term. Obviously they derive some utility from gambling that is greater than their expected losses.

I can't argue with the fact that gambling has significant external social costs. But if you apply this logic more generally you will probably ban half the economic activity in the world. I just don't think its the governments job to protect people from making bad choices.
 

Dr. Zaus

Lifer
Oct 16, 2008
11,764
347
126
Other forms of entertainment do not masquerade as something other than expenditure.
If my car breaks down and I need money for repairs, I may be tempted to go to the casino to risk what I have for the possibility of monetary gain. I will not be tempted to go to the movies. It's obvious that what the movies are selling (entertainment) is not what I'm in need of (money).

Gambling for pure entertainment is perfectly legal. Let's play now:

I'll flip a coin. Y'all post whether you think it's going to come up heads or tail. If you're right I'll quote all the correct responses and reply with, "You're a winner!"

We can play this all day long.

If this takes off perhaps I start charging $8.75 for entry and $10.25 for a bucket of popcorn...

Anyway, good devil's advocate. I always like it when somebody comes up with a challenge presented well enough that it can illuminate some of the vast extent of my positions.
(Now if somebody could only pose a question that I haven't already posed to myself and wrung through the wringer. It's been a long time now since I've been faced with a situation that required a mind expansion, and I miss the flurry of activity and the joy of discovery that goes along with it.)

The costs of gambling are high; but if the only justification of prohibition we need is indirect social costs the no one should be free to do anything that disagrees with what the learned and wise state thinks is optimal for society. I'm not arguing that pure totalitarianism is the eventual outcome, simply that the teleological ethical basis from which you make your argument lacks a proper respect for persons.
 

DominionSeraph

Diamond Member
Jul 22, 2009
8,386
32
91
I just don't think its the governments job to protect people from making bad choices.

That's because your model is limited to surface features. You cannot see the hundreds of thousands of avenues of protection that the government has emplaced that you would have no problems with.

You've tried to convert something into absolute terms that is utterly retarded as an absolute, so excuse me if I don't much care what you think.
Think bigger.
 

DominionSeraph

Diamond Member
Jul 22, 2009
8,386
32
91
The costs of gambling are high; but if the only justification of prohibition we need is indirect social costs the no one should be free to do anything that disagrees with what the learned and wise state thinks is optimal for society. I'm not arguing that pure totalitarianism is the eventual outcome, simply that the teleological ethical basis from which you make your argument lacks a proper respect for persons.

st5antenna.jpg


Mobility allows for the above. It was not designed, it was evolved.
Cauterizing obviously incorrect paths is not an argument that stasis is the only answer. One can allow plenty of mobility in the system to allow for evolution to show its knack for surpassing anyone's ability for design while not taking the hit of running blindly into every dead-end.
Regulation and freedom can coexist.
 
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DominionSeraph

Diamond Member
Jul 22, 2009
8,386
32
91
This economic activity is wrong because... Someone not engaged in gambling got a good deal in wood cutter's tools?

The economy takes a hit. The lower value of his tools indicates the lack of wealth parity. If there was another woodcutter who was just as good who was in need of a woodcutter's tools there would be no "good deal."
A hit is being taken because effort will have to be expended to sell the tools and a local hit will be taken with a reduction in local woodcutting.

"Wrong," is a moral judgment. Given that humanity is unlikely to be eternal, all paths will eventually lead to the same outcome, so there is no "right" and "wrong". There are no universal values, only local ones.
I value directed efficiency where it can be achieved without greatly compromising the efficiency of evolution. History shows that unregulated gambling would likely take us through social decay before we reinvented the wheel of a contravention to gambling. I don't exactly see why we'd need to go through all that when we can just do it now.
 

Dr. Zaus

Lifer
Oct 16, 2008
11,764
347
126
If there is no universal right or wrong why seek efficiency on a local level? Nature seeks efficiency, true, but why should we... Why should we not instead seek stability?

Why would it matter what occurs outside of the world you must directly interact with if there was maximization of outcome possible greater than that seen locally?
 
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DominionSeraph

Diamond Member
Jul 22, 2009
8,386
32
91
Evolution naturaly curtailes freedom,

To some degree. But evolution is a system that works very well at finding things that work very well. This means that it can find meta-evolution. Instead of stratifying into rigid orders, it includes a value in the randomness that drives evolution.

Nature seems to value robustness.

but what curtails regulation?

Intelligent modeling, or failure/outcompetition.
Humans are never truly locked into one mode. If reality demands a response that your current mentality is incapable of giving, you will be driven to insanity where you can reprocess things without being tied down to your previous beliefs.
People are robust. If one thing doesn't work we try another. This is why I don't quite get a conservative's fear of change. I can only attribute their fear to an inability to think through the individual human systems as well as the evolutionary backup. So the only thing they can use to determine if something works is whether it worked yesterday. Any change to that and they are lost in the woods with nothing to guide them.
 
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shira

Diamond Member
Jan 12, 2005
9,500
6
81
Gambling is a fight over what people have banked rather than the creation of new wealth.

Take a woodcutter and a furniture maker. The furniture maker needs wood. The woodcutter happens to need a chair.
The woodcutter happens to have a tree he felled yesterday. The furniture maker has a chair he made yesterday. So... do they gamble? Is it an efficient use of time for them each to spend days trying to one-up each other, both in an attempt to get the other's small cache of wealth for no cost to them?
If the woodcutter would just fell another tree, and the furniture maker would make another chair, and they were to trade, they would both have their original bankroll plus exactly what they want.
Work allows for sustainable gain. Gambling is nothing but net loss and can even set things up for a downward spiral -- what happens if the loser now has to sell the tools of his trade just to eat? Now he can't work. It is a significant loss to the system when a person loses the wealth required to create wealth efficiently.

Gambling screws with the market's disbursement. Instead of wealth movement showing a preference for movement supporting the creation of more wealth, you have wealth movement that prefers nothing, taking away from the pool finding its "best fit." (To the winner it's "found money", leading to splurging behavior, not wise investment. So what you have is an blip in luxury demand with no sustainable backing while the real market is crashing.)

We have ample evidence that unregulated gambling causes serious problems. It's not something that people self-regulate particularly well, and even small fluctuations in disposable income can have profound effects.

"Serious problems" is pretty vague. Care to be more specific? Also, I don't think many people advocate no regulation of gambling. Regulating gambling doesn't equate to outlawing it.

You're also overlooking the fact that many forms of gambling are just as much games of skill as, say, golf or baseball. And like gambling, most sports involve a significant random element (baseball being the most obvious example). In the long run, the difference in skill will dominate. That being the case, why should some games of skill that involve chance be outlawed whereas other games of skill that involve chance remain legal? Why punish the highly skilled for the weaknesses of the less skilled?

Outlawing gambling is just a misguided and just as futile as outlawing various drugs. All that's accomplished is the creation of a black market, with all the concomitant criminality.
 

DominionSeraph

Diamond Member
Jul 22, 2009
8,386
32
91
If there is no universal right or wrong why seek efficiency on a local level?

I conclude that such is an artifact of evolutionally instilled core values.

I see no evidence that a rock seeks anything. So we are different from rocks. This doesn't trouble me, as the universe is under no obligation to output nothing but rocks.
To value "not valuing" over "valuing" would require you to value. So you can't get around valuing. The question of "why" isn't particularly meaningful in the face of "is." Reality is beholden to no theory, so you cannot trap it in a logical bind that would turn "is" into "is not."

In a battle between theory and reality it is never reality that is incorrect.


Nature seeks efficiency, true, but why should we... Why should we not instead seek stability?

We are not stable creatures. We are opportunists. We invade systems and violently wrench them for our own uses.
You can't ask humans not to test the boundaries of what reality allows to them. Testing boundaries for avenues of exploitation is what we excel at.

Any system of governance has to be able to change to adapt to us as we adapt to it and the changing world around us.
We are not static creatures in a static system, so asking for stasis just doesn't work.


Why would it matter what occurs outside of the world you must directly interact with if there was maximization of outcome possible greater than that seen locally?

I have no clue what this means. You seem to be jumping around between locales and perspectives with attached value structures.
 

DominionSeraph

Diamond Member
Jul 22, 2009
8,386
32
91
"Serious problems" is pretty vague. Care to be more specific?

Google, "gambling debt."

Also, I don't think many people advocate no regulation of gambling. Regulating gambling doesn't equate to outlawing it.

It isn't outlawed. If you want to gamble, go to a casino.
They're highly regulated and controllable. Online gambling is not. To put a clamp on problems arising from online gambling would require the government to take over personal finances.
Seems better to just avoid the problem rather than being stuck with that particular solution.

You're also overlooking the fact that many forms of gambling are just as much games of skill as, say, golf or baseball.

No, the particulars of the distribution of the pool are irrelevant. Nothing changes until we hit 100%/0%, at which point we just call it "fraud."

And like gambling, most sports involve a significant random element (baseball being the most obvious example). In the long run, the difference in skill will dominate. That being the case, why should some games of skill that involve chance be outlawed whereas other games of skill that involve chance remain legal? Why punish the highly skilled for the weaknesses of the less skilled?

Sports don't prey on the weak. The losers do not go home any materially worse off than the winners.
Gambling with monopoly money is the same way. The highly skilled have their evidence of victory while the less skilled have that they tried. That is the limit of the coincidence of your analogy. Amazing how it's legal on both sides, eh?