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Comment by pandapower2 | Hacker News Reader

>Those are stakes of roughly $600,000 per minute, or $36 million per hour.

This is an odd thing about gambling when compared to drugs, prostitution or other vices. Gambling can scale up to consume whatever amount of money you happen to have.

It is no doubt a lot but there is some upper bound on how much heroin/cocaine/whatever you can consume without outright killing yourself.

Similarly, there is some upper bound on how much any single human can spend on prostitutes.

Gambling has no upper bound. It can scale up infinitely in line with the gamblers financial means.

I don't know what that theoretical cost ceiling is for drugs and prostitution but I'd hazard a guess and say its way lower than $36 million per hour.

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And gambling addicts are scary because they can ruin their lives in less than a year, digging a hole worth more than a decade.

Their lives, and the lives of people whom they happened to become close with before their downwards spiral. I know some stories and they're not pretty.

These must be the 'guests' that 'go dark after 2-3 years', according to the article.

Churn must be interesting for casinos, there has to be a continual search for new 'guests' that haven't already been fully fleeced. The out of this world hospitality is probably the best advertising they have.

Although gambling is as old as money and can be found all over the world, the phenomenon of Las Vegas is extremely American. In the rest of the world there is 'pecking order' with a hierarchy where everyone knows their place, whether they like it or not. This is useful as there is no pressure to 'become king' as that position is not open to you. You can be relatively happy with your status even if you are 'just' a school dinner lady. Furthermore you can gamble on a regular basis to improve your situation (in your dreams). There are the 'turf accountants' on the High Street or at the actual races. Sports betting also allows for the gambling interest to be masked, you can pretend that you 'love' horses, football or dogs.

Meanwhile, in the land of the free, where the dollar is king, there is some pressure to show you have made it, that you are eligible for the top table. With this pressure comes status anxiety, so you 'have' to make it or die trying. Since you can't just pop in to the 'turf accountant' to waste some money on horses (America lacks bookies), you have to save up and go to Vegas, to live it up whilst you are there. Interesting 'monopoly' Vegas has going on there.

I don't think you've been to or are aware of Macau. What you are describing is certainly at play in America but it's by no means exclusive of or born in that country.

The article didn't explicitly say this, but it was heavily implied that many of the guests were Chinese or East Asian (99 ranch, male enhancement fungus, superstitious rituals). Not to mention it's characteristic of the nouveau rich of China that have no idea how to properly invest their money.

I have a different view of the United States as a foreigner. It seems that people have accepted the lack of upward mobility quite well.

As a foreigner in US, I have observed some interesting lifestyle choices at play.

Most popular media propagates "impulsive", "care-free" choices as the way to "live your life". Add an abundance of options to spend money you don't have (credit cards, personal loans, financing options, Lease Vs. Buy, subscription models, etc.) and you have yourself an ecosystem that is highly likely to overspend, run out of money and fall straight into debt.

Throw in social media into the mix and you have cheap, scalable, autonomous marketing campaign that pulls in the masses.

But this is not spending of $36M/hour. House edge is something like 1% so you're expected to lose "just" $360K.

House edge on most table games is significantly bigger than 1%. Single zero (euro) roulette is about 3%, blackjack can be played near to 0% with skill but the rest is all terrible.

Craps has a pretty low house edge if the casino offers odds and you play as boringly as possible (only two types of bets have close to 1% house edge).

No, not necessarily. I remember a story, featuring Bobby Baldwin iirc, who wanted to raise the stakes so high at a casino that the floor manager had to come in and say no. Bobby (if that's actually him, still unsure), left disappointed, saying "And I thought you had a no-limit table...".

There are other vices that can eat into millions. Conspicuous consumption and buying ridiculous luxury vehicles, for two examples. There's diamond studded, gold plated everything these days for the millionaire who wants to own the most expensive phone, bra, watch, shades, handbag and so on.

But even the price of a diamond has a limited range. Art on the other side has no upper limit. A little canvas with something conceptual drawn on it can easily reach tens of millions of dollar.

I always thought that part of the pleasure people get by shopping is purchasing things that are stlighly more expensive that they can afford. That goes from buying the cheapest scarf at Hermes to buying an expensive car and anything in between depending on your means.

Problem, how do you get that pleasure when you have over $500m at the bank? Comes art dealers, who will happily make you believe that this really exclusive conceptual thing is worth more than an entire building. I don’t think most wealthy buyers care the slightlest about art. But they can finally access that same stingy pleasure a secretary can get buying a Hermes scarf.

A great deal of the art dealer world is essentially money laundering.

Money is a instrument of power. When you can buy anything it’s hard to get that dopamine release.

One can be both rich and still have a deep appreciation of art.

If you "appreciate art", you're going to buy $20,000 pieces from brilliant artists, not the name brand stuff that is only marginally more merit worthy if at all.

A great deal of art collecting by the wealthy are people who discovered a particular artist while young, and they felt a great impact from that art, but only later in life were they able to spend the large sums needed to own some of it for themselves. Parts of David Bowie’s collection are an example of this, artists whose work he fell in love with in the 1960s as a young man still far from wealth.

I'm going to peg this at less than 2% of name brand art purchases.

Since perceiving art is highly subjective, couldn't it be subject to the same kind of placebo-like effect that makes a more expensive wine taste subjectively better than a chemically identical cheaper wine?

I think it is safe to say that people who store art in a safe or a secure warehouse in Geneva do not buy art because they enjoy looking at it.

But isn't that at investment, then? A secretary will show off his scarf (let's make him a man and tone down the sexist undercurrent), not bury it.

You are seeing sexism when there is none. I don't think buying expensive cars, clothes or gadget is a male vs female thing.

Call it an investment. But that still not for the love of art.

Art is an investment and if it's worth $1 million now, it's guaranteed to be worth a lot more in 10 years. Same with exclusive cars - although the gaudy gold plated ones probably won't appreciate as much as the 60 year old Ferrari mentioned elsewhere.

Art is literally an investment asset class, with preferential tax rules in many jurisdictions. It's also used to avoid money laundering regulations.

But not all pieces appreciate in value. There have been many cases of forgery and other fraud perpetrated by high profile galleries.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/th...

Art is an investment and if it's worth $1 million now, it's guaranteed to be worth a lot more in 10 years.

If you know that for sure I have some crypto currencies to sell to you. Guaranteed to make you a mint in 10 years.

Sarcasm aside. You're statement is bullshit. While it's possible that art apreciates significantly it's also very possible that a piece of art depreciates in value massively.

Usually this has very much to do with an artist falling out of fashion. Suddenly the prices for his works are only 1/3rd what they used to be.

If you want to read up on a more knowledgeable opinion I provide a link.[1]

Money quote : Certainly, it [art] can. A couple of decades ago, a Rand Corp. study estimated that only 1/2 of 1% of all paintings being sold at that time ever resold for more money than they had originally sold for.

[1] https://www.quora.com/Can-a-fine-art-painting-lose-value

edit : change of a redundant word + parts of my comment ended up in the quote

I wouldn't claim guaranteed. The price only goes up while enough people believe the price should increase, and I think certainly counts as a 'greater fool' investment. On one hand, there is an entire industry propping it up. On the other hand, it is a fashion. On the third hand, it will become less useful as a store of wealth as banking and tax regulations tighten.

Old cars are interesting. A 60 year old Ferrari is now worth so much because they are so rare. When they were made, those Ferrari's were a terrible investment because most of them would not be around in 60 years time.

I don’t think it’s really guaranteed.

the most expensive car you can buy is like a 60 year old ferrari, and its definitely under a billion, unlike the drug trade, but op is right that gambling scales so easily.

i wonder how these poker sites are allowed to operate from offshore and take all my money :(

I thought they weren't? https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2011/04/15/founders...

> Similarly, there is some upper bound on how much any single human can spend on prostitutes.

...what? How could this possibly be the case?

Look at the amount King Ludwig I spent on one prostitute (Lola Montez).

Falling in love and making gifts is another thing.

Proper prostitution operates at market prices, and its enjoyment doesn't scale beyond one body and 24 hours a day.

By that standard, the maximum amount of money you could spend on strippers, and the number of strippers you could enjoy per day, would be $0. But it is common to engage multiple prostitutes for a single job even though you're only able to have sex with one of them.

Story has it that she revealed her chest long before any promise of title was made.

You can always throw a party.

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