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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

> Legalizing sports gambling was the biggest unforced error in United States public policy in living memory.

That's a tough sell; the US makes a lot of errors. Assuming "public policy" means "domestic"; their industrial policy promoting deindustrialisation seems like a bigger error. After a few moments of thought I'd probably argue the Bush-Obama era establishment of a massive internal surveillance apparatus (including a secret court) is a strong contender for biggest unforced error in living memory. There might be bigger ones but the US citizens lost a remarkable amount there. It is no longer possible to know what the laws of the US are, because some of them are secret. And the use of spying and federal harassment of political opponents seems to have been steadily normalising.

Even just background over-regulation on starting and running new businesses is probably going to cause more damage to poor people than legalising sports gambling.

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Industrial policy promoting deindustrialization was a migration (the same one all advanced economies make) toward higher value-add tasks.

The surveillance apparatus was created to prevent another 9/11 which quite possibly would have destabilized the state itself.

These may or may not have been mistakes, may or may not have been worth it, may or may not have been illegal, etc. etc., but they both had a pretty coherent rationale for them.

What's the rationale for legalized sports betting? It's such an obscenely indefensible change that any politician advocating for it should be investigated relentlessly (at least journalistically) until the day they die.

> It is no longer possible to know what the laws of the US are, because some of them are secret.

That's not true.

> Even just background over-regulation on starting and running new businesses is probably going to cause more damage to poor people than legalising sports gambling.

Absurd statement.

> What's the rationale for legalized sports betting?

Some people want to bet on sports. It seems obvious enough. It's like asking what the rationale is for letting people do anything. They don't have to clear it with you to make sure you agree that it is a worthwhile activity (or anyone else for that matter). Even if it is clear folly on a whim.

I'll just add that every mistake the US makes is going to have a rationale. Everything the US does has a coherent rationale with the possible exception of the recent Iran war. But sometimes the rationale is stupid.

> That's not true.

It is true. They had a big thing about clamping down on whistleblowers under the Obama administration because people kept trying to leak information on it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...

> Absurd statement.

The world is an absurd place. My mind usually goes to https://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/the-cost-of-regulation when I bring that point up.

Okay great: people want to bet. Should we legalize heroin and legalize advertising heroin on TV? I don't really have interest in arguing the point with you. If you think "people want to do it" is sufficient then that's fine, and other readers can be convinced-or-not by that argument. I don't think this argument is even within earshot of the legitimacy of the arguments for the other two "unforced errors" you mention.

Secret law: The Wikipedia section heading being "secret law" does not actually make it a "secret law" in the sense that most Americans would read it. What it's referring to is a set of secret court rulings. Which are, yes, very problematic and not something I'll defend. But the phrase "secret law" would cause most Americans to think of secret legislation, which does not exist.

1) If most Americans haven't reflected that law and legislation are different words then so be it, but I don't intend to hold myself accountable.

2) Bear in mind how the "they're obviously going to be scanning internet traffic" conversations went back in the 90s and 00s (where it went from absurd tinfoil hat talk to common sense assumption basically overnight). If they do turn out to have secret legislation that feeds into the FISA court then I reserve the option of being smug in retrospect. It seems quite reasonable that they would need secret legislation to operate the secret court that produces secret laws likely enforced by secret police. There is pressure to recreate the whole legal system with the word "secret" in front of it to make any individual secret part work.

It's a secret court; I doubt any of us know what is going on in there. This is one of the major problems with secret courts, it is not possible to opine on how they are working without speculation.

It’s not that they’re different words. It’s that the word “law” has multiple distinct meanings. One (the more common meaning) is a synonym for “statute.” That’s not what’s discussed here.

Your second paragraph is actually exemplifying the exact type of misunderstanding of the situation that I was alluding to. You really don’t need secret legislation, or even secret statutes, or even secret rules to produce the “secret law” referred to in the article. All you need is secret decisions.

I hate semantic and pedant arguments on the Internet but this is worth it:

We don't legalize things in America, we illegalize things.

The constitution doesn't give us rights, it actually takes them away so our government can operate.

We give freedom lip service in this country but if you truly believe in it this is what we must drill into people in civics class and in discourse.

This is in fact what happened with sports betting. They wrote a law making it illegal. That law got struck down, so we are back to the default which is it is legal.

We can make it illegal again to address the court ruling, but it's an uphill battle.

I don’t know what you think was gained by this argument.

Sports betting was effectively illegal, and a number of people lobbied aggressively and pursued lawsuits to overturn the status quo (de facto federal ban) then a huge number of efforts to permit it at the state level in a bunch of states.

All of these efforts are completely adequately described as “legalization” efforts.

Yes, we can change the new status quo again. And we should.

That's an interesting opening sentence considering you then iterated what I said about the specifics of sports betting.

You took issue with referring to it as “legalization.” That’s exactly what it was.

>Should we legalize heroin and legalize advertising heroin on TV?

Im always amused by this line of thought, should we make alcohol illegal then and ban advertising it on tv? What about soda with too much sugar? Should we, perhaps, ban everything which is addictive and causes any harm?

I too am amused by people who can’t draw distinctions between degrees of things.

But note I didn’t present the “people want to do it” argument. My view is things should be balanced between their antisocial risks and their prosocial value.

IMO yes there should be extremely high taxes on high-sugar concentration foods and beverages, and probably additional impediments to their advertising. We have alternative sweeteners that do not destroy the financial viability of our healthcare system, and we should tilt the tables in their favor. High antisocial risks, low prosocial benefits compared to readily available alternatives.

Alcohol is dicier as there is a real prosocial value to it that’s non-trivial to replace, but it too should probably be taxed more aggressively as we know that small tax increases disproportionately affect the most problematic consumers of alcohol.

Note how this argument isn’t “people want to do it therefore it should be allowed?” Or “people can be harmed by it therefore it should be disallowed?”

Even if we accept your risk-benefit framework, it doesnt follow that banning something improves overall welfare.

Prohibition has costs of its own: black markets, organised crime, unsafe products, enforcement expenses and incarceration.

You acknowledge that alcohol has social benefits, but apparently heroin doesnt. Why? Because alcohol facilitates socialisation? Because its culturally accepted? Who gets to determine the "prosocial value" of an activity? Almost any unhealthy behavior can be framed as a societal cost.

Theres an enormous amount of subjectivity here. Some people genuinely enjoy recreational drug use. Others enjoy gambling, despite knowing they will probably lose money.

You are arguing that the state should determine which activities are permissible based on their net social utility. Im arguing that danger alone should not give the state a right to prohibit consenting adults from engaging in any activity. Individual autonomy has value in itself, including the freedom to make decisions that are objectively bad for oneself.

> What's the rationale for legalized sports betting?

People are acting like sports betting is new. The Romans bet on the gladiators. I'm not a history buff, but I'd imagine older civilizations bet on some form of sport as well.

What's the rationale? To make money of course. To be confused on this seems like a bit of deliberate obtuseness. The fact it hasn't been legal for so long was because the puritanical start to the country. It would be nice to have specific leagues that were pure sport for sport's sake, but once one league allows betting and the money starts to flow, all of the other leagues will follow or wither

Not so fast. Puritanical is the easy thing to say. Folks just found new ways (tech) to make money from it. It’s never been ethical or legitimate. Still isn’t.

In true HN fashion, I suppose I must be FULLY explicit.

“What’s the rationale for legalized sports betting [that mirrors the rationales for these other two decisions that you are placing in the same category]?”

“Just make money” or “the Romans did it” are unlikely to fit the bill.

Why do people invest? To make money.

Sounds more like you're wanting to ask a more generic question on why addict gambles, but if you want to understand the rational of an addict, then get in line. The only thing to understand is trying chase the high in whatever form it takes. Ask an addict and they will tell you there's no explaining it.

To me, the "HN fasion" is not accepting that there are things that exist that are not rational and no matter how much you want to logic your way to an answer, it will never happen.

You’ve lost the thread. Start back at the top.

This is about policy errors and the degree to which those errors are unforced.

The question is whether sports gambling was just as “forced” as the surveillance state or as deindustrialization.

> I'd probably argue the Bush-Obama era establishment of a massive internal surveillance apparatus (including a secret court) is a strong contender for biggest unforced error in living memory.

Yeah, that one's huge. Another huge one was when the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 provided retroactive immunity to the telephone companies who all willingly, blatantly, and -undoubtedly- knowingly violated Federal law controlling domestic surveillance.

This is tangentially related, but I suspect that the major LLM Manufacturers are hoping that they can frighten Congress into doing something like that again. Getting all active lawsuits about your illegal behavior erased all at once is a huge gift to scumbag businesses.

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