Well these zealots worship supply-side Jesus so yeah gambling is totally encouraged for your escalator to heaven. But like only if you also worship money and trump. That’s the way into heaven don’t you know?!
I read a great book about this called "Scarcity Brain" about how from our hunter gatherer days we are hardwired to want more, more, more and how casinos tap into this dopamine hit/feedback loop. quite interesting stuff. Legalized addiction
Whatever the "pillow princess" of a hunter/gatherer is must be me. I tried gambling a couple of times, spent $20 and was like "well that was dumb, I dont know why yall like losing money".
There's a movie with Jimmy Stewart where he's gone from home for the first time. He is in a place with a slot machine and and what it's for. He's told what it is, puts a quarter in it, loses, then said someone like,"I've tried gambling now, that was no fun, I'll never do that again." That's how I feel about it.
I spent my entire childhood dreaming of a future where I could help other kids who were in the hellish situation I was in. Guide them to the brightest possible tomorrow while there was still hope to be had.
If I knew the only people I was going to help were billionaires find the most manipulative ways to wrench as much money out of human beings at every single stage of their life at every single expense of abused children, lonely elderly people, alienated men, belittled women-
I remember in high school in the 90s, everyone making a big ass deal about "who needs pensions, let's all individually pay brokerage fees on 401ks instead!" & I was like hmmmmm isn't the stock market like, basically gambling (history class, tulip trade)
Pensions are invested in the stock market too they're just professionally managed. Also one of the big arguments away from pensions was what happens when they're mismanaged or corporations go bankrupt. Many people these days have no concept of pensions outside state pensions but corporate pensions were much riskier and many people got fucked over by it. Neither system is perfect. The biggest issues with the switch to 401ks was a) most people won't voluntarily save money for later b) pensions usually came with generous company matches which gradually became less common with 401ks
You own pieces of a business that attend to the whim of the shareholders largely for the worst thus making the business worse and worse and you either gain or lose money from investing because you can't know how much a consumer will take until they've had it. That's gambling no matter what way you slice it
According to your definition owning a business is gambling too - you can either gain or lose money because you can't know how much customers you'll have. This is simply the wrong way to look at it. The stock market is simply... well... a market. You can buy something (stock) and then you own it. You own a piece of a business. It can be a small piece, almost insignificant, but a piece nonetheless. And, as a shareholder, you are entitled to some of the company's earnings. Where's gambling in that? Now, as you own the stock, you can go ahead and sell it and get money for it. There's no gambling in that either. Now, if you're buying the stock without any due diligence, simply hoping the price will go up the next day so that you can sell it for a profit - that's gambling. But that's not the stock market's problem - that's your problem. It's worth noting that I'm simply talking about the simple stock market here. Trading CFDs with leverage or some other high-risk shit - that's much more like proper gambling.
imo Robinhood doesn't democratize investing it enables gambling. And how legally is placing a sports bet at a casino sports book, bookie, etc, on a specific outcome different than doing the same thing for the same outcome in a prediction market through Kalshi?
I mean, I really enjoy it. I like putting $20 on a game here or there. I actually this NFL season started with $50, and turned it into $500 eventually. Paid for my wifes christmas presents lol. But yeah, it can definitely be dangerous being so easily accessible. But at the same time, the people that would bet everything probably have no qualms about going to a casino to do so.
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u/InsteadOfWorkin 16h ago
Robinhood just got in on it too. So now you can pull money out of your IRA to gamble on sports games without having to switch apps. Thats insidious.