• TheLepidopterists [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    9 days ago

    What’s absurd to me is that it’s not like you couldn’t bet on sports before, you just had to have some buddies at work, or a sibling who or something who was interested.

    That doesn’t allow for the quantity of gambling necessary to immiserate people en masse though.

      • TheLepidopterists [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        9 days ago

        Which also contributed to it draining income from the community.

        If you and your brother in law trade the same 20 bucks back and forth over a few years of 2 person bets then all you did was make the game more exciting. If you did the same but gave a quarter of that to the US government to buy bombs and tanks for the local police department then you could be hundreds or thousands in the hole each after a few years.