Justin Wolfers - Thanks for writing this - mea culpa and all. I'm appalled and disgusted with the dump of betting slop out there. Every YT, even news broadcasts are funded by sports betting machines and ads. Maybe we should instigate a Prohibition Amendment? Nah, will just hijack betting to a new level (I bet). Even state lotteries have been taken over. Never liked these either. I'm "betting" that gambling addiction has or will soon overtake booze as the #1 addictive problem in the world! Hope I'm wrong. All bets are off.
I remember you taught a class on gambling at Stanford, or maybe gambling was just part of the class. This was 2000-2005, I think. I don't know how I know this. I wasn't at Stanford. I tend to save stuff, like pdfs, but I can't find anything.
Strange brew here: the normalization of something we once called a vice; competitive (?) rivals who are both connected via paid "advisor" Don Jr (and is that pay really just a handout for influence over any potential scrutiny or regulation?); and the dream of perfect information in a market being twisted into milliseconds of early access to upcoming business/government insider info IF you pay the right person.
The growth of the sports betting industry is impressive... and the opportunity cost of all that spending. One could counter, "well, people would just do some other stupid wasteful thing with their money" - but Justin's co-worker sounds like he was generally sensible guy before gaming fever got into his brain chemistry. On the scale of commercial betting these days, how many people are falling under that spell? I appreciate Justin's heartfelt concern about what we've set loose and how little we thought it through. With the money now sloshing around for lobbyists, and with the presidential family biz tied up with it, this genie is likely to run amok.
Can we sometime look at how the stock markets have developed a purely speculative component, trading on info about trading instead of the fundamentals of a company & its business. Seems like the latest Truth Social venture into that sounds a lot like the sports and prediction market enterprises
As History Professor Timothy Snyder has said Trump sees us as "perfect Idiots" in this video Economics Professor Justin Wolfers explains how Trump's family is now profiting from selling insider information and human weakness as gambling addicts.
Justin Wolfers - Thanks for writing this - mea culpa and all. I'm appalled and disgusted with the dump of betting slop out there. Every YT, even news broadcasts are funded by sports betting machines and ads. Maybe we should instigate a Prohibition Amendment? Nah, will just hijack betting to a new level (I bet). Even state lotteries have been taken over. Never liked these either. I'm "betting" that gambling addiction has or will soon overtake booze as the #1 addictive problem in the world! Hope I'm wrong. All bets are off.
I remember you taught a class on gambling at Stanford, or maybe gambling was just part of the class. This was 2000-2005, I think. I don't know how I know this. I wasn't at Stanford. I tend to save stuff, like pdfs, but I can't find anything.
Great conversation.
Strange brew here: the normalization of something we once called a vice; competitive (?) rivals who are both connected via paid "advisor" Don Jr (and is that pay really just a handout for influence over any potential scrutiny or regulation?); and the dream of perfect information in a market being twisted into milliseconds of early access to upcoming business/government insider info IF you pay the right person.
The growth of the sports betting industry is impressive... and the opportunity cost of all that spending. One could counter, "well, people would just do some other stupid wasteful thing with their money" - but Justin's co-worker sounds like he was generally sensible guy before gaming fever got into his brain chemistry. On the scale of commercial betting these days, how many people are falling under that spell? I appreciate Justin's heartfelt concern about what we've set loose and how little we thought it through. With the money now sloshing around for lobbyists, and with the presidential family biz tied up with it, this genie is likely to run amok.
Can we sometime look at how the stock markets have developed a purely speculative component, trading on info about trading instead of the fundamentals of a company & its business. Seems like the latest Truth Social venture into that sounds a lot like the sports and prediction market enterprises
As History Professor Timothy Snyder has said Trump sees us as "perfect Idiots" in this video Economics Professor Justin Wolfers explains how Trump's family is now profiting from selling insider information and human weakness as gambling addicts.