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We Haven’t Seen the Worst of What Gambling and Prediction Markets Will Do to America
(www.derekthompson.org)
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this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2026
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Recently I saw some youtube video where these gamblers were watching traffic cameras. They bet on the number of cars that would pass through an intersection before the light turned. Grown men screaming at their computers because an arbitrary intersection in an arbitrary city had an arbitrary number of cars go through it that minute.
What the fuck is that doing to brain chemistry? At what point is it considered a terminal illness?
SO hyped for the American cultural revolution
The first thing I will do is gather a bunch of patriotic teenagers and sing songs as we decapitate anyone who owns a gambling website. Songs of JOY.
Behavioral addictions generally aren't related even in a tenuous conceptual manner to terminal illness because behaviors can be unlearned and in many cases forcibly stopped (e.g. can't play with fire if you don't have access to fire).
I get that, but I've also known terminal alcoholics. The psychological dynamics of that intensify as the physical ones do. I had patients dying of liver cirrhosis scream at me because I refused to sneak them whiskey, saying I'm failing to do the basic job of a nurse. It's that specific kind of dynamic I'm trying to capture in comparing the two.
Why are you saying this as though alcoholism is merely a behavioral addiction when you know better than I do that it isn't? And how do you propose a gambling addict gets gamba cirrhosis?