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In my day ...

Is that why gambling being illegal was pushed through or why legalising it was?

The gambling industry is predatory by nature, with the vast majority of its profits coming from people who have problems and are often getting massively into debt to fund their addiction. Speculative stock trading is different in that the larger harm it does is pushing companies to focus on short-term objectives (typically harmful for employees, stakeholders and the society as a whole rather than the speculators themselves suffering, though obviously they can screw up badly as well).

If we're listing forms of gambling, the entire cryptocurrency market should be included. Indeed the lack of regulation there means it is littered with pump and dump scams.

Personally I'd treat the gambling business the same as tobacco: regulate tightly, enforce that regulation, and ban all forms of advertising. And then see whether they are able to exist without causing harm (something the tobacco industry cannot do).
 
That people always forget about current gen tv, can be spaced out in huge gaps of time.

Just finished watching The Critic's box set, an underrated cartoon about a bad movie review, but the humor was sort of top of it's game back in 1995ish...

I even sworn off watching Breaking Bad for a giant spell as well..
 
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When I was knee high to a grasshopper, my mother in the fall would go to a few farms with neighbors and come back with numerous vegetables and the neighbors would can all the vegetables for the winter. Then my father would go with a couple of neighbors and buy half a cow, Then they would butcher it in our basement and fill up our freezer.
 
@Hadron I don't understand what you think the difference is between cryptocurrency and the lottery. Or the stock market. If people want to use risk capital on the newest shiny $hitcoin and hope to trade off to another before the bottom falls out, that's risk vs. reward. Although legal, 90% of the stock market speculators lose money (even though the market is regulated to oblivion); and I think many of us know people on fixed income who will buy a month of groceries' worth of scratch-off lottery tickets, hoping to win big (in my opinion, the lottery is a tax on poor people and people who can't do math) although the odds of doing so are stupefyingly low.

Personally, I don't jump around the crypto market, speculating and making wild decisions that could cost me my house. Instead, I focus on The ONE: Bitcoin (I have a little Ethereum, but I'll probably move that to Bitcoin over the next few months before the halving in April).

Bitcoin is not an "investment" to make money... it IS money. It's simple arbitrage: exchanging one currency for another. The difference between Bitcoin and the U.S. Dollar, or any other fiat currency, is that there are only so many of them: as opposed to the Federal Reserve Bank, which prints more & more dollars, thereby devaluing each one and causing more inflation. Of the 21 million Bitcoin that can ever exist, it's estimated that some 7 million are already lost forever - meaning those remaining are worth ever more. With Bitcoin ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) right around the corner, it will further legitimize Bitcoin as a currency and a commodity and drive up the value further.

Me? I'm not in Bitcoin to make more dollars, because dollars are no longer worth the paper they're printed on. I'm moving my dollars to something that is increasing in value and keeping it there (the term is HODL or "Hold On for Dear Life", meaning the Bitcoin market will be volatile but will always trend up. I'm a HODLer) and storing it on a hardware wallet in my safe.
(While the U.S. government can rant on about banning personal custody of Bitcoin for being some sort of "black market criminal activity", banning it would be a violation of my guaranteed rights under the 4th Amendment. They simply want to regulate something that is de-centralized for a reason... it isn't mean to be regulated. I just want to be able to access my crypto when I want it... not when some online exchange says I can have it because they control it)

- end rant -

:)

{/spoiler]
 
I remember being 8 years old in 1970 and I would walk around our neighborhood for blocks, looking for yards with tall grass. I'd knock on the door and offer to mow their lawn: $2 for the front yard, $3 for the back, $5 for both. Even at that young age I was a free enterprise guy. Dad was actually buying the gas and keeping things working: but it was a great lesson in capitalism. Try getting your yard cut now for five bucks!
 
I started mowing lawns in the 60's. One lady would only pay me $3 for mowing 3/4 of an acre. After mowing her lawn a few times I told her I needed $5 to mow her lawn. She flipped out and called my mother and then started calling other neighbors telling them how outrageous it was for me to demand $5 to cut her grass.
 
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Five dollars was an incredible amount of money in 1960. My first hourly job in the very early 60's paid fifty cents an hour. I worked 9 hours a day and thought I was getting rich. My wages went up some over time and by 1966 I bought my first car for $150 :) I was the man about town bwahaha
 
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