The Auron MacIntyre Show - The Sports Betting Epidemic ｜ Guest J. Burden ｜ 12⧸5⧸25

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00:00:30.280 Hey, everybody.

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00:01:04.400 All right, guys.

00:01:05.460 Sports betting.

00:01:06.540 It's become this giant epidemic.

00:01:08.760 It used to be where you watched television or movies.

00:01:12.100 And, yeah, someone went to a casino every once in a while.

00:01:14.640 Maybe they had a small poker game in the background.

00:01:18.640 But the sports betting, the constant betting on the horses, calling the bookie in for points on your basketball game, this was degenerate behavior.

00:01:27.440 This was routinely shown to be behavior that was for people who were backsliding, who were in the grips of addiction.

00:01:35.460 Now it's ubiquitous.

00:01:36.940 It's everywhere.

00:01:37.840 It's on every television show.

00:01:39.480 It's on every podcast.

00:01:42.020 You have celebrities endorsing.

00:01:43.420 Of course, even the different sports leagues themselves have integrated sports betting into their model.

00:01:49.880 They're showing the odds.

00:01:51.180 They're showing the different bets you could make.

00:01:53.500 They're doing the advertising for all of this stuff, and it's all done from your pocket.

00:01:57.960 This has radically changed the way that we look at gambling, especially as it spreads beyond sports to all kinds of other stuff like political prediction markets and wars and video games.

00:02:09.580 Joining me today to talk about that is one of our favorite returning guests, Mr. Jay Burton.

00:02:13.900 Thank you so much for coming on.

00:02:15.640 Yeah, Aaron.

00:02:16.140 Thank you so much for having me on.

00:02:17.260 It's a pleasure to be here.

00:02:18.280 So this might be in some ways generational, and it's interesting because I know a lot of people watch this show, and maybe they're not the biggest fan of sports, right?

00:02:30.120 I'm somebody who I enjoy watching my one team.

00:02:34.400 I watch the Buccaneers on Sunday most of the time for National Football League in the United States, and that's pretty much all I watch when it comes to sports.

00:02:45.360 But a lot of people will sneer at this and say, well, this is just a sports bro problem, right?

00:02:50.220 Like the sports ball American who watches all the football and is obsessed with all the sports league and is doing fantasy football and all these things.

00:02:58.000 That's just a problem for them.

00:03:00.200 But what I think is important as we're going to get into here is while this starts in sports, and it may mainly impact that crowd right now, it's spreading into every aspect of our lives.

00:03:12.500 Again, from wars to politics to video games.

00:03:16.640 You can gamble on literally everything all the time, and all of these different apps and opportunities are presented to people constantly.

00:03:23.740 So people over probably like 40 or 50, they're still doing this to a decent degree because they're sports fans.

00:03:30.520 But the people under 50, they're doing it a lot, not just through sports, but through these other avenues.

00:03:36.500 So is this something that you have seen impact people in your real life?

00:03:41.120 Oh, yeah.

00:03:41.880 It got extremely popular over COVID.

00:03:45.080 People were locked at home.

00:03:46.340 There wasn't much to do.

00:03:47.640 And, okay, there were some disruptions to sports, but let's be honest, a lot of people were watching a lot more.

00:03:53.020 And the Supreme Court, I believe, overturned a nationwide ban in 2018.

00:03:57.900 There was a little bit of lag time there.

00:03:59.760 And, I mean, for most people, it was relatively harmless.

00:04:03.220 Like, every once in a while, my friends and I would, you know, put five bucks in a pot for the most disgusting parlay possible, right?

00:04:10.840 You know, one in a million odds, just because it's like, why not?

00:04:13.460 You know, you're basically throwing five bucks away.

00:04:15.860 Harmless.

00:04:16.260 But there were a lot of guys I went to college with who kind of went into a hole during COVID who got seriously addicted to sports back.

00:04:23.240 Guys who weren't making a lot of money, weren't really doing a lot with their life, who got genuinely addicted to it.

00:04:29.880 And, look, humans like to gamble.

00:04:32.200 It happens in any society.

00:04:33.460 And there will always be people who are addicted to gambling.

00:04:36.680 But, as you said, there's a world of difference between, you know, some guy who's got a bookie, right, who's really in deep.

00:04:42.960 And dozens of different apps promoted by famous celebrities, promoted by the leagues themselves, which are quite literally two button presses.

00:04:52.540 You know, many of these apps, as I'm sure your listeners will be aware, incentivize you to get started.

00:04:57.960 It's like the old 80s drug PSA, like, hey, kid, you want to try a hit?

00:05:02.280 They'll give you $100, $200 just to start.

00:05:05.800 And, obviously, the reason they do that is they know there's a certain number of people who are going to become, effectively, chemically addicted to gambling.

00:05:14.200 It's also, it bears mentioning, the type of sports betting has also changed to become much more granular.

00:05:20.620 Whereas, before, you might bet on a spread or you might bet on who's going to win the big game.

00:05:25.560 And, obviously, people have always, you know, unfortunately, lost their lives to gambling.

00:05:30.040 You may be familiar with a famous Russian guy, Dostoevsky, who wrote a book about this, The Gambler.

00:05:34.360 But, this new technology has enabled these very minute micro bets.

00:05:39.840 So, not necessarily betting on the outcome of the game, but in a fight, you'd say, you know, decision in round one, under this amount of time, or this many significant strikes, or, you know, XYZ, very granular things, which has made throwing games, throwing a match, much, much easier.

00:05:56.640 Because now, you don't have to convince an entire sports team or convince someone to throw away their entire career.

00:06:03.360 All you have to do is mess with it a little bit.

00:06:06.700 You know, maybe you don't go for that shot because, you know, there's a lot of money on you scoring XYZ number of points.

00:06:12.640 And, as we'll get into later, this has already happened.

00:06:15.580 So, there's multiple layers to this.

00:06:17.520 There's the moral hazard.

00:06:18.760 What are we doing to people?

00:06:20.040 How does this affect society?

00:06:21.500 But, also, how does this affect sports?

00:06:24.060 And, the answer is, not positively.

00:06:25.980 Yeah, there's so much to get into there.

00:06:30.320 I guess we'll just start at the beginning.

00:06:32.480 I'm very lucky in that gambling is just something that has never appealed to me.

00:06:38.200 You know, I have friends who go to casinos regularly.

00:06:41.120 And, I've gone with them.

00:06:43.720 And, I don't know.

00:06:44.500 Just the minute, you know, the first $50 evaporates on the table.

00:06:48.920 I'm just like, what are we doing here?

00:06:50.680 I don't, like, again, this is not a holier-than-thou thing.

00:06:54.800 There are plenty of vices that I am far more susceptible to.

00:06:58.120 But, this one just never tripped my dopamine receptors, right?

00:07:01.140 It just doesn't work.

00:07:03.100 Yeah, for me.

00:07:04.200 And, so, I'm very glad about that.

00:07:06.520 And, luckily, my friends who tend to be, you know, more gambling-inclined, they still tend to be more casino-oriented.

00:07:13.940 So, they haven't gotten into the, you know, the sports betting yet, probably because I'm old.

00:07:19.060 But, also, you know, one of the biggest parts about this is, much like any other vice, you know, it used to be something that you had to travel to do in a shameful kind of manner in a restricted place, right?

00:07:32.080 Like, you could do sports betting, but you had to go to Nevada, right?

00:07:35.160 If you wanted to go to the casino, you basically had to go to Vegas, right?

00:07:40.020 Like, these things were much harder to read.

00:07:41.700 Or call someone with a criminal record, right?

00:07:43.340 Like, index with the underworld.

00:07:45.500 Exactly.

00:07:46.220 If you wanted to make these bets, you know, from the comfortable environment of your home, you had to involve yourself with somebody who was going to break your knees should you not deliver that payment, right?

00:07:58.220 So, there was, like, a hard barrier.

00:08:00.060 It was, again, a lot like pornography in the sense that, yes, it was available, but you had to, like, travel to some seedy, weird store in the middle of town and everybody knew what it was for.

00:08:10.420 And it just is gross and most people didn't want to involve themselves with it.

00:08:13.780 So, there's, like, this natural barrier between people and the consumption of that bikes.

00:08:19.220 Same thing existed with, you know, with gambling.

00:08:22.880 It was either more or less harmless stuff happening at a kitchen table or it was, like, very serious.

00:08:28.740 I need to dedicate myself to making this mistake to step into it.

00:08:33.320 Now, it's something that's right in front of you.

00:08:35.320 And I'm sure you are familiar with this, but for people who don't know, gambling plays on what's called the Skinner Box response in mammals, right?

00:08:42.680 If you want to train a dog, the way to train them is not to have them do a behavior and give them a consistent reward.

00:08:49.360 That's actually a mistake to understanding the proper way to obsess them with a behavior.

00:08:53.500 The thing you want to do is that sometimes they get a reward and then sometimes they get a random large amount of rewards and sometimes they get nothing.

00:09:00.680 And that constant need to, like, figure out if I hit the button, what kind of food comes out of the dispensing machine, this is called a Skinner Box, right?

00:09:09.140 And this is what a lot of our social media is now based on.

00:09:13.240 You know, I open up my social media app.

00:09:16.520 What am I going to get?

00:09:17.280 Am I going to get this constant hit of dopamine?

00:09:18.820 Am I going to get nothing?

00:09:19.960 Is there going to be an explosion of attention?

00:09:22.120 Like, this plays through all kinds of dynamics now in our social media landscape.

00:09:26.820 A lot of people involved in engineering software are looking directly at this kind of behavioral psychology to figure out how to addict people to these different products.

00:09:37.140 But gambling always has this, right?

00:09:38.920 Like, that's why it takes a hold of people so deeply when it has it.

00:09:42.380 You always have that opportunity to just have this amazing payout and then nothing and then enough drip to keep you going.

00:09:48.820 And as you say, there's now a common attempt by these different platforms, the Fan Duels and that kind of thing, to offer you some free money up front.

00:09:58.840 Again, anyone who's ever been to a casino recognizes this behavior.

00:10:02.440 The first time you sit down to Blackjack, the first $100 you lose in slots or Blackjack, you can get back.

00:10:07.620 Now, you can't really get it back because it's with the company either way.

00:10:11.360 But in theory, if you lose it all, you could get it back and gamble it again.

00:10:16.200 And this just feeds you into the behavior.

00:10:17.920 And once you've gotten into that cycle, then it's very easy to continually keep you addicted, especially, as you say, when the barrier is so low that I can just open up my phone in the same way I would post on Facebook.

00:10:28.640 And suddenly I could drop $5, $100, $1,000, $10,000 and not even blink.

00:10:34.780 And this is something that I think a lot of conservatives feel conflicted about, that many people understand the moral hazard of gambling.

00:10:45.300 For instance, in my state several years ago, they legalized skill games, which is basically slot machines at pretty much gas stations in rough areas.

00:10:55.500 And what has that done?

00:10:57.780 Well, sure, there's a benefit to the economy, but it's basically immiserated poor people. 0.72

00:11:02.380 Like every time you go in, there's some old lady who looks a little rough, just throwing her money away. 1.00

00:11:09.340 And look, is there a possibility she would be throwing it away on something else?

00:11:13.200 A hundred percent.

00:11:14.460 But for conservatives who have a lot of kind of inbuilt libertarian sensibilities on the economy, there's this feeling of, oh, well, that's freedom.

00:11:23.300 That's their choice to do so or not.

00:11:25.500 So who am I to restrict that?

00:11:27.360 And I understand where that comes from.

00:11:29.620 But the problem is things like that, things like gambling, especially on a widespread level, are corrosive to society.

00:11:37.100 They immiserate people.

00:11:38.280 They make their lives worse.

00:11:39.740 And you're allowed to say no to things.

00:11:41.880 You don't have to just allow bad things to happen because of kind of scatteredly applied libertarian economics.

00:11:51.780 You don't just have to accept bad things all the time because it would be mean or rude or inconsistent to not allow them to happen.

00:12:01.160 And look, almost every culture, at least almost every Western culture, has put a significant stigma around gambling.

00:12:07.900 It was recognized to be a generally disreputable thing.

00:12:11.040 And particularly in the American South, we've always had a different attitude towards vice than sort of the New England Puritans.

00:12:17.340 It was never officially sanctioned, but there were places to do that.

00:12:21.640 You could go on a riverboat again.

00:12:23.480 But there were barriers placed in between that desire and most people.

00:12:28.560 And look, we understand we're not asking for something impossible.

00:12:34.220 It is very many societies have decided to restrict gambling.

00:12:38.700 You're never going to get rid of it.

00:12:40.380 But this incredible proliferation and ease of access and also a conflict of interest with many industries like sports has created this huge problem.

00:12:52.200 Funny enough, I got into a knockdown drag out with a with the head of a Republican state party over this fact.

00:13:02.960 Me and R.R. Reno, funny enough, we're speaking at an event and we, you know, he had mentioned something about limitations on government, that kind of thing.

00:13:12.880 And we both pointed out that things like legalizing drugs or having sports betting was ultimately deleterious to the, you know, kind of his state.

00:13:22.200 And he got very hot and said, well, this is just freedom.

00:13:25.520 This is the free market.

00:13:26.800 Aren't we Republicans?

00:13:27.780 Don't we believe in liberty?

00:13:29.200 What are you talking about?

00:13:30.300 Big government getting involved in all of this stuff.

00:13:32.680 And of course, Reno, you know, being kind of an arch Catholic and myself being an arch Protestant Catholic, basically said, no, like, obviously you have to involve the government.

00:13:44.180 This the civil magistrate has a duty to protect the people from vice like you.

00:13:49.200 Yes, as you point out here, in most cultures, they understand that there is going to be some level of this, right?

00:13:56.700 Like prostitution is going to exist. 1.00

00:13:58.600 Drugs are going to exist.

00:14:00.120 Gambling are going to exist, right?

00:14:02.160 No one who isn't living in some kind of utopian fantasy believes these things simply don't exist.

00:14:07.820 However, there is a lot of wisdom in heavily restricting the places they can exist.

00:14:12.820 Now, some of these things can be entirely eliminated.

00:14:15.300 Some of them can't, and for the ones that can't, circumscribing them in a particular situation really saves a lot of people's lives, right?

00:14:23.660 Like it really does change something in the mind, especially of the addict, of having something in their pocket ready to pick up the minute they can, as opposed to having to go to an undesirable place and engage in obviously socially, you know, disliked behavior.

00:14:40.740 And there's a barrier there, the fact that there just happens to not be that addiction right sitting at your hand does quite a bit.

00:14:49.180 But as you say, there's a conflict with this kind of libertarian form of economics saying, well, as long as it's a market transaction, it's fine.

00:14:57.900 And you'll notice that that is a lot of the language going on.

00:15:01.400 So as we pointed out, this is not restricted, of course, to sports now.

00:15:06.100 The fact that this has become widespread after the Supreme Court ruling you were referencing in 2018, the fact that that has become widespread across all kinds of what are now being called prediction markets is quite significant.

00:15:18.280 Because this means that, you know, places like Kalshi will run, you know, different, different advertisements saying, hey, do you think the government shutdown is going to last three weeks or four weeks?

00:15:28.520 Well, you could make, you know, $50,000 if you're right, you know, and so there's just every decision.

00:15:34.460 In fact, the owner of Kalshi just did an interview where he said the goal is to monetize every single point of human disagreement.

00:15:43.440 Like you just like that, that laid it out, like every single disagreement, every difference of opinion can become a monetizable function inside the system.

00:15:54.300 And I guess somewhere there's like a libertarian just salivating at that idea.

00:15:58.960 But for those of us who recognize that actually there are quite a number of things in the world that are sacred and should not be subject to the market forces, there are actually things that should not exist inside the marketplace.

00:16:10.540 This is horrific. And just turning everything and saying, oh, well, ultimately, it's just about the market.

00:16:16.220 This is a terrible cop out. And especially for people, you know, libertarians might be able to get away with this.

00:16:21.040 But for conservatives who are supposed to pretend like they do care something about the moral fabric of the country, allowing this at scale.

00:16:28.260 I mean, obviously, the money is just too good for a lot of these people.

00:16:31.400 But ultimately, the fact that they can't find the wherewithal to take a moral stand seems to be a huge issue.

00:16:36.520 Well, additionally, I think it's important to address one of the common arguments you see in any sort of discussion around vice, which is the idea that by legalizing it, you can reduce harm.

00:16:51.220 You can reduce criminality. You can reduce the additional exposure to, for instance, people who are going to break your knees.

00:17:00.240 And that premise was convincing to many people for a long time, particularly around legalization of weed.

00:17:07.820 The idea was, well, we'll take this off of the black market.

00:17:10.660 We'll regulate it. We'll make it safer. We'll reduce the amount of criminality involved.

00:17:15.080 Has that happened?

00:17:17.880 Well, if you look into this, you'll find out that there are Chinese triads running giant weed farms in the middle of rural Maine. 0.99

00:17:25.580 You'll find out, as we'll mention a couple of times, that there are large mafia connected sports betting rings that are using ostensibly legal services, but still using that to fund criminality.

00:17:39.660 The idea that this is, you know, this is the way to solve these kind of social ills is by de-stigmatizing and regulating them, or sorry, bringing them into kind of, you know, normal culture is clearly not the case.

00:17:53.480 I mean, look, I was in Portland not too long ago, and this is the second time I've been.

00:17:58.040 It was much nicer the second time.

00:18:00.220 Well, why was that?

00:18:01.080 It's because previously, they had completely decriminalized open-air drug use, so you could just smoke crack in front of a preschool.

00:18:09.400 And so, you had a bunch of people everywhere smoking crack.

00:18:13.880 And then, contrary to what you'd expect, when they said, you're no longer allowed to do that, there's a lot less of it.

00:18:22.940 You create incentives, and people react accordingly.

00:18:25.500 So, this premise that you hear over and over and over again, that the way to solve social ills is simply by de-stigmatizing negative behavior, that society's reaction is the real problem, is clearly not borne out in the data, clearly not borne out in experience.

00:18:41.220 And this is an idea that we're comfortable calling out in, you know, the liberals talking about homelessness or talking about drug use.

00:18:48.120 But many people who are, you know, erstwhile conservatives get very uncomfortable when it comes to something like gambling, which has become a major part of the economy.

00:18:56.920 I mean, even look at certain factions of the Trump coalition, right?

00:19:01.140 Look at someone like Dave Portnoy over at Barstool.

00:19:04.620 He is a wealthy man because of sports betting.

00:19:08.220 That is already creating, one, a huge conflict of interest.

00:19:11.600 But two, what does that sort of conservative actually look like?

00:19:15.360 Like, look, I'm not trying to character assassinate Portnoy here, but he's someone who, you know, is-

00:19:20.600 I don't think you have to.

00:19:21.400 I think he's perfectly good at that himself.

00:19:23.440 All right, I was trying to be kind, Noreen.

00:19:25.080 What do you want to say?

00:19:26.460 But takes that same attitude of libertinism that he takes towards gambling, and he says, oh, Roe versus Wade went away, so I'm not going to vote for Trump.

00:19:36.160 That's human rights.

00:19:37.440 So remember, you've got to understand, fellow conservatives, when you're making friends with social libertines, you've got to understand they don't just apply that sort of social acid to things that you don't care about.

00:19:52.180 They will use that exact same tactic when it comes to abortion, when it comes to immigration, when it comes to things that deeply, deeply matter.

00:19:59.680 So to me, this is one of those issues where I understand why people feel reticent to condemn the free market, to condemn liberty in this way.

00:20:09.400 But if you dig just one or two layers down, you'll understand that this is completely legitimate for conservatives to have an issue with.

00:20:16.200 Yeah, there's, of course, this complete lie that's been pushed by libertarians and even conservatives that prohibitions don't work, right?

00:20:25.400 Like, you just can't limit anything.

00:20:27.460 The government can't limit things.

00:20:28.380 People will just do them anyway. 0.98

00:20:30.360 And that's just observably not true, right?

00:20:32.680 And even on things where I am incredibly sympathetic to basically no regulation like firearms, it's very clear that the regulation of firearms did significantly reduce the type of firearms one could own.

00:20:44.180 Like, you know, pre-assault weapons ban, these kind of things, very, very restrictive.

00:20:50.180 I remember several situations where there were, like, large shootings and lots of threats of new gun legislation being passed, and people panicked and bought ammo and AR-15s and AK-47s and all these things because they would just never be able to buy them again. 0.69

00:21:06.420 And so you might disagree, ultimately, with prohibition, but pretending, like, it doesn't work is kind of ridiculous.

00:21:13.760 Now, there are, of course, all kinds of secondary effects, the points that, you know, people make that, you know, perhaps alcohol prohibition in the United States, while it had some upsides, alcohol was simply too ubiquitous and too culturally ingrained in order to be effectively pushed out and therefore created criminal consequences.

00:21:31.100 These are fair points, but this is a great reason why you don't want something like sports betting to break through and become ubiquitous in your society, because once it's in the society, it's far harder to get it out.

00:21:42.900 It's better to keep that hedge up, keep that fence up, then let it in, and then try to drive it back out again once you realize it's ultimately a mistake.

00:21:51.420 And this is really the huge part of what has happened, again, with sports betting, because it has made all the other forms of wagering so much more acceptable to other people.

00:22:03.260 And we've already seen, as you point out, that it's infiltrated into the sports themselves.

00:22:07.980 So, uh, we've seen, uh, big, uh, scandals with the NBA and you just recently told me there's one with the UFC I wasn't aware of, uh, but we're seeing the scenario as, as you pointed out earlier, where these, uh, parlay bets are so complicated, right?

00:22:22.940 There's, there's several different aspects.

00:22:24.580 It's not just, did you win or did you lose or just the point spread?

00:22:28.040 It's, you know, micro things like if there's going to be this specific type of kickoff or this specific type of submission, or, you know, there'll be all these different micro things that you can bet on.

00:22:40.140 And many of them don't even actually impact the winning of the game.

00:22:44.060 And so many athletes can effectively trigger these bets, knowing that they're very high percentage.

00:22:50.960 And if they leverage them properly, they can make huge amounts of money without necessarily having to get all of their teammates together and like black socks throw, you know, huge games and have these massive cheating scandals.

00:23:02.260 And so we've already seen this in BA.

00:23:04.040 We've already seen this in UFC.

00:23:05.100 It's certainly happening across the board in every, uh, conceivable market.

00:23:09.400 And so you have the situation where not only do these, uh, do these apps exist, not only are they wildly altering the games that they are, uh, they are being used to bet on, but in many cases, it's extremely difficult to detect when and how these markets are being manipulated by the players involved.

00:23:30.140 The players know that one thrown shot, one missed thing, uh, one particular way in which you manipulate the score, the outcome could allow you to continue to win the game, but just making sure that you didn't do it by this many points are in this particular way could ensure a massive win for you in the manipulation of the market of a bunch of suckers.

00:23:47.940 Who did not know that ultimately you were putting your thumb on the scale at capital one, we're more than just a credit card company.

00:23:55.140 We're people just like you who believe in the power of yes, yes, to new opportunities, yes, to second chances, yes, to a fresh start.

00:24:05.480 That's why we've helped over 4 million Canadians get access to a credit card because at capital one, we say yes.

00:24:11.780 So you don't have to hear another, no, what will you do with your, yes, get the, yes, you've been waiting for a capital one.ca slash yes terms and conditions apply.

00:24:22.280 Well, and this is relevant as well.

00:24:23.980 One of the biggest kind of ongoing stories of the last several years has been more and more people realizing that elected members of our government are able to make themselves massively wealthy with insider information.

00:24:36.660 Obviously you see the same thing with sports betting, for instance, one of the first big UFC betting scandals, and I promise I'll, uh, I'll make this easy to understand is that in 2022, uh, this minor fighter was suspended for like two years for concealing an injury.

00:24:57.480 It seems kind of weird lying about an injury.

00:24:59.700 People do it all the time.

00:25:00.680 Well, it turns out because everyone at his gym knew that he was hurt, that he was hiding it, and they all bet against him.

00:25:09.840 One of the guys on the team had basically found out this strategy.

00:25:13.380 He would call around, figure out who was hurt going up into a fight.

00:25:18.060 And the guy involved, the guy fighting, he didn't even need to know about it.

00:25:21.780 But if you figure, you know, that guy tore his ACL, he's still got to make the big game, still got to make the fight.

00:25:26.840 But you know, that all of a sudden the line that everyone else sees, the information everyone else has is completely irrelevant.

00:25:35.560 Sure.

00:25:35.720 It doesn't work a hundred percent of a time.

00:25:37.520 We know that there's big upsets.

00:25:38.920 That's what makes sports fun to watch.

00:25:40.320 But all of a sudden you've created insiders and outsiders with large amounts of money flying around.

00:25:46.680 And additionally, once large amounts of money fly around, you're creating a massive interest in finding out that sort of information.

00:25:55.300 So this brings into corruption with refs, which is, let's be honest, the oldest story in sports, right?

00:25:59.960 Right.

00:26:00.400 But there's a difference, again, between that being a mob activity, that being something that, you know, is thrown underground, very difficult to access. 0.84

00:26:09.620 And again, a bunch of, let's be honest, dumb money, people who just have an app on their phone.

00:26:16.740 And so they will, especially if they're not getting the same information that even just a stats nerd could get, let alone someone with information from the inside. 0.91

00:26:25.680 You were basically covering the bad end of a deal.

00:26:29.780 You don't know it yet.

00:26:30.940 But even more so than simple chance, you were throwing your money away.

00:26:34.800 And look, our mutual friend, Bog Beef, was at one point in his life a professional poker player.

00:26:41.020 And he always talks about this where he's like, I was never a gambling addict.

00:26:43.780 I was a poker player.

00:26:44.860 He liked, you know, he would make money from it, but it was never something he wanted to do.

00:26:48.360 And once the money dried up, he stopped playing.

00:26:51.160 But the way he talks about it, he's like, yeah, the real degenerates, the guys who were really hooked to it, they always go to sports.

00:26:56.960 And that's apparently, at least according to him, and he seems to know what he's talking about, that is both the riskiest, because it's not a game of, you know, poker is a game of luck, but there is a skill to it, pattern recognition.

00:27:09.260 You were simply betting on what you hope to be unbiased decisions of someone else.

00:27:16.080 Well, once you have normalized it, you were creating a massive interest to rigging every single micro system in that game.

00:27:24.820 I'll throw it back to you, Aaron.

00:27:26.960 No, this is exactly true.

00:27:28.360 And this brings me to, I think, what is a critical point that is obviously usually avoided very, you know, seriously by conservatives for what will become a very obvious reason.

00:27:39.220 But the fact is that behind this whole discussion is the U.S. stock market, right?

00:27:45.960 Like the fact that it's a waste of time because of the way we have manipulated interest rates to basically invest your money in savings or any of these things.

00:27:55.820 You're just lighting your money on fire.

00:27:57.420 If you're not in the stock market, then you can't even survive the inflation bath that you're taking every single year from our degenerate government and its money printing. 0.90

00:28:07.620 So that means that everyone who is not like a sucker is in the stock market, right? 0.84

00:28:13.680 Because they have to be.

00:28:14.940 There are very few other options in order to efficiently make sure that you at least escape inflation.

00:28:20.460 And if you're doing well, outpace it.

00:28:23.640 And the fact that in many ways the stock market is just obviously indistinguishable from gambling, right?

00:28:30.320 Like I know a lot of day traders, right?

00:28:32.660 And every single one of them is just sitting there going like, no, really, man, I've got it under control.

00:28:37.340 It's fine.

00:28:38.000 It's fine.

00:28:38.400 I'm a professional.

00:28:39.420 I do professional things.

00:28:40.880 I am absolutely not just like a heroin addict.

00:28:43.320 Like it's so clear, you know, that this is in, you know, they lie to themselves about, I understand I've got a system and the whole thing.

00:28:51.360 And it's, it's just like, you really can't go 10 minutes between a gambling addict and a like day stock trader and hear literally any difference between these people.

00:29:00.360 Right.

00:29:00.620 Like, and don't get me wrong.

00:29:01.900 There are skills in stock trade, right?

00:29:04.640 Like that does exist in the same way there are skills in betting, right?

00:29:08.840 But ultimately these are fundamentally very similar behaviors with very similar feedback loops and impulses.

00:29:15.720 And the fact that our own stock system and our, as you pointed out, our entire, you know, legislature is basically warped around the fact that we have this open air gambling system, our entire economy is based on.

00:29:28.220 And these people pull key levers inside the political system to decide whether your company gets a giant contract from a defense firm or something like that.

00:29:37.460 The fact that that is basically at the core of our political system makes it very difficult to then look at our sports system and say there's a whole lot different.

00:29:47.780 In fact, the, the trading app Robin hood, the bitch became very famous for like kind of the meme stocks and the meme coins and everything else that was being traded on it. 0.97

00:29:58.220 Is now just going to sports betting, right?

00:30:00.200 Like they're just integrating both.

00:30:01.720 So there's not even a barrier there.

00:30:03.400 Like you can go and you can buy a meme coin and you can buy, you know, game, uh, GameStop stocks.

00:30:08.320 And then you can, you know, bet on, uh, whether or not some guy is going to scored the third goal in any given hockey game, like all simultaneously on the same platform.

00:30:17.820 And that really just gives up the game that ultimately across all aspects of our society, we have this highly leveraged, uh, you know, like casino mentality.

00:30:27.020 When it comes to wealth.

00:30:28.740 And so it's very easy for people to walk in.

00:30:31.700 I think I saw someone in chat saying, I just signed up for poly market.

00:30:34.700 I didn't even think of it as gambling because is it different from stock trading, right?

00:30:40.280 Like ultimately these things feel similar enough to where, yeah, sure.

00:30:43.900 These are, these are things of skill.

00:30:45.280 I could ultimately be respectable winning money this way.

00:30:48.720 If I can buy stocks on my phone, why can't I make a sports bet on my phone?

00:30:52.680 These are all perfectly reasonable, legitimate market transactions.

00:30:57.020 A hundred percent.

00:30:58.580 And look, we understand that there is a utility to financial services, right?

00:31:02.580 The ability to access capital is essential to having an economy that works, but I'm basing

00:31:08.040 this off of the work of a really talented young analyst, Roberto Rios, Peruvian bull on Twitter.

00:31:15.520 And he basically talks about the share of the GDP, the economy that is generated by financial

00:31:22.660 services.

00:31:24.220 And generally over most empires through time, it's anywhere from like two to 5%, and that

00:31:29.300 seems to be relatively healthy.

00:31:31.260 The problem is once it grows to a certain point, the best money to be made is in kind

00:31:37.640 of shuffling money around.

00:31:39.220 So ours is, I believe on this, like 10 to 14%, depending on who you ask, significantly over

00:31:45.780 the historical norm.

00:31:47.340 And again, aren't you and I are not socialists here, right?

00:31:50.260 We're not condemning the idea of investments far from it.

00:31:54.640 But as you've said, there becomes a problem where your money is constantly being devalued.

00:32:00.300 So you are effectively being punished for saving and preparing for the future, unless you go

00:32:06.920 to get something that bears interest.

00:32:10.560 And if you've ever been to business school, you understand what interest is.

00:32:13.760 It's a payment for risk.

00:32:15.240 The higher the interest rate, the riskier it is.

00:32:18.760 And that interest rate is basically there so that you're willing to do it, right?

00:32:23.540 If, you know, your alcoholic uncle comes up and says, hey, can I borrow 20 bucks, you're

00:32:30.200 probably not going to get it back.

00:32:31.200 So you might demand harsher terms than if your sainted grandmother says, hey, can I borrow 1.00

00:32:36.120 a quarter to go down to the, you know, to go down to the vending machine, right?

00:32:39.160 It's a different thing.

00:32:40.000 There's a different payment associated with that, you know, undertaking of risk.

00:32:44.160 And look, people have always invested.

00:32:46.680 I mean, you can go back to, you know, even colonial times.

00:32:48.940 Many of these ships were funded by private money.

00:32:52.220 But that was something that very, very rich people did.

00:32:56.200 People who had money to burn, whereas for most people, admittedly, they didn't have

00:33:01.320 a ton of access to hard currency, but the idea of speculating was completely outside of their

00:33:08.400 conception.

00:33:09.160 Whereas now, as you've said, basically anyone who has enough money to save it is putting

00:33:15.560 it into the market.

00:33:17.460 It's putting it into risk.

00:33:18.460 I'm glad you mentioned Robinhood because we saw a sort of interesting thing happen with

00:33:23.880 Robinhood.

00:33:24.860 Robinhood opened up sort of consumer access to the market radically.

00:33:28.860 It was very easy.

00:33:29.580 You could do it from your phone.

00:33:30.760 And what you saw is you have Robinhood, you have stimulus checks.

00:33:35.100 All of a sudden, the market goes insane because you have a ton of people dumping money in.

00:33:41.400 And look, if you are deciding that your measure as a politician, as a president, as a leader

00:33:47.020 is the stock market, this is the best thing ever for you because the stock market's just

00:33:52.300 massively shot up.

00:33:54.260 Now, has there been any value created?

00:33:56.280 Are any of these companies worth more just because more people want to buy stocks?

00:34:01.020 No, it hasn't.

00:34:02.180 Nothing fundamentally has gotten better.

00:34:04.100 There's just more capital flowing around.

00:34:08.440 Again, I'm not anti-markets.

00:34:10.940 We've got to understand that these things do have negative consequences because just like

00:34:16.200 betting, when you can shovel in a ton of low information, and I include myself in that,

00:34:22.720 I don't know anything about the economy, people into the market, you were setting up, again,

00:34:27.840 a bunch of marks.

00:34:29.180 People who you can, as we've seen with GameStop is a great example.

00:34:34.100 Just deliberate market manipulation, force other people to pay the bad end of a trade.

00:34:41.100 And look, again, this sort of stuff is at some scale present in every human society.

00:34:47.060 We understand that.

00:34:47.880 But at the point at which it becomes not simply something that you can do, but is a baseline

00:34:54.240 requirement for not becoming poorer over time, this is a problem.

00:34:58.840 Exactly right.

00:35:01.580 And again, that's why I feel it's so easy for people to step into something like sports betting

00:35:06.820 because it just feels like another extension of this.

00:35:10.100 It's already something that they're used to doing.

00:35:11.820 They're used to doing it on their phone.

00:35:13.360 It makes perfect sense to them at a certain level.

00:35:16.160 And just to get some stats in here so we have a kind of an understanding of kind of the enormity

00:35:22.380 of the problem, sports betting alone, just the sports betting, not the crypto, casinos,

00:35:28.540 nothing else, just sports betting, cleared almost $14 billion last year.

00:35:34.520 Uh, we're talking 22% of Americans have some sports betting app on their phone.

00:35:40.520 Uh, one in five Americans has placed a sports bet this year.

00:35:44.540 When you go to young men, uh, men under the age of, I believe like 45 or 40, the number

00:35:51.440 of people with a sports app on their phone goes to 50% of the population almost.

00:35:56.940 So you have this scenario where at least half of young men are investing into this addiction.

00:36:04.520 And the thing is, it creates this, I don't know if you've probably, maybe you've heard

00:36:09.280 this, I don't know the, the economy of treats, right?

00:36:12.300 Like where, where people are so, it seems so impossible to start a family or own a home.

00:36:20.880 Those goals are so far out that the small purchases, the small luxury purchases start

00:36:27.600 to replace that.

00:36:28.880 And this is why we see people who otherwise, you know, can't afford to get a working car

00:36:33.980 or get a home or start a family.

00:36:36.620 They start ordering a bunch of Uber eats, right?

00:36:39.840 Or these kinds of things.

00:36:40.740 And people will blame those services.

00:36:43.640 Oh, well, you know, just be responsible and save.

00:36:45.640 And at some level, yes, absolutely should.

00:36:47.780 Like ultimately you are responsible for your finance at the end of the day.

00:36:51.620 This is not a cop out.

00:36:53.060 You need to take control and you need to be disciplined.

00:36:55.960 You need to have the emotional continents necessary to, uh, you know, build wealth over time.

00:37:01.220 That said, when you have a scenario where all of these next steps in life seem out of reach

00:37:08.220 for the average young man, then the question becomes, well, why not just gamble it all on

00:37:13.700 a chance to jump up in that ladder, right?

00:37:16.460 Like if I'm only going to make an extra $50 this month and there's no way that an extra

00:37:21.920 $50 a month is going to add up to a home at some point, then why not just gamble that

00:37:26.860 $50 in the hopes that ultimately it turns into $50,000, it turns into life-changing money.

00:37:32.000 It allows me to move into these things, which again, is not an endorsement of, or a excuse

00:37:38.120 for engaging in this behavior, but you can see how quickly kind of the hopelessness, especially

00:37:43.440 of young men who don't see as Ford can quickly turn into, well, it's probably worth trying

00:37:49.800 this because at least if I happen to get this to work out, then I can achieve something that

00:37:54.220 otherwise would just not be acceptable to me, even if I was responsible and careful with

00:37:58.660 my behavior.

00:38:00.680 Well, Aaron, I'll have you know, one, affordability is a Democrat hoax.

00:38:05.740 And two, you're exactly right.

00:38:08.400 That look, like we understand that that sort of behavior is not ultimately rational.

00:38:13.220 That's not the correct thing to do, but it is understandable because again, I'm sure you

00:38:17.940 remember a while back, the, the big, you know, talking point on the economy was young people

00:38:23.500 in cell phones, like, Oh, you know, young people buy $1,000 cell phones every year.

00:38:28.580 And that's why they can't afford a house.

00:38:31.240 I don't know if that's true, but let's just take it at face value.

00:38:35.040 Okay.

00:38:36.020 You buy $1,000 smartphone every year for 25 years, gets you to 25 grand.

00:38:42.440 Okay.

00:38:43.480 Investing even, you know, a thousand dollars a year for 25 years still doesn't get you

00:38:48.900 to a down payment on a $500,000 house.

00:38:52.700 It doesn't.

00:38:54.200 And so again, should you be spending that thousand dollars every year for the next two and a half

00:38:58.820 decades?

00:38:59.640 No, that's a waste of money.

00:39:01.620 But when any, any more useful long-term goal is seemingly out of reach, it's sort of, well,

00:39:08.500 why not?

00:39:09.140 It's not going to matter anyway.

00:39:10.680 I see the term financial nihilism going around.

00:39:14.140 Okay.

00:39:14.540 Again, nihilism is not good, but you have to understand that just as with incentives to,

00:39:19.320 you know, gamble or prostitution, people do respond to incentives.

00:39:23.960 People are not in all cases, complete and total rational economic calculators, you know,

00:39:29.460 pulling the spreadsheet out to figure out how to maximize their utils.

00:39:33.920 We're ultimately emotional.

00:39:35.600 And for the same reason that things like gambling works, things like that sort of, you know,

00:39:41.020 economy of treats, the idea of simply like, well, there's no point in saving for the future.

00:39:45.760 It won't matter for me anyway, is a very real problem.

00:39:49.320 Okay.

00:39:49.540 Why is it a problem?

00:39:50.440 I've got mine.

00:39:51.240 You might say.

00:39:51.800 Well, historically speaking, when you have a large population of young men with nothing attaching them to a society, right? 0.81

00:39:59.660 No way to, you know, pair off, find a wife, no way to literally have something at stake with property.

00:40:07.440 That is an unstable circumstance.

00:40:09.840 It is not good for long-term health of a society.

00:40:13.480 And so, look, someone might say, well, you're just biased because you're under 30.

00:40:17.520 And fair enough, I might be biased because I'm under 30.

00:40:19.800 But also, I have history on my side here.

00:40:22.780 Generally speaking, large populations of unhappy young men with nothing to lose do not a stable, happy society make. 0.99

00:40:31.060 Yeah, what's the African proverb, the young man who's not accepted by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth?

00:40:39.360 It's really something that you want to think about.

00:40:41.960 Whether you think those young men are justified or not really isn't a question because once your house is on fire, nobody cares, right?

00:40:48.440 So it's one of those scenarios where maybe they did eat too much avocado toast.

00:40:51.780 Maybe they didn't put enough work into whatever, you know, horrible corporate existence you want them to live.

00:40:58.760 But ultimately, when they come to burn down the village, it won't matter if they were right or wrong.

00:41:04.140 It won't matter that they're burning your village down.

00:41:06.680 And I think this is important also because we're training younger and younger people to involve themselves in this is a big part of this as well.

00:41:15.120 You know, this is not something I thought a lot about early on, but I'm a longtime card gamer.

00:41:20.220 This might come a surprise to people, but I'm a bit of a nerd.

00:41:23.580 Uh, and so, uh, I am someone who was involved in playing, uh, several collectible card games in which opening a card pack was a normal part of the process.

00:41:32.840 And one of the big things about that is you can open up a pack and it can have a worthless card in it, or it can have a card that's worth thousands of dollars.

00:41:40.780 It's totally random.

00:41:42.080 And of course it's legal gambling.

00:41:44.340 I didn't think about it that way at the time, but that's built into the system.

00:41:48.380 It's preying upon that Skinner box mentality of every time I do this, I get a reward, but sometimes the reward is nothing.

00:41:54.420 And sometimes the reward is life changing and there's everything in between.

00:41:57.800 And it keeps you chasing that dopamine high, that Skinner box attachment.

00:42:02.160 Well, several years ago, video game designers figured out that you could implement a similar system into video games.

00:42:10.560 It's called a loot box.

00:42:11.580 And you've seen even a number of governments now ban loot boxes because they do have this predatory effect on the minds of young children who are playing these games, who will steal their, uh, you know, parents' credit cards and drop thousands of dollars on, uh, you know, different in-game collectibles that aren't real.

00:42:29.620 It's just ones and zeros on a screen at some point.

00:42:32.760 Uh, but, but they get that same high.

00:42:35.140 And the thing is that secondary markets have been created for buying and selling these things.

00:42:40.180 And believe it or not, they're even become gambling markets, like massive multi-billion dollar gambling markets based on trading and gambling these items.

00:42:50.060 And the thing that happens is that a lot of this ends up, uh, being pushed by, uh, personalities, which is something we haven't got into yet that I want to touch on for sure is the advertising aspect.

00:43:00.520 But a lot of this gets streamed on places like kick or on Twitch.

00:43:04.860 And, uh, you can see people just sit there in front of these different, uh, games and they can, uh, constantly gamble with these different video game, uh, uh, assets.

00:43:15.200 And technically it's not gambling cause they, you buy one type of currency that's not real, but then you change it for something.

00:43:21.540 There are all these legal loopholes that you can kind of move through cause you're not technically betting on a real thing.

00:43:26.900 It's a imaginary video game item.

00:43:28.640 So it's not real gambling.

00:43:29.800 And like, there's all these loopholes you can create, but this means that a large number of young, uh, kids are currently spending their time playing video games and then going on a line with the different items they've accumulated from playing those video games and those loot boxes.

00:43:46.300 And they are literally just streaming themselves gambling on a regular basis.

00:43:50.720 And you can just watch people win the world or lose it all.

00:43:54.100 And it has all of the dynamics and drama you'd expect that would come from that kind of thing.

00:43:58.720 Uh, but it just really is this absolutely degenerate way to get like young, you know, teenagers and even middle schoolers and elementary school kids into gambling without any kind of legal barrier.

00:44:10.220 And all of it is being promoted by many of their favorite online personalities.

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00:44:29.500 Well, and it's important to recognize that in much the same way that sports betting has reduced the quality of sports, it's reduced the quality of video games.

00:44:38.780 Not much of a gamer anymore, but I remember the before and after loot box time and very distinctly, the goal of creating a video game changed from creating a video game that lots of people want to buy.

00:44:51.760 Okay, it might not be high art, but you want to appeal to people to make it fun versus to get people in the door to plug them into a gambling economy and run it forever.

00:45:04.580 I'm not a huge sports gamer, but you see this with games like FIFA, for example.

00:45:09.200 There's the technical game, right?

00:45:10.980 The thing on the box.

00:45:11.920 And then what actually makes money, which is basically an online card game.

00:45:16.500 Similar things have happened in other sports games.

00:45:18.200 It becomes what people refer to as a live service, something like Netflix that you are constantly paying into forever.

00:45:25.600 It's not like I bought a game.

00:45:26.940 Here it is on my hard drive.

00:45:28.260 I'm good for as long as I want to play it.

00:45:30.320 Now it is, well, you're paying.

00:45:32.160 Also, you're paying every month.

00:45:33.600 And also, if you really want the full experience, if you want to get your gambling dopamine, well, you got to be buying in constantly.

00:45:39.920 And look, most people don't do that.

00:45:41.880 Not everyone does it.

00:45:42.960 But the money to be made from, effectively, abusing what they call whales, people with a lot of money to spend who are hyper addicted to this, is so great that effectively it doesn't matter.

00:45:54.780 And to your point, again, we understand, much like giving a kid alcohol or drugs at a young age, these things are doubly habit forming on developing brains.

00:46:03.960 And the idea that this is just something we have to accept as part of being free market, sort of limited government Republicans is absurd.

00:46:15.320 You don't have to.

00:46:16.460 You can just say no, and it would go away.

00:46:20.280 Sure, will there be that person who finds the convoluted way, you know, onto the dark web to bet on, I don't know, Korean soccer leagues?

00:46:29.220 Yeah, sure.

00:46:29.800 But that's not most people.

00:46:32.600 And again, I can't remember who, some German, might have been, Bismarck, said governing by the margin makes for poor laws, right?

00:46:40.240 The idea of you can never fix every edge case, but it is entirely possible to solve this problem for most people.

00:46:49.460 It just requires you to say some things are worth more than a marginal increase to GDP.

00:46:57.160 And that's a very uncomfortable thing for some people to say.

00:47:00.140 Yeah, I mean, as somebody who I have myself turned down sports betting sponsors, like I simply am not going to engage in that.

00:47:09.420 But we can see how, again, ubiquitous this is across all kinds of domains.

00:47:14.000 Again, you know, in the video game spaces and the streaming spaces, I mean, we don't, you know, some, we know people who know this, but some older audience members may be shocked to discover that many of these streamers have millions and millions and millions of followers who are involved with themselves on a regular basis.

00:47:30.680 They're often much larger than any given cable TV news audience or program.

00:47:35.840 And these are all people who are involved in engaging with this content.

00:47:40.940 In many cases, we see the advertisements.

00:47:43.440 Of course, you can't listen to Joe Rogan podcasts or, you know, any of these very popular podcasts without hearing FanDuel and what's the other one?

00:47:52.320 Like, DraftKings, like, they're just everywhere all the time, right?

00:47:55.920 There's just massive marketing campaigns, celebrities, every sports podcast.

00:48:00.180 Like I said, it's literally integrated into the sports broadcast.

00:48:03.700 Now, if you're watching NFL football here, they're giving you the betting lines.

00:48:08.120 They're giving you the percentages.

00:48:09.140 They're giving you the smart parlays.

00:48:11.940 You know, how can you take advantage? 0.84

00:48:13.420 Because, okay, just as a side, guys, if you're dumb enough, I have to remember where we can use the R word, what platforms we can get away with it on now.

00:48:24.580 Only when referring to Tim Walsh, I think. 0.57

00:48:26.880 Okay. 0.98

00:48:28.720 But if you are dumb enough to actually, like, invest in a bet that you're seeing on the screen because they told you it was smart at NFL, 0.98

00:48:42.100 like, all the other millions of people who are watching this simultaneously didn't just get the exact same orders is insane. 0.98

00:48:48.940 And as you pointed out, if any member of Congress was just going out there or if any, you know, CEO was saying,

00:48:55.540 definitely bet on this, definitely buy this stock, definitely involve yourself because here is the inside information as to why you should do this.

00:49:03.260 Like, a thousand, you know, red flags, alarm bells everywhere.

00:49:06.940 And yet this is just dominating.

00:49:08.860 Like, even people who have explicitly said that, like, addictive behavior, sports gambling, these things are ultimately bad examples for the community,

00:49:17.800 like Joe Rogan, are still taking just massive amounts of money from these sponsors.

00:49:23.140 And so it's just, it seems inescapable.

00:49:25.560 It's woven into every aspect of society, even the people who are playing the game, people who are commentating on the game,

00:49:32.180 the people who are producing the game are all involved, are all pushing it, are in some cases actively fixing the results to make profits.

00:49:42.080 It just seems like there's, it's almost like we hit the Wild West.

00:49:45.900 There's too much money sloshing around.

00:49:47.600 And there's no way that we can get a hold of it in time and everyone's just making too much money in order to push back.

00:49:53.700 And so this whole thing is just kind of, you know, we're getting the accelerationism. 0.86

00:49:57.180 The decisions are just kind of making themselves because even people who know that ultimately this is wrong or stupid or a long time losing game, 0.92

00:50:04.160 they can't turn it away now because it's just too profitable. 0.84

00:50:08.220 Well, I'm glad you brought up the media angle because as you've said, if this were stocks, it would be market manipulation.

00:50:14.480 The guy on the TV says, buy this, buy this, put your money on this while he is sponsored by the guy on the other end of that.

00:50:23.820 Yeah, only Jim Kramer's allowed to get away with that.

00:50:26.040 Come on.

00:50:27.120 Well, I mean, you look at the performance of the reverse Kramer ETF fund and you start to wonder, what is he being paid to do?

00:50:33.420 It's very true.

00:50:34.120 For instance, right, like, do you think if you go to the owner of the casino, if you go to the guy who's running the roulette table and ask him where to put your money,

00:50:46.220 you think he's going to give you an honest answer?

00:50:48.940 His whole success depends on you not making the right decision.

00:50:52.440 And so the idea that this isn't corrupting, you know, sports broadcasting or also the kind of social media influencers,

00:51:00.360 for instance, you know, many athletes who are currently competing in these sports leagues or, you know,

00:51:07.260 nonetheless, like popular commentators or figures or whatever, giving you what they think you should bet on.

00:51:14.660 Like, this is absurd.

00:51:16.040 Like, again, I know that, you know, imagine if the circumstances were different is kind of the classic conservative refrain.

00:51:21.140 But if you were doing this with the stock market, you would be in jail for the rest of your life.

00:51:26.880 But because it's something different, even though it functions basically the same way, that's completely fine.

00:51:33.440 And again, I don't want to come across as some kind of pearl clutching social conservative,

00:51:38.220 just upset that people are doing nasty things, that people have vices.

00:51:43.560 But there's a world of difference between a sensible understanding of, you know, gambling

00:51:49.100 and this unrestricted access to everyone at every stage of life at the press of a button

00:51:54.980 with massive amounts of corruption behind the scenes.

00:52:00.980 It's genuinely, it boggles my mind that this is just something you are supposed to accept.

00:52:06.520 Because if you, if you wrote it out on paper, you know, explaining exactly what the pros and cons of this,

00:52:11.680 no one in their right mind would sign up for it.

00:52:14.000 You'd be like, oh, no, this is a horrible system.

00:52:15.420 That's going to make almost everyone's life worse.

00:52:18.100 It's like, yeah, well, it is how it is, basically.

00:52:22.200 Yeah.

00:52:22.660 No, no one's talking about like rating your local, you know, poker game or making sure that no one can roll dice somewhere in a, in an alley somewhere.

00:52:31.860 It's, you know, they're talking about large scale, immediately available, you know, obviously like heroin level of addiction worked into everything,

00:52:40.040 specifically in many cases, targeting children.

00:52:42.440 And, you know, in some places they'll try to restrict this.

00:52:45.720 They'll try to put it on like one provider.

00:52:48.760 So, for instance, in Florida, Hard Rock is the only one that has sports betting available.

00:52:54.200 But let me tell you a little story about how this works.

00:52:57.320 So, when I was a local reporter early on, I was showing up to all these political events.

00:53:03.000 And there's this table at every event.

00:53:04.940 And every one of these events is this table saying we need to save the greyhounds.

00:53:08.620 Because greyhound racing was all over Florida at the time.

00:53:12.600 And I'm, we're an animal rights organization here to save the greyhounds.

00:53:15.960 And I kept noticing these people at literally every single political event, right, left, conservative, liberal, it didn't matter.

00:53:23.860 The greyhound people were there. 1.00

00:53:25.160 And I thought that was very strange because, A, oftentimes they're in places where this is not their market.

00:53:30.400 This is not the people that they'd normally reach out to.

00:53:32.580 B, these people were too well organized and a little too professional to be in the, in the animal rights, you know, domain.

00:53:40.660 The lady from your local animal shelter doesn't have a $4,000 Armani suit. 1.00

00:53:46.000 Yeah, exactly, exactly.

00:53:47.300 And it wasn't quite that obvious.

00:53:48.600 But it was definitely a scenario where, okay, usually the people doing this are like kind of your frizzled out wine aunt who like shows up to this kind of thing, right?

00:53:56.440 It's not professional political actors.

00:53:58.800 It's not, it's not well turned out, bright, you know, young activists.

00:54:04.520 These who, you know, they don't, they're not dressed like Antifa.

00:54:07.980 They don't smell like Petruly.

00:54:09.100 Like these are, you know, these are, these are obviously people who could be a professional in other areas.

00:54:13.480 And so I started, you know, I actually did a bit of reporting, uh, shockingly enough.

00:54:17.520 And I started digging into it, come to discover that the entire thing was being funded by the Seminole hard rock casino empire in Florida,

00:54:26.060 because obviously their only competition where the pari-mutual facilities where you could race greyhounds is the only other place where you could play table games in Florida.

00:54:34.240 That wasn't owned by the Seminole hard rock casino franchise, which has the only exclusive rights outside of the pari-mutual facilities to do gambling. 0.78

00:54:42.600 And so the whole reason that they were funding this animal rights campaign is they didn't give a crap about animal rights.

00:54:48.800 And the whole reason they were doing it is if you could get people to shut down the, these, these basically casinos, uh, on the fact that they were dog tracks. 0.56

00:54:58.040 And that's what allowed them this exception.

00:54:59.720 Then that means that the hard rock casino would be the only one.

00:55:03.500 It would be the monopoly inside the entire state.

00:55:05.860 And it worked.

00:55:06.440 They actually passed a, a state amendment to the constitution to ban that evil greyhound racing because we won and we got, and we saved the poor animals.

00:55:16.820 Every one of them was euthanized by the way.

00:55:18.540 Uh, and, uh, after that got done, uh, you basically made it impossible for anyone, but the, uh, casino, uh, to, to run.

00:55:26.800 Uh, so that's, that's just, these things are everywhere.

00:55:30.920 Uh, there's so much money involved.

00:55:32.960 Uh, they are often using, manipulating you behind the scenes to drive that kind of stuff.

00:55:37.920 Uh, and so just be aware that even in these scenarios where they're like, oh, well, at least we're going to make it like this one source so it can be well regulated.

00:55:45.600 It's like, no, this is, this is a state manufactured monopoly specifically driven by horrible interests, uh, making sure that they're the only ones they have the exclusive right to fleece you.

00:55:55.300 Uh, and of course, it's always great that it's the, the Indian tribe.

00:55:58.340 So take that white man, you know, you get that at the end of the day, we, we, we, we may have lost most of the country, but we're going to be getting your, uh, your life savings.

00:56:05.240 So that's what matters.

00:56:06.900 Can you imagine explaining that circumstance to Thomas Jefferson?

00:56:10.920 Right.

00:56:11.120 Yeah.

00:56:11.280 So we did, we did ban dog racing in the constitution and his major objection is like one, you guys have Florida now.

00:56:18.120 And you let the Indians do what, you know, like it's just, it's such, it again, like politics is always kind of a, you know, a slimy game, but in situations like that, it's just so naked. 1.00

00:56:28.800 It's like, what can you even say?

00:56:32.380 Yep.

00:56:32.960 Well, like I said, this is something that I think is a huge issue and I think needs to be taken more seriously.

00:56:38.520 I think conservatives need to be talking about it.

00:56:40.960 I think the right needs to be talking about it.

00:56:43.000 I don't think that we should just allow this to become ubiquitous.

00:56:45.980 I think there is actually quite a good stand on this.

00:56:49.540 And the thing is like, unlike probably drugs and porn, uh, the thing about gambling is even the people who are addicted to it know it's bad for them in a pretty deep way, right?

00:57:01.560 Like there's people who can lie to themselves about those other vices, but when it comes to gambling, I think pretty much every like degenerate sports gambler knows at some level they're having a problem.

00:57:11.240 Like even the people who are selling gambling are usually have to be like, yeah, you probably shouldn't do too much of this.

00:57:15.840 It's real bad for you.

00:57:16.800 You know?

00:57:17.140 And that's something that I think is, uh, you can, I think this is a issue you can win on is what I'm saying.

00:57:23.020 I think while those other vices are things that people will fight for.

00:57:26.580 And I think actually have a wider percentage of acceptability in society because I think they're no, they're more normal human behaviors taken to bad extremes.

00:57:34.240 The gambling one in particular hasn't grabbed a hold of everyone yet.

00:57:37.860 And there's still time for people to say, no, man, actually, this is not a good look and this is not a good life for you.

00:57:43.880 And this will impact your ability to like move forward in life.

00:57:47.160 And you don't want your kids having access to this either.

00:57:49.560 Uh, and so I think this is, is one of those issues where you can push the moral argument effectively, be a real conservative.

00:57:57.340 Who isn't just worried about liberty in the sense of being able to like bet on whether or not some guy in the fourth quarter will hit a three pointer after someone else rebounded.

00:58:07.580 So, you know, like if, if you can sell that vision to people as a good moral choice, and I think still win on this issue, at least maybe I'm delusional, but that, that is my hope.

00:58:18.020 And I think this is a stance that ultimately, uh, conservatives should take.

00:58:22.120 Uh, so before we move on to the questions of the people there, uh, Mr. Burden, where can they find your fantastic content?

00:58:30.680 Yeah, sure.

00:58:31.480 So my primary output is the Jay Burden show.

00:58:34.420 Uh, if I do say so myself, I'm sort of prolific.

00:58:37.420 I put out five interviews a week from many people.

00:58:39.900 You will know I had our own on not too long ago, maybe six, seven weeks ago, but other favorites, uh, actually pretty much everyone I've mentioned on this show, uh, Roberto Rios and the good old boys been on my show a number of times.

00:58:51.440 So, uh, the Jay Burden show, wherever you listen to podcasts.

00:58:54.700 Yes.

00:58:55.120 You will not be gambling with your time there.

00:58:57.280 Sorry.

00:58:57.700 Sorry.

00:58:58.220 Sorry.

00:58:58.760 Okay.

00:58:59.140 Moving on.

00:58:59.680 Moving on.

00:59:00.340 Everyone forget I did that.

00:59:01.420 All right.

00:59:01.960 So, uh, Machiavelli, uh, says, I think they are rigging the NFL in real time currently.

00:59:08.080 Well, I mean, we literally know that's true, right?

00:59:09.860 So that's, that, that, that's not even speculation.

00:59:12.700 Uh, is, is it as a wide scale as perhaps you might be insinuating?

00:59:17.340 We don't know, but we do know that the micro, uh, manipulation is absolutely happening and driving, uh, you know, in other sports.

00:59:24.680 So the idea that there's just none of that happening in the NFL seems, uh, insane.

00:59:29.200 So I think you're, you're probably right that that's going to be prevalent there as well.

00:59:32.400 So I'll put it this way as someone who grew up in the era of like the Ray rice Ravens, the idea that our, you know, our sports professionals are just too moral to scoop to, to fixing a game.

00:59:46.260 When the number of NFL players who get a serious felony or kill someone is fairly significant.

00:59:52.720 Like, to me, it's like, what do you think is going to happen?

00:59:55.680 Like, what do you think is going to happen?

00:59:57.000 I can't believe that these felons who are fighting dogs, uh, would, would absolutely never, you know, bet on the game that they're playing.

01:00:04.340 And, uh, yeah, and it, it is, it is a funny, I, you know, if there is going to be one sports betting market and I, I, I disavow, but if there's going to be one, let it be where I can bet on what crime different sports stars are going to actually like, okay.

01:00:18.320 I know that quarterback, he's definitely going to get domestic violence before the end of the season. 0.70

01:00:22.720 Right.

01:00:22.960 Like, like, like, you're just sitting there like Tom Cruise and minority report, like murder, drug possession, except I'm, except I'm Steve sailor.

01:00:31.500 Right.

01:00:31.820 Like I'm using, I'm using inside sailor graphs to, to, uh, you know, three shot, no kill demographics.

01:00:38.460 Yeah.

01:00:38.720 Yeah.

01:00:38.960 It's like tight end, probably not going to get a weapons charge.

01:00:42.480 Uh, definitely.

01:00:43.740 However, wide receiver, absolutely catching a weapons charge.

01:00:47.140 Uh, you know, so the kicker's cheating on his taxes.

01:00:51.120 Right.

01:00:51.380 Right.

01:00:51.560 Right.

01:00:51.780 Yeah.

01:00:51.980 Yeah.

01:00:52.160 Yeah.

01:00:52.720 It's safe, safe to bet.

01:00:54.500 He probably doesn't have the heroin habit.

01:00:56.440 Uh, let's see here.

01:00:57.940 We've got infernal mourns.

01:01:01.560 Sorry if I got that wrong.

01:01:02.520 Sports betting is gamer genocide.

01:01:04.680 We must protect the future of gamers.

01:01:06.660 Everyone recognizes that ultimately gamers are the most oppressed minority in the United States today.

01:01:13.580 Uh, so the gamers should of course rise up against this horrible threat. 0.95

01:01:17.980 Uh, the sanity revolt says dumb prop bets. 0.86

01:01:21.380 Uh, what do you mean?

01:01:22.440 Anyway, I took the, the under amount of, uh, times big coach sig smiles at the B one G championship

01:01:29.160 this weekend.

01:01:29.820 I mean, it sounds like a joke, but we really are at that level of complexity of these bets.

01:01:34.260 Like, and again, like the Cal she stuff literally is, you can just bet on anything.

01:01:38.620 It doesn't matter what is, how many people are going to die to drones that day in the Ukraine

01:01:43.240 war.

01:01:43.540 Right.

01:01:43.820 Like, uh, like, uh, how long will the government shutdown last?

01:01:46.700 Uh, what, what, what will be the total outcome of the next, I don't know, like probably school

01:01:51.160 shooting at some point.

01:01:52.200 We'll all be on there.

01:01:53.200 It's all horribly degenerate and it's just shouldn't exist.

01:01:58.080 Brent Swingle says one of my favorite friends was traveling in Asia extensively and was amazed

01:02:03.100 at the casinos in South Korea that ban Koreans.

01:02:06.860 Uh, well, yeah, I, I'm not super familiar with all of the betting laws there, but even

01:02:11.880 when it comes to, uh, like for instance, Japan, I think they have the, or maybe it is South 0.99

01:02:16.600 Korea too.

01:02:17.100 They have the whole pachinko parlor culture, right? 0.99

01:02:19.940 Because direct betting is banned.

01:02:21.600 So you have to like buy basically like Chuck E.

01:02:24.360 Cheese tickets and trade them in.

01:02:26.400 And then it's not betting, right?

01:02:28.200 Like you win like these glass balls and then you like trade them in for, for items in the

01:02:32.300 Chuck E.

01:02:32.580 Cheese store.

01:02:33.280 And that way it's not, it's not betting.

01:02:34.820 I'm not familiar with all of the different laws, but I do know that there are these insane

01:02:38.860 loopholes and yeah, it would make sense that ultimately, uh, a, uh, a, a country that 0.99

01:02:43.280 cared about people would probably allow stupid foreigners to come in and light their money on 1.00

01:02:46.980 fire, but would ban their own citizens from engaging that behavior. 1.00

01:02:50.400 Well, look, like I'm no great fan of the Chinese government, but they basically invaded a small 1.00

01:02:56.440 portion of Myanmar to go after illegal betting.

01:02:59.760 And in typically Chinese fashion executed like half a dozen members of the family that 0.97

01:03:05.900 owned the casino.

01:03:06.880 Again, not a fan of the Chinese, but they seem to take that problem seriously. 1.00

01:03:11.760 Even in another country.

01:03:13.420 I'm going to officially move that into the base category.

01:03:16.420 I've like, uh, yeah, I'm not, I'm not here to push, uh, the, the, the, the,

01:03:19.920 the Chinese communist party, but yeah, right there.

01:03:22.060 I'll, I'll say that that one is probably the right move.

01:03:25.640 Uh, let's see.

01:03:26.620 We got, uh, oh yes, I, yes, I cannot pronounce your name at all.

01:03:31.200 Uh, but he says, uh, conservatives need to stop worshiping systems, institutions, and abstract

01:03:35.480 concepts such as capitalism.

01:03:36.760 We should be far more order, uh, for look for ordered Liberty, not libertine, uh, libertinism

01:03:43.900 man was not made to serve the GDP.

01:03:46.760 Yeah, again, absolutely true.

01:03:48.360 And this is something that I've been arguing for a long time.

01:03:51.440 This argument has kind of reemerged.

01:03:53.520 Tucker Carlson has made it several times, but this got really fired up again with Ben Shapiro

01:03:58.080 was talking about how everybody needed to move every year and abandon, uh, their family

01:04:02.480 in their community because capitalism said, so look, the point of capitalism, and again,

01:04:08.540 we're not socialists here.

01:04:09.620 We're overall fans of capitalism.

01:04:11.940 The point of capitalism is it helps your people more than other economic systems.

01:04:16.520 I don't care about capitalism as an economic system.

01:04:19.180 I don't care.

01:04:20.880 What I care about is what results does it produce?

01:04:24.200 Does it produce more happiness, more flourishing, more virtue in my society than other systems?

01:04:30.900 And within certain bounds, I think the answer to that is yes, but yes, when you create this

01:04:35.800 system, this like overarching ideology of no capitalism is a goal, it's a moral good instead

01:04:42.900 of a system that could achieve moral goods.

01:04:45.660 This is where we run in to the huge problem.

01:04:51.120 We've got Joe McDermott who says, are you telling me that Sodom and Gomorrah couldn't have

01:04:54.580 been fixed by legalizing their activities?

01:04:57.640 Nope.

01:04:57.900 Nope.

01:04:58.300 Funny enough.

01:04:58.740 Uh, God had some other solutions at hand.

01:05:02.260 I mean, I don't know.

01:05:03.380 I think this time, if we just de-stigmatize Sodom and Gomorrah type activities, it might

01:05:08.980 work.

01:05:09.420 It hasn't worked for anyone else, but it could work for us.

01:05:13.160 Well, that is how you get Caesar.

01:05:14.780 So one way or another, uh, let's see here.

01:05:17.020 Uh, no, I'm not grim from red hood says entire system based upon turbo turbo usury.

01:05:24.980 What a world.

01:05:25.580 What a world.

01:05:26.080 And yeah, this is of course something we didn't really get into the aspects of, but lending

01:05:30.400 for this stuff has become very prominent, right?

01:05:32.880 There's lots of ways you can finance and leverage yourself in these scenarios.

01:05:37.080 So it's not even just people losing whatever money they should have been investing, uh, into

01:05:42.000 their future, but it's also a scenario where many people are funding their addictions through

01:05:47.020 easy credit, easy money.

01:05:50.640 Restoring classical says, uh, what's the over under that Calci ends society?

01:05:55.420 I see what you did there.

01:05:58.540 Uh, Sean Weiland says financial nihilism remains undefeated.

01:06:03.480 Yep.

01:06:03.700 As, uh, as burden pointed out, that is definitely an aspect of it here.

01:06:08.900 Life of Brian says my case for prediction markets.

01:06:11.800 If Republicans were allowed, uh, were allowed to voters against, sorry, trying to try to turn

01:06:18.640 this into a readable sentence.

01:06:19.900 If Republicans were allowed to voters against themselves, we will be at zero seats by 20.

01:06:23.860 So I guess what he's trying to say is, uh, you could predict that, uh, Republicans will

01:06:28.440 vote against their own interests perhaps.

01:06:30.440 Uh, and then we, yes, I guess.

01:06:32.980 Wait, I guess if you could, if you could get people to vote on elections, they would bet

01:06:38.160 against themselves to make money.

01:06:41.700 I guess.

01:06:42.080 I don't know.

01:06:42.580 To rig the elections.

01:06:43.480 Okay.

01:06:43.900 Sorry if we're not understanding your question correctly there, sir, but thank you.

01:06:47.640 And then again, from red hood says the existence of gotcha games actively, uh, taking a hundred

01:06:53.660 plus just for you to get one character or item is insane.

01:06:57.540 Uh, you, you managed to move.

01:06:59.740 I'm sure there's a Japanese way to pronounce that is one of the worst offenders. 1.00

01:07:03.440 Uh, I'm not familiar with this type of, uh, game.

01:07:07.000 I do, or do you know the terminology for a gotcha game?

01:07:09.600 Yeah.

01:07:09.840 So gotcha games are, they're pretty similar to like digital card games, uh, kind of like

01:07:15.640 a digitized version of like MTG or something like that, where there, there is a game to be

01:07:20.460 played, but different characters are objectively better or worse than others.

01:07:24.620 And you have to draw those characters from loot boxes, basically like the game itself

01:07:30.000 is gate kept behind that, uh, got really big in Asia.

01:07:34.680 That's why a bunch of them are named weird names, but they've gotten really big here and

01:07:39.120 somehow combining anime and degenerate gambling has made sort of this like super concentrated

01:07:44.620 nuclear waste of degeneracy and, uh, just, it just nuked from orbit. 0.59

01:07:49.500 As far as I'm concerned, it is completely.

01:07:52.440 So is it kind of like pay to play?

01:07:54.080 Like you need to achieve this certain level of like, it's like, yes, it is, but it's also

01:08:00.600 like your team or your, basically it's like, if you could make a random spin at a, at a,

01:08:07.120 uh, like roulette wheel to play Pokemon, that's kind of how I'd describe it.

01:08:11.680 Like your Pokemon would be determined by the pack.

01:08:14.580 You can buy them directly or buy spins.

01:08:16.760 Again, I don't really know a lot about this.

01:08:18.640 It's just kind of through osmosis, but a lot of them combine like suspiciously underage 0.99

01:08:23.680 anime figures where you're just like this, why do we have this?

01:08:26.480 Like, we just put you in jail.

01:08:28.700 As one of my critical zoomer correspondents, I need you to educate me on, uh, on all the

01:08:34.280 things that my old man brain cannot comprehend.

01:08:36.280 I'm going to go back and listen to some Led Zeppelin.

01:08:38.720 By the way, did you see, like, I just, I, this is completely off topic, but I just have

01:08:42.680 to make the joke because it was so funny that the new, uh, Chronicles of Narnia, that's

01:08:47.040 going to come out on Netflix, which is going to be a unmitigated, like disaster.

01:08:51.140 Like it doesn't exist.

01:08:52.340 I, I, I, whatever, I don't, I'm not even going to react to any of it when it comes out.

01:08:56.880 Cause I know it's going to be so bad.

01:08:58.120 Uh, but they already, they were saying something like this one will have contemporary music like

01:09:03.400 pink Floyd and the doors like contemporary to who my grandparents, my great-grandparents.

01:09:11.160 Like, what are we doing here?

01:09:12.700 Like just insane.

01:09:14.060 There's nothing more stuck culture than taking a Christian series for children from the 1950s,

01:09:21.620 stripping out the soul of it, turning it into a middle, like a Lord of the Rings knockoff

01:09:26.960 and then putting in nostalgic music for grandparents in it.

01:09:31.800 It's just like that.

01:09:33.060 Your, your point about, you know, wearing your religion as a skin suit quite literally happening 0.95

01:09:37.200 in real time.

01:09:38.080 Yeah, absolutely the case.

01:09:40.340 All right, guys, well, we're going to go ahead and wrap this up.

01:09:43.220 Thank you everybody for coming by and watching.

01:09:45.660 It's fantastic to speak with you.

01:09:47.440 Always fantastic to speak with Mr.

01:09:49.120 Burden.

01:09:49.420 Of course, make sure you immediately go and follow him on all the social medias.

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01:10:10.940 Thank you everybody for watching.

01:10:12.240 And as always, I will talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - December 05, 2025

The Sports Betting Epidemic ｜ Guest J. Burden ｜ 12⧸5⧸25

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