Perhaps it was too direct a rebuttal... in my perspective I view any proclivity to "vice" as intrinsic to the nature of societies & human curiosity. This is, thus far, corroborated by the behavioral sciences.

In that model there are two essential approaches (aside from negligence) one can take: enforcement or empathy. The former says "it is in the greater good for this to be restricted," without paying much mind to the individual. The latter focuses instead on the individual or condition and says "how can I help this individual transition from a destructive state to a healthy one and/or integrate them into society?"

I think we see the enforcement approach fail when banned activities can't be clearly demonstrated to cause acute harm. It's easy to stand behind a law designed to restrict a deadly substance, reduce drunk driving, et al. -- that gets harder when you start restricting abstract behaviors that don't have graphic or clearly-definable consequences (e.g. a drunk individual behind the wheel of a car is a simple and acute danger; I challenge you to quantify the impact of a generalized, individual "gambler" on society).

Regardless of your own value associations, we as humans are dynamic creatures and "laws" are static values -- that is to say they exist on a spectrum of opposing force that occasionally shifts dramatically in one direction. I think we're seeing that shift now through the lens of the failed "war on drugs," in how innate these behaviors are to our biology. You may feel better banning an activity that you feel is destructive, but you shouldn't be so naive as to assume your ban will have any effect on individual human motivation when dopamine is involved--it's deferring the problem, and distracting from the factors that predispose an individual to "destructive behavior" in the first place.

I do think enforcement is necessary (re: balance, the key to everything in society), but it's hard to argue that the "war on drugs" (as an example) has done anything other than establish a black market global economy, the supply chains of which bring instability and violence to much of South/Central America... not to mention the egregious legal precedents toward non-violent offenders we have set in our own country under the guise of reform and in the interest of subsidizing for-profit prisons.

If we're really interested in improving our quality of life as a society, maybe we shouldn't regulate "activities" so much as how we respond to them in terms of statute and precedent...

I suspect "able" here means "allowed". "I wish people would be allowed to make educated decisions…" is not criticizing anyone except perhaps the people who wish that people would not be allowed to make certain decisions themselves.

You're adding a slant to his comment that didn't exist.

He wants the ABILITY to choose one's own path. He's not commenting (positively or negatively) on the paths others have chosen.

Nobody is twice as likely to win the lottery. Saying that it's "close to a lottery" is clearly wrong.

Similarly, no game is evenly matched, and there's no particular reason any given player can't elevate their game to the point of beating the rake.

That's like saying the movie theater is stacked against you because they charge admission to get in.

There is a huge difference between playing a game against the house which is mathematically set up to lose you money in the long term, vs. paying an entrance fee to compete against other players.

    In poker, the house takes a cut that typically 
    overwhelms the benefit of being a skilled player. 
    An unskilled player is losing to the house and 
    their competitors.

Unless you are playing at an underground game with an insane rake, most established casinos (all of them in the US) have a beatable rake.

Most online game rakes are beatable, plus you get rake back offers, etc.

   Gambler's ruin still takes effect: you have a finite 
   bankroll so you can only ride out a finite amount of 
   bad luck before you're bankrupt. Fine, if you're rich 
   or the house.

Bankroll management is part of being a skilled player. If you are playing with a roll suitable for the level you are playing at, 20 buy-ins usually, and still meet ruin then you aren't beating variance then you are a bad player, not just having bad luck.

   Many of the best poker players in the world have bankrupted 
   or have had to take deep loans to continue playing.

Most pro poker players are degenerate gamblers who play other games or do sports betting or lose big on prop bets, etc.

Now contrast these points against games like blackjack (which make the casinos way more money than the poker room does) and it's not even remotely the same thing.

I survived for two years playing live poker and I used to be a partner in an underground club in Manhattan. Our rake was inline with what AC offered.

> - Many of the best poker players in the world have bankrupted or have had to take deep loans to continue playing.'

That's because it turned out that those players weren't actually the best players in the world. Poker saw a huge birth of statistical analysis from 2002-2008 when Online Poker was legal/legal enough in the US. People who only played live (in person at a casino) their entire career might only play 50k-200k hands. When online poker came about you could play 200k hands in a month. It turns out these so called "best in the world players" were just on a really good run. It also turns out it takes millions upon millions of hands to really find out if you're truly a winner or just benefitting from the good side of variance.

This affect gets even worse because the so-called "Best players in the world" were MTT players and MTTs have the highest statistical variance of all. I have friends who are still poker pros. Next to Asian businessman, the only other player they would rather have at their tables are "Television Pros."

The difference is in whether poker is a game of skill or not. You can't lose the lottery on purpose--no skill involved.

The best players win all the money. Both skilled and unskilled players realize that.