Comment by keiferski
2 days ago
I’m increasingly convinced that the single most important concept to understand in the 21st century is Chesterton’s Fence:
"Chesterton's fence" is the principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_...
Gambling isn’t a new problem, but apparently we thought it would turn out differently this time, for some vague unclear reason.
I think the simplified version of that reason is: no one really believes in anything anymore, except in the value that acquiring money by any means necessary is a good thing.
> Gambling isn’t a new problem, but apparently we thought it would turn out differently this time, for some vague unclear reason.
Moneyed interests saw a business opportunity, simple as that. Economic investment is becoming highly concentrated towards high-growth, high-risk opportunities and gambling has long thrived in the black market while staying current with technology.
> except in the value that acquiring money by any means necessary is a good thing.
And this will only become more true as the economy continues to worsen. Economic downturns and market collapses favor the elite.
The powers that be have always saught wealth. At some point they gained enough power to start usurping the law that was supposed to keep them in check.
We should have made it clearer that monied interests have a choice: be kept in check by the law, or by the guillotine.
The problem is, the guillotine solution to regulation only becomes feasible after the monied interest have thoroughly fucked society, to a level that would make living as blue-collar working in Detroit downtown today feel like being a banking executive living in Geneva.
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I'm too entralled by TikTok to build a guillotine.
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> Gambling isn’t a new problem, but apparently we thought it would turn out differently this time, for some vague unclear reason.
The things I've seen have been either "it's not right to tell me not to" or "non-participants can get useful information by observing the odds". What I haven't seen is claims that it won't be net-harmful to participants.
This seems like the contrarian argument to libertarianism. A libertarian might claim it is orthogonal to it in theory, but in practice it is very much relevant to a “break all the walls down” ideology.
> I think the simplified version of that reason is: no one really believes in anything anymore, except in the value that acquiring money by any means necessary is a good thing.
Hit the nail on the head and these are my thoughts exactly. I don't really want to be the guy that thinks his time is extra-ordinary (cue fake quote of Socrates saying "kids these days have no manners"), but... maybe it is?
For me it's like people don't even feel the need to pretend anymore. Selfish geopolitical calculations and greed have dictated all actors' actions in the 20th, that isn't new, but at least then there was a need to appear to abide by laws or to uphold human rights, even to strive for the eradication of war (and often it wasn't a disguise; people actually cared about those things).
States used to care or at least appear to care about progress, betterment, social improvement, moral improvement. Today? All any government speaks of is raw GDP growth %. And so gambling is pushed on TVs, streets, subways, kids' entertainment... The idea that a government of a nation would strive for the moral well-being of its citizens (by heavily curtailing gambling for example) seems positively quaint in 2026.
Anyway I'm tired, excuse the incoherent ramble.
Maybe, like myself, you're just aging into being a bit of a conservative.
Let's not label ourselves. Once we do it, we have this tendency to think in black and white terms. Like, I wish people didn't divorce, so kids could have stable families, does this make me a conservative? Maybe yes, or maybe no, because I don't want to FORCE people to stay married.
But once I label myself a conservative, I am stuck, and now have a new set of friends with the same label, because I am labeled myself, and they have all those radical ideas, and then I have to pretend to believe and ending up believing them too.
Of course, the same applies when you label yourself a progressive.
Eh, I don’t think not wanting gambling and amoral behavior to consume society makes me a conservative in any real sense of the word. More just common sense pragmatism, is how I’d put it.
Maybe you mean in any modern sense of the word, but I'm pretty sure that is indeed a large part of what it used to mean.
The Chesterton’s Fence argument is an argument against progressive social changes, no?
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IMO, the world simply functions better when we strive for virtue.
Amoral by what standard? That’s where the conservatism comes in.
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Sure, but Chesterton's Fence is a pretty foundational argument among many conservatives.
Conservatives think societies are hard to understand, which makes them hard to engineer, and replacing institutions that work with new inventions needs to be done carefully and slowly.
Think of it as grift and not gambling.
I think most serious left-wing people also hold a strong aversion to gambling on the grounds that it's financially exploitative and can be viewed as a regressive tax on the poor/uneducated.
Conservatives don't have a monopoly on morality.