One problem with the on-going legalization of vices like sports gambling and marijuana is that, over time, it shifts the quality of people whose job it is to market the vice away from organized crime-adjacent disreputables toward MBA’s.
In Maine the MBA gang is making recreational marijuana “fun and approachable”, with the blessing and encouragement of the State and local governments.
Next up: legal sports betting, with an emphasis on college basketball and football games where 19 year-old players dominate. Legislators are salivating, as the tax revenues will provide solutions to so many problems.
I remember explaining online decades ago why I was against marijuana legalization: What you can sell openly you can promote openly. My nightmare was seeing pot logos on race cars and catchy print ad slogans, say like "now with peyote for a more satisfying high." (Hat tip to Steve for an even more nightmarish nightmare.)
A disadvantage of age is that you live to see what you dread.
Yes, I think about all of these celebrities selling sports betting to the young men of America. Can you imagine Kevin Hart on television selling Marlboros? It's inconceivable.
There are strict laws prohibiting the advertisement of cigarettes in most venues. They've been legal the whole time. It isn't true that what's legal to sell is also legal to promote.
Point taken. But discounting my exaggeration, the point remains that after legalization the promotion for the formerly illegal trade generally becomes more visible, never less. These days billboards for cannabis "dispensaries" are quite common in California. - Ken
> Post-seasons, of course, have been a different matter for the Dodgers, with only one World Series title in the Clayton Kershaw era
One title in 35 years is nothing to brag about. Ironically, the Dodgers' only title in that run was the year there was no attendance. Having said that, postseason success does not necessarily translate into proportionately larger profits, as the television rights are held by MLB rather than the local teams. Yankees fans are annoyed their team has won one World Series in the last 23 years, but the team makes money hand over first. Ever since Billy Bean characterized the postseason as a "crap shoot" baseball executives have been using that as an excuse for poor postseason performance.
As an aside, in the last 35 seasons 20 different teams have won the World Series.
I'm guessing PepsiCo, which appropriately is headquartered in the hamlet of Purchase in Westchester County, New York. Between Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and their Frito-Lay division, they may have succeeded.
Here is a 2011 article from The New Yorker called Snacks for a Fat Planet:
A semi-interesting chicken-egg question is that of the rise of the convenience store. The placement of giant tubs of sugar water and family size bags of potato chips in gas stations seems to have gone hand in hand with the wave of obesity.
Up until maybe twenty years ago, the Irish were noticeably skinnier than Americans. They would point and laugh at giant Yankee tourists. Now they’ve caught up, at least from my non-scientific observations. And, just like here, the rise of the gas station/convenience store has taken place simultaneously.
Of course, the smoking ban in pubs also happened about twenty years ago; but getting an ice cream cone every time you stop for gas can’t help.
My theory is it was when women stopped cooking. Men to whom food is as important if not more so, now cook a good deal; however, they seem to grill most of the time, or concentrate on protein at any rate. Few men like to bake, or make the "dreaded" casseroles that used to feed America.
When there is no one in the house that bakes, or that - practicing economy - sees to it that a substantial portion of the food consumed is starches and vegetables, whether canned or fresh or made into a casserole or some combination of those options as was common in America until about 40 years ago - the shortfall is made up by things you buy at the store. And those things are instantly and constantly available, quite apart from their nutritional content.
People may not cook or bake carbs - but they don't really give up carbs.
As a baker, I think it's funny when I hear women say, Oh, I don't bake, I would just eat it all. Well, you might do. But then it would be gone and in order to have more you'd have to plan and put in some work. Versus - just buying it and having it in the pantry all the time.
This time component is underestimated in my view though I'm not very good at describing it.
But I remember this feeling that I'm not sure people get anymore: when you were a kid, asking your mother "When is dinner gonna be ready?" Because you were so hungry. Because there wasn't much of anything to snack on or if there were - chips would have been about it - you were not permitted to "spoil" your dinner by eating them.
I don't get the impression that anyone, especially kids, "spoils" their dinner anymore because I think people just eat kind of all the time, whatever's at hand.
Does anybody really *wait* for supper, for their food anymore? I mean, besides waiting in the Chick Filet line?
Nearly everybody young was so skinny in pictures back then.
If the internet is any guide, it seems like people cook more than ever. The internet has certainly made me a better cook, though exposure to America's Test Kitchen was my first aid to improvement. More their tips and tricks and product choices than their recipes, ultimately. And just sort of a - let's think about what we're doing here, and how it actually turned out.
So maybe I'm all wet, or maybe it's like what I suspect the internet also accomplishes - makes a subset of people think everybody is reading and writing, while in fact literacy fades away.
And if we had few snacks - the older generation had even less - my grandmother was an excellent cook and I liked occasionally getting to spend a night or two at her house. However, she literally had nothing beyond Town House crackers or Melba toast that fell into the "snack" category. I would sometimes desperately search the cabinets when she was out of the kitchen and at some point stumbled on a cache of Andes mints that she kept among the liquor, for guests. I hit the Andes mints hard in secret.
My husband describes something similar at his grandparents' house only it was those old-fashioned "orange slice" gelled candies.
As a teacher, I can tell you that one of the biggest changes in children is their need to be constantly grazing, as well as drinking water. When most of us were in school we ate in the cafeteria at lunch time and that was it. If we wanted water, we went to the water fountain, as those single-serving 500 mL bottles were not yet a thing.
> old-fashioned "orange slice" gelled candies.
I call them fruit slices as they come in different colors and flavors, but I enjoy those.
Yes, I saw that when I was in and out of the schools years ago. It didn't surprise me that a kid that had already loaded up on teddy grahams or Oreos and juice, threw much of their lunch in the trash.
I remember one little boy I subbed with quite a lot and he always asked me to peel his banana for him. He had trouble doing it without smashing it.
School started so very early, though, that it seemed to me kids hardly had time to eat much breakfast at home.
I felt for them having to do math at 8:00 in the morning!
This is one of the reasons why I am against universal free school breakfast and lunch on principle. The amount of nutritious food that gets wasted every day is staggering.
The waste bothered me as well. An aspect which was a byproduct of the institutional nature - was that a piece of fresh fruit was on the tray many days. Which would have been fine - but a lot of times it was pears, and I discovered they were hard as rocks. And indeed, how would you ever serve a couple hundred ripe pears at one moment? I even queried the teachers about this: am I alone in thinking pears are to be eaten when they are ripe? The teachers didn't care about lunch, which was their brief break. The pears nearly all went in the trash, but occasionally a kid would eat it. You could tell the kids for whom the lunch was a really important part of the day's calories, though there were certain menu items the kids really did like. They liked a very sticky thing called "breakfast for lunch": pancakes and a couple of little smokies.
Believe it or not, the big municipal school district in my last city actually made a press release for the local news - *asking parents not to send lunches from home*. This I think had to do with maximizing federal lunch payments. I was appalled.
The bigger problem that has emerged with cannabis commercialization related to this is the many innovations in how the drug can be consumed. When it was underground, it was always simply cannabis flower or homemade edibles. Commercialization has led to highly addictive reusable vape cartridges and other forms of cannabis concentrate, as well as many more types of edible cannabis and simply far more options for people to get addicted to.
If certain people cannot handle certain vices, then should they be allowed to vote? If people are incapable of responsible behavior, then how can we trust them to delegate decisions to others? If someone can’t take care of their personal finances or health, then how can they be expected to vote for a politician who will responsibly do this for them? Is government paternalism compatible with universal suffrage?
"But even I back then could recognize that tasking high quality individuals like my friend with catering ever more to Americans’ impulsive instincts was a recipe for trouble."
So, numbers. Is there an actual Vice list any more?
All the vices I found in my exhausting but not exhaustive online exercise for the day seemed simply (qualitatively) to support the thesis that Vice management types have proliferated online and into Corporations like head lice or some other loathsome affliction. Vices have been detoxified and some new ones added, you'll be able to guess without looking what the new ones are...
The Old Vices have literally been run off the road like poor unfortunate creatures.
It's all very well to recite Catholic virtue/vice summaries, but, data, please, actual things you shouldn't do, like stick your gum under the desk at school when you're done with it (yes, I have done this).
For example (anecdote time), smoking tobacco (cigarettes especially) is generally regarded online and in stores as a weakness or vice, and is taxed, severely, denounced, etc. Yet every convenience store sells them. People openly buy them with no furtive looking around to see if they're being seen. Alcoholic beverage sales are absolutely booming. Gambling. What about the sort-of-new stuff?
Increasingly, the Vape/CBD/whatever else goes on in there stores are popping up like mushrooms, with well managed and attractive signage, etc., in sharp contrast to the Cancer Stick People, who are hunkered down, obviously fighting a rearguard action hoping for a comeback with the Vape people or something.
So, it seems legalizing Vice has generally made us fatter, lazier, less aware of whatever, you get the picture.
Maybe those old hard copy pre-1962 Catholic summaries of Virtues/Vices might sell.
Selfishly as someone who isnt prone to addiction and who is high in openness to experience id like to be able to dabble with different types of drugs on occasion without worrying about purity or the law.
There should be IQ tests or other types of competency tests for people to get occasional access to these substances
I've long thought that marijuana should be effectively decriminalized but its sale, marketing and commercial cultivation should be prohibited.
That way potheads could grow their own stash and perhaps make a little under-the-table profit without these marijuana retailers in every crappy neighborhood or run down town selling highly refined, brain-deadening concoctions out in the open for every kid to see.
I think this would be a form of "demarketization" that even a lot of potheads would support.
I used to be in favor of legalization. Later I understood that legalizing something doesn’t just take the government boot off the necks of existing users; it makes the thing “OK” in the eyes of millions more, with side effects to match.
With alcohol, socially this may be a worthwhile trade. Weed, not so much.
Are you sure the real reason isn’t that you like children being exposed to drug use? This is an open space here, you can be free in discussing your fetishes, Mr. Mario Man.
Evidently you're sufficiently sheltered not to have noticed that they're already exposed to drug use. Take a walk in Washington Square.
You might even invest forty seconds in searching and eyeballing some statistics (if you don't know that word, it basically means counting and comparing a whole lot of facts) in this and other countries. There's a slim chance that you'll allow yourself to notice that usage of all narcotics, in all age groups, has NEVER risen after legalization. In fact it usually goes down because some of the expense of the drug wars can then go to rehabilitation programs. But since people of average or below average intelligence are incapable of changing their minds -- strangely, they confuse their (100% received) ideas with their egos -- I fear your blinkers will remain fastened.
But I weary of how so many ignoramuses want me to do their homework for them. Reading is fundamental, kids.
As for prohibition, it's astonishing that our cosa nostra "government" is still getting away with shaking down this industry. You'd think even people wouldn't be that gullible for this long.
And illegal means concentrated, full of additives like fentanyl, and deadly. During alcohol prohibition thousands of people died from fake whiskey made of water, artificial flavors, caramel color, and rubbing alcohol. Murder by law. More sophisticated and educated countries like Portugal and the Netherlands are showing the way. And, oh, by the way, the number of users does not increase with legalization. Do the research before you start blabbing. The "War on Drugs" is profitable for governments, but it's not their business. Next, alcohol, tobacco, saturated fats, and humor. A laughably tragic piece of brutal and tyrannical imbecility.
Do the homework And, oh, people who like to tell other people what to do are the people who like being told what to do. Weaponized sheep. Astounding.
In Maine the MBA gang is making recreational marijuana “fun and approachable”, with the blessing and encouragement of the State and local governments.
Next up: legal sports betting, with an emphasis on college basketball and football games where 19 year-old players dominate. Legislators are salivating, as the tax revenues will provide solutions to so many problems.
What could possibly go wrong?
I remember explaining online decades ago why I was against marijuana legalization: What you can sell openly you can promote openly. My nightmare was seeing pot logos on race cars and catchy print ad slogans, say like "now with peyote for a more satisfying high." (Hat tip to Steve for an even more nightmarish nightmare.)
A disadvantage of age is that you live to see what you dread.
Ken
Yes, I think about all of these celebrities selling sports betting to the young men of America. Can you imagine Kevin Hart on television selling Marlboros? It's inconceivable.
There are strict laws prohibiting the advertisement of cigarettes in most venues. They've been legal the whole time. It isn't true that what's legal to sell is also legal to promote.
Point taken. But discounting my exaggeration, the point remains that after legalization the promotion for the formerly illegal trade generally becomes more visible, never less. These days billboards for cannabis "dispensaries" are quite common in California. - Ken
So I presume you would ditch ABC stores in favor of moonshiners?
> Post-seasons, of course, have been a different matter for the Dodgers, with only one World Series title in the Clayton Kershaw era
One title in 35 years is nothing to brag about. Ironically, the Dodgers' only title in that run was the year there was no attendance. Having said that, postseason success does not necessarily translate into proportionately larger profits, as the television rights are held by MLB rather than the local teams. Yankees fans are annoyed their team has won one World Series in the last 23 years, but the team makes money hand over first. Ever since Billy Bean characterized the postseason as a "crap shoot" baseball executives have been using that as an excuse for poor postseason performance.
As an aside, in the last 35 seasons 20 different teams have won the World Series.
> the ultimate goal of Giganto Corp
I'm guessing PepsiCo, which appropriately is headquartered in the hamlet of Purchase in Westchester County, New York. Between Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and their Frito-Lay division, they may have succeeded.
Here is a 2011 article from The New Yorker called Snacks for a Fat Planet:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/05/16/snacks-for-a-fat-planet
A semi-interesting chicken-egg question is that of the rise of the convenience store. The placement of giant tubs of sugar water and family size bags of potato chips in gas stations seems to have gone hand in hand with the wave of obesity.
Up until maybe twenty years ago, the Irish were noticeably skinnier than Americans. They would point and laugh at giant Yankee tourists. Now they’ve caught up, at least from my non-scientific observations. And, just like here, the rise of the gas station/convenience store has taken place simultaneously.
Of course, the smoking ban in pubs also happened about twenty years ago; but getting an ice cream cone every time you stop for gas can’t help.
My theory is it was when women stopped cooking. Men to whom food is as important if not more so, now cook a good deal; however, they seem to grill most of the time, or concentrate on protein at any rate. Few men like to bake, or make the "dreaded" casseroles that used to feed America.
When there is no one in the house that bakes, or that - practicing economy - sees to it that a substantial portion of the food consumed is starches and vegetables, whether canned or fresh or made into a casserole or some combination of those options as was common in America until about 40 years ago - the shortfall is made up by things you buy at the store. And those things are instantly and constantly available, quite apart from their nutritional content.
People may not cook or bake carbs - but they don't really give up carbs.
As a baker, I think it's funny when I hear women say, Oh, I don't bake, I would just eat it all. Well, you might do. But then it would be gone and in order to have more you'd have to plan and put in some work. Versus - just buying it and having it in the pantry all the time.
This time component is underestimated in my view though I'm not very good at describing it.
But I remember this feeling that I'm not sure people get anymore: when you were a kid, asking your mother "When is dinner gonna be ready?" Because you were so hungry. Because there wasn't much of anything to snack on or if there were - chips would have been about it - you were not permitted to "spoil" your dinner by eating them.
I don't get the impression that anyone, especially kids, "spoils" their dinner anymore because I think people just eat kind of all the time, whatever's at hand.
Does anybody really *wait* for supper, for their food anymore? I mean, besides waiting in the Chick Filet line?
Nearly everybody young was so skinny in pictures back then.
If the internet is any guide, it seems like people cook more than ever. The internet has certainly made me a better cook, though exposure to America's Test Kitchen was my first aid to improvement. More their tips and tricks and product choices than their recipes, ultimately. And just sort of a - let's think about what we're doing here, and how it actually turned out.
So maybe I'm all wet, or maybe it's like what I suspect the internet also accomplishes - makes a subset of people think everybody is reading and writing, while in fact literacy fades away.
And if we had few snacks - the older generation had even less - my grandmother was an excellent cook and I liked occasionally getting to spend a night or two at her house. However, she literally had nothing beyond Town House crackers or Melba toast that fell into the "snack" category. I would sometimes desperately search the cabinets when she was out of the kitchen and at some point stumbled on a cache of Andes mints that she kept among the liquor, for guests. I hit the Andes mints hard in secret.
My husband describes something similar at his grandparents' house only it was those old-fashioned "orange slice" gelled candies.
As a teacher, I can tell you that one of the biggest changes in children is their need to be constantly grazing, as well as drinking water. When most of us were in school we ate in the cafeteria at lunch time and that was it. If we wanted water, we went to the water fountain, as those single-serving 500 mL bottles were not yet a thing.
> old-fashioned "orange slice" gelled candies.
I call them fruit slices as they come in different colors and flavors, but I enjoy those.
Yes, I saw that when I was in and out of the schools years ago. It didn't surprise me that a kid that had already loaded up on teddy grahams or Oreos and juice, threw much of their lunch in the trash.
I remember one little boy I subbed with quite a lot and he always asked me to peel his banana for him. He had trouble doing it without smashing it.
School started so very early, though, that it seemed to me kids hardly had time to eat much breakfast at home.
I felt for them having to do math at 8:00 in the morning!
> threw much of their lunch in the trash
This is one of the reasons why I am against universal free school breakfast and lunch on principle. The amount of nutritious food that gets wasted every day is staggering.
The waste bothered me as well. An aspect which was a byproduct of the institutional nature - was that a piece of fresh fruit was on the tray many days. Which would have been fine - but a lot of times it was pears, and I discovered they were hard as rocks. And indeed, how would you ever serve a couple hundred ripe pears at one moment? I even queried the teachers about this: am I alone in thinking pears are to be eaten when they are ripe? The teachers didn't care about lunch, which was their brief break. The pears nearly all went in the trash, but occasionally a kid would eat it. You could tell the kids for whom the lunch was a really important part of the day's calories, though there were certain menu items the kids really did like. They liked a very sticky thing called "breakfast for lunch": pancakes and a couple of little smokies.
Believe it or not, the big municipal school district in my last city actually made a press release for the local news - *asking parents not to send lunches from home*. This I think had to do with maximizing federal lunch payments. I was appalled.
A colony of mrowki from Poland ont heir first trip to America were disappointed at the lack of fat people for them to jape at.
Steve, how do I get to be a patron? I put your kids though college?
I think you have to pay a lot more money.
The bigger problem that has emerged with cannabis commercialization related to this is the many innovations in how the drug can be consumed. When it was underground, it was always simply cannabis flower or homemade edibles. Commercialization has led to highly addictive reusable vape cartridges and other forms of cannabis concentrate, as well as many more types of edible cannabis and simply far more options for people to get addicted to.
If certain people cannot handle certain vices, then should they be allowed to vote? If people are incapable of responsible behavior, then how can we trust them to delegate decisions to others? If someone can’t take care of their personal finances or health, then how can they be expected to vote for a politician who will responsibly do this for them? Is government paternalism compatible with universal suffrage?
Interesting problem Steve. Reminds me of the scene in Idiocracy where “BRAWNDO” (it’s got electrolytes) comes out of the drinking fountains.
"But even I back then could recognize that tasking high quality individuals like my friend with catering ever more to Americans’ impulsive instincts was a recipe for trouble."
So, numbers. Is there an actual Vice list any more?
All the vices I found in my exhausting but not exhaustive online exercise for the day seemed simply (qualitatively) to support the thesis that Vice management types have proliferated online and into Corporations like head lice or some other loathsome affliction. Vices have been detoxified and some new ones added, you'll be able to guess without looking what the new ones are...
The Old Vices have literally been run off the road like poor unfortunate creatures.
It's all very well to recite Catholic virtue/vice summaries, but, data, please, actual things you shouldn't do, like stick your gum under the desk at school when you're done with it (yes, I have done this).
For example (anecdote time), smoking tobacco (cigarettes especially) is generally regarded online and in stores as a weakness or vice, and is taxed, severely, denounced, etc. Yet every convenience store sells them. People openly buy them with no furtive looking around to see if they're being seen. Alcoholic beverage sales are absolutely booming. Gambling. What about the sort-of-new stuff?
Increasingly, the Vape/CBD/whatever else goes on in there stores are popping up like mushrooms, with well managed and attractive signage, etc., in sharp contrast to the Cancer Stick People, who are hunkered down, obviously fighting a rearguard action hoping for a comeback with the Vape people or something.
So, it seems legalizing Vice has generally made us fatter, lazier, less aware of whatever, you get the picture.
Maybe those old hard copy pre-1962 Catholic summaries of Virtues/Vices might sell.
Selfishly as someone who isnt prone to addiction and who is high in openness to experience id like to be able to dabble with different types of drugs on occasion without worrying about purity or the law.
There should be IQ tests or other types of competency tests for people to get occasional access to these substances
I've long thought that marijuana should be effectively decriminalized but its sale, marketing and commercial cultivation should be prohibited.
That way potheads could grow their own stash and perhaps make a little under-the-table profit without these marijuana retailers in every crappy neighborhood or run down town selling highly refined, brain-deadening concoctions out in the open for every kid to see.
I think this would be a form of "demarketization" that even a lot of potheads would support.
Capitalism's strength is that it's very good at giving people what they want.
Of course, the surest way to ruin a man is to let him have whatever he wants.
The fat, lazy, moronic, drug addled customer (voter) is always right
I used to be in favor of legalization. Later I understood that legalizing something doesn’t just take the government boot off the necks of existing users; it makes the thing “OK” in the eyes of millions more, with side effects to match.
With alcohol, socially this may be a worthwhile trade. Weed, not so much.
Marijuana hasn't been my DOC since school, but I like smelling it on the street. It smells like --
-- -- --
-- freedom.
Are you sure the real reason isn’t that you like children being exposed to drug use? This is an open space here, you can be free in discussing your fetishes, Mr. Mario Man.
Evidently you're sufficiently sheltered not to have noticed that they're already exposed to drug use. Take a walk in Washington Square.
You might even invest forty seconds in searching and eyeballing some statistics (if you don't know that word, it basically means counting and comparing a whole lot of facts) in this and other countries. There's a slim chance that you'll allow yourself to notice that usage of all narcotics, in all age groups, has NEVER risen after legalization. In fact it usually goes down because some of the expense of the drug wars can then go to rehabilitation programs. But since people of average or below average intelligence are incapable of changing their minds -- strangely, they confuse their (100% received) ideas with their egos -- I fear your blinkers will remain fastened.
But I weary of how so many ignoramuses want me to do their homework for them. Reading is fundamental, kids.
As for prohibition, it's astonishing that our cosa nostra "government" is still getting away with shaking down this industry. You'd think even people wouldn't be that gullible for this long.
And illegal means concentrated, full of additives like fentanyl, and deadly. During alcohol prohibition thousands of people died from fake whiskey made of water, artificial flavors, caramel color, and rubbing alcohol. Murder by law. More sophisticated and educated countries like Portugal and the Netherlands are showing the way. And, oh, by the way, the number of users does not increase with legalization. Do the research before you start blabbing. The "War on Drugs" is profitable for governments, but it's not their business. Next, alcohol, tobacco, saturated fats, and humor. A laughably tragic piece of brutal and tyrannical imbecility.
Do the homework And, oh, people who like to tell other people what to do are the people who like being told what to do. Weaponized sheep. Astounding.