Hmmm, I’m sick of sports betting and having it shoved before my eyes on every sports channel/show etc. I think prediction betting is skeevy as hell and would love if not total bans on these things, at least tight regulation with teeth and consequences.
There are multiple proposals pending or proposed in state and federal legislatures and regulatory agencies to ban predictive and individual performance betting, according to the many Google hits I got on “intragame sports betting ban”.
Agree w both of you that sports betting is something like allowing cocaine in the locker room. Yeah, it’s sure create some buzz on the field. But the buzz will destroy everything around it.
Which is fine for the folks whose MO is simply smash and grab capitalism. But for anyone else, it’s pure vandalism leaving massive destruction of value (and values) in its wake.
Everyone is thinking about physical objects, and I’m thinking about social behaviors, language, symbology, and norms.
We now essentially ban (through social pressures and legal means) wolf whistles, nooses, swastika’s, blackface; when they were more commonplace and broadly considered more innocuous in the past.
I wonder what such things we consider innocuous now that our grandchildren will pillorize us over and tear down names and monuments that were once considered esteemed.
No, just the opposite. The Inner Party is explicitly a bunch of bullies who get their kicks from causing as much suffering as possible. The point of Victory Gin being nasty is that they enjoy being nasty. Preventing alcoholism is a form of altruism that is directly opposed to their M.O.
Non-unisex single-occupancy public bathrooms.
Here in WA, sports betting is only allowed at tribal casinos and on the track, and app-based gambling is only allowed if you’re using a tribal app while on that tribe’s reservation. The state is also suing Kaishi and Robinhood right now to force them to stop offering their services in this state.
I don’t have a problem with sports betting per se, but I do think you should actually have to physically go to a casino and hand over physical cash in order to do it. I don’t like that people can blow their rent money on a basketball game while sitting on the toilet.
I dunno, I think a truly committed totalitarian regime ought to prohibit any pleasure at all, and a nice touch would be to put a moralistic spin on it – it ought to be for their own health, or Wellness as we’d call it now. Why should people be allowed to ease their pain for an hour? Orwell didn’t quite think it through.
(Sorry off-topic)
The idea is to keep the proles docile and content so that they don’t question the way things are or think too hard about anything. What better way to achieve that than cheap gin? I mean, Russia has been doing the same thing with vodka for CENTURIES.
So, I guess the fact that death rates among the elderly actually dropped in Aus during COVID is “proof” that “they” were hoping to extend life in the elderly?
The extension of life was around 3-6 months judging from the population statistics here, so if the purpose of COVID was to extend life by forcing elderly people into having an extra 3-6 months with restricted activity and loss of human contact for the last 6-12 months locked away, I guess it worked.
It doesn’t seem to be happening, but my Doctor thought that, after the success of the sunscreen and anti-smoking campaigns, the next obvious target for the anti-cancer activists was going to be home BBQ. Since the stuff is known to be carcinogenic, and apparently failry highly so compared to other sources.
Living to an old age
Euthanasia is become legal in many places but I can see things going a step further. Living after you have stopped benefitting society by increasing GDP (i.e. working) could be considered selfish, especially if you are also a considerable burden on society due to the costs of healthcare etc. People might be allowed a few years to enjoy retirement before they are put down, if healthy enough to do so but this would be limited (or you would just be expected to work until you are unable to do so / reach thre maximum age)
Vote (or vote for the opposition)
This is already the case in many countries. Elections, if they exist at all are mock events to “prove” the leader has 99% support, anyone who is a threat is put down and while there may be “opposition” candidates they are carefully selected / vetted so they are not a real threat and those who still vote for them are watched carefully as they are likely to be traiters to the state.
Riding your bike on the footpath.
Bad gin never deterred the inhabitants of Airstrip One and never will.
This article could interest you:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/05/05/vladimir-putin-vodka-empire-00095109
As for the OP: sausages, particularly dry cured and smoked. Because cancer, often colon cancer.
E-scooters.
An interesting question for the OP is whether they intended this thread to be
- What things will be banned on our way to a horrifying dystopia
or - What things will be banned on our way to a happy healthy egalitarian Star Trek future
or - Some other thing they’ll have to re-explain to us all.
Democrats? 
Helium is also used for industrial welding. I can’t believe, given its relative scarcity (not in terms of its universal abundance, but our ability to harvest or mine it) and its importance in medical and industrial applications, that we still use it to inflate and float balloons.
Less than two children, there are already panicky comments about decaying birth rates, once the “less than replacement” birth rates start to bite, I can see governments enforcing children quotas.
Gasoline engines will eventually be banned. It is already happening in some countries, e.g. Singapore. And way down the road (no pun intended), you’ll need a lot paperwork to justify the private ownership of even an electric car. Electric, self-driving cars will be the norm, not the exception, for safety and environmental reasons. To get somewhere, you will need to call for an autonomous car to pick you up.
unregulated social media. Social media succeeds if you get likes and views. You get likes and views by instilling fear, anger, confusion and righteous anger in people. So unregulated social media designed to keep people constantly angry and afraid will be banned. There will be regulations designed to prevent social media from becoming destructive and ensure its more productive to people. Social media itself will still exist, but it’ll be heavily regulated to prevent it from constantly instilling negative emotions in people.
Also the idea of leaving homeless people with severe trauma and mental illness to live on the streets will eventually go away and seem barbaric.
Eventually growing animals for food will be banned after lab grown meat is advanced enough.
Yeah, I partly agree. I don’t think they’ll require people to have kids, but I think they will have massive punishments for people who don’t have kids. Like less vacation time at work, higher taxes, etc.
Yea, an outright ban on having less children is probably too much, but brutal incentives? totally a possibility.