Home

Voluntary Self-Exclusion From Harmful Purchases

Published 2026-11-08

Tie me to the mast if I ask for it; untie me if I do the work.

Stopping People From Doing "Bad" Things

The National Voluntary Self-Exclusion program is "a free way to stop gaming [gambling] across many different websites and casinos": you sign a form, prove your identity, and submit. It's basically the ability to voluntarily say “please prevent me from gambling in the future”. No matter how the casinos design their labyrinths of addiction and hell and depravity or the morally-corrupt companies program their slot machines or app algorithms, the self-excluded cannot bypass this. (In reality they can; not every gambling option is included and ID checks aren't ubiquitous and can easily be ducked, but at least the friction and risks are still there.)

Voluntary self-exclusion is a beautiful mechanism and there should be more options available to help people improve their lives when self-control and willpower aren't necessarily available or reliable.

The exclusion can be set at many levels:

Identification: Person with ID number X is excluded from purchasing Y, as determined by the business scanning the ID card before qualifying purchases. For example, Evan is an alcoholic who excluded himself from buying alcohol on his path to sobriety. When the liquor store scans his ID, they see that he's over 21 but on the exclusion list, so they deny the sale. A form of this already exists in Australia's Northern Territory for purchasing alcohol.
Credit/debit card: Card number X is not allowed to purchase Y. Any new cards ordered would come with the same restrictions, so in effect this would be a narrower version of the ID level. This is, of course, easy to bypass by using cash or a friend, which is why the ID level is more robust.

And can cover many things:

Time period/spending cap: I don’t want to spend more than $X in Y period. This would be set up at the card company level.
Merchant type: Merchants are categorized (ISO 18245) by what they sell. Companies could standardize and granularize these types further, then allow the user to self-exclude at the card level for types of purchases. The UK's Monzo bank can block gambling transactions based on the merchant code.
SKU: Certain SKUs could be labeled as age-restricted, prompting the ID check. Additional labels could be added and trigger ID checks, or at least look at who the card is associated to. The GS1 Global Product Classification provides a taxonomy for labeling certain products—if each SKU had some associated GS1 GPC attributes that were public knowledge, then users could self-exclude from said attributes, e.g., "I'm addicted to chocolate, so stop me from buying anything with attribute 30016987 [Chocolate/Sugar Combination - Milk / Cocoa Cream]".

Alternatively, those wary of complete exclusion may elect to be financially penalized for qualifying purchases. The penalty takes place at purchase and can be directed to the charity of their choice or just go straight to the government as an additional tax. For example, Travis may now pay $100 for a case of beer that's normally $20, with the additional $80 going towards helping wannabe internet writers implement their societal system ideas that would make the world a better place but create weird, perverse, difficult-to-detect incentives that only reveal themselves after some time of being in use.

How Signing Up Would Work

The process for signing up is pretty much identical to NVSEP's:

Candidate goes to the relevant authority and requests an application.
- For age-limited items, it's the government. For non-age-limited items, it's their bank or credit card company.
- For basic or low-cost items, it can be done online with some ID checks. For serious or high-cost items, it must be done in person to confirm the person's willingness.
Candidate fills out form with conditions of exclusion. Is it always or sometimes? Any exceptions? What are the exit requirements?
The authority adds them to the relevant database.
Done! The candidate will now get rejected when trying to purchase said item or category of item.

To get the ban lifted, they must satisfy the exit conditions they specified during the initial sign-up.

Concerns

Being Pressured to Exclude

Addicts are often pressured to get help for their issue. Family members may do the same here by pressuring an alcoholic to self-exclude from purchasing alcohol. It should ultimately be up to the individual if they want to exclude themselves, requiring a robust method of initial election ("I want to add myself to this list and nobody is forcing me to") and ongoing election ("I want to stay on this list and nobody is forcing me to"), the latter of which would be defaulted to a "keep me on the list unless I explicitly choose otherwise".

When signing up, there will be certain protections—a private interview, a delay period—for the user to ensure they aren't pressured into anything.

The Difficulty of Getting Out

Getting in should be accessible for those who want to get in; getting out should be as difficult as the person wants it to be when initially signing up. We all live with the consequences of our actions, but we also change with experiences and a problem now may not be a problem later. Or our future selves may really want to get out later but be happy our past selves made it difficult. Or they may be really upset when they want to buy that pretty girl at the bar a drink but have to settle for a mocktail because they can't buy alcohol. Choose your exit conditions wisely!

Take the scenario where a drunk Josh says “bro it’d be so funny if I could never buy a banana again” at 3:00am after a long night out with his friends, only to realize in horror that, in fact, that wasn’t very funny and now getting out is incredibly difficult. This risk can be mitigated by pre-defining the severity levels of each type of exclusion and requiring in-person attendance where they check for sanity and sobriety.

That said, plenty of other, arguably more harmful, actions exist in the world that don't check for sobriety or sanity. I can buy the dumbest financial options known to man or something ridiculous at an auction without anyone batting an eye or checking if I'm in a good state of mind. A similar expectation can be set here.

Privacy

Being exposed as on one of these lists has potential negative consequences socially and/or professionally, so privacy must be taken seriously. The lists will be held by the authority, not the merchants themselves. Users may make changes through a website portal (keep in mind exiting still requires satisfying the initial agreed-upon requirements).

The store clerk cannot see the reason why the sale was rejected; instead, it will simply say "Sale rejected" and not allow the purchase to go through.

Qualifying Purchases

Here's a non-exhaustive list of potential purchases and categories:

Drugs: Alcohol, nicotine, marijuana. Sadly I don't think a lot of (hard) drug dealers would be willing to abide by this idea!
Pornography (yes, I know some states already have a ban on under-18 users viewing certain sites and that arguably causes harm by sending potential users to more harmful sites)
Gambling: Adding new money to betting websites; being allowed into casinos; purchasing lottery tickets; video game loot boxes
Food and drink: Unhealthy foods. What if foods' SKUs had associated nutrition info and the block was at the macronutrient level? Users could be stopped from buying unhealthy foods, e.g., if saturated fat is greater than X g, do not allow the purchase.
Firearms
Payday loans and buy-now-pay-later plans: Predatory loans can create a vicious cycle of getting money now, making very high interest payments, then having to borrow again. Preventing users from signing up will either force them to figure out their money issues or send them to even more predatory options, which may be an unintended side effect.
Options trading: In the same way that firms require users to apply for approval to trade options, they could set up a simple "not allowed to trade options" mechanism governed by the SEC.