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Posted on 05/12/2010 5:15:38 AM PDT by Kaslin
Some of us like to gamble. Americans bet a hundred million dollars every day, and that's just at legal places like Las Vegas and Indian reservations. Much more is bet illegally.
So authorities crack down. They raided a VFW branch that ran a poker game for charity. They ban lotteries, political futures markets and sports betting. They raid truck stops to confiscate video poker machines. Why?
On my Fox Business News show tomorrow night, Chad Hills of Focus on the Family (www.focusonthefamily.com/) says: "These machines have been shown to be extremely addictive. That's a huge concern, primarily for kids, because it's hard to keep them away."
Well, I certainly agree kids shouldn't gamble, and some people do wreck their lives. But why can't adults be left to do what we want to do?
Hills and Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., both eager to ban gambling, talk about "addiction" leading to bankruptcy, crime and suicide.
I'm skeptical. People are responsible for the consequences of their bad habits. I thought Focus on the Family and conservatives like Kyl believed in self-responsibility.
On my show, professional poker player Andy Bloch points out that, legal or not, gambling already goes on everywhere. Prohibition doesn't rid society of an activity. It drives it underground, where it's less visible and less subject to respectable social conventions.
As for people getting into trouble, Bloch noted that after online gaming was legalized in the United Kingdom, "they found that there was no significant increase in the number of problem gamblers."
Hills, on the other hand, claims that a 2006 anti-Internet gaming law reduced gambling. "People say this drives gambling underground," he added. "I'm like, good, drive it underground."
I point out that people still find the gambling sites.
"But it makes it extremely difficult. You have to be fairly desperate to do it."
I doubt that anyone who wants to gamble illegally has trouble doing it. And let's not forget the official corruption that black markets encourage. Law-enforcement people take bribes to look the other way. It's an old story.
Hills claims that the 1999 National Gambling Impact Study concluded that 15 million Americans are problem and pathological gamblers. But like many people who want to ban things, he distorts the data. The study's 15 million "problem gamblers" included people who might get in trouble.
"Ninety-nine percent of the American public has no problem with gambling," Bloch says. "They should have the freedom to gamble if they want to gamble online. There is no casino that is being forced into people's homes."
By the way, Hills said he'd oppose legal gambling even if it weren't associated with wrecked lives. Why? "Gambling is the art and the science of deception that feeds on the exploitation of human weakness for the sole purpose of monetary gain."
To that, I say, so what? Will they ban the stock market next? Filmmaking is the art and science of deception. Poker is just a game where deception and bluffing are the skills.
For self-responsible adults, gambling can be fun and harmless. A free country is supposed to treats adults as though we are self-responsible. Government should let us learn from our mistakes rather than treat us like children.
Despicably, while government outlaws private gambling (at least that which competes with the well-connected casino interests), it runs its own gambling operations: state lotteries. And what a scam they are! States offer terrible odds. The evil casinos take about 1.4 percent of each bet at the craps table. State lotteries take 50 percent of each bet. Compounding the damage, states spend tax money to promote their lotteries to the poor, who are led to believe that the lottery, rather than hard work, is the route to becoming millionaires. Rich people buy few tickets.
So governments push their own inferior games while outlawing better ones run by private business. That's insane. People gamble anyway, criminals get involved, and by forcing Internet gambling offshore, America loses a $12 billion industry.
In "On Liberty," John Stuart Mill wrote, "Over himself and over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign."
Sovereign. Hear that, busybody politicians?
Concur—the only reason gambling is demonized per se is that it interferes with the government cash cow that is the lottery.
” is that it interferes with the government cash cow that is the lottery. “
Ummmmm...
Sorry - gambling, with a few exceptions, was demonized and legislated against long before State Lotteries were even thought of....
That and organized crime’s strong desire to keep their monopoly.
There is still organized crime in Britain but it isn’t from bookmaking. Betting shops are some of the cleanest, most inviting and well-run businesses in London. Odds on everything from sports to politics are on offer and have a much greater rate of accuracy than polls from left-leaning media outlets. Perhaps the media don’t want the competition either!
Tilting at these social windmills will only lead the GOP down another blind alley. I well remember 2006, when the Republican congressional leadership rammed through a ban on internet poker instead of using their political capital on things that actually mattered.
A lot of conservatives pay lip service to getting government out of people’s lives, until it comes to some pet social issue. Don’t like gambling? Then don’t gamble. Nobody’s forcing you to. But whether someone else gambles is not your decision to make—or at least shouldn’t be.
Entertainment, fine. Spend all the cash you can show up with and then answer to your wife why there is no money for groceries. But the ruination of innocent families, using the power of the state to enforce such debts is beyond the pale. IMHO.
Per my recommendation for making gambling debts unenforceable, I am getting the government out of people's lives, except to the extent that organized crime trying to collect gambling debts constitute a quasi government power that should also be gotten out of people's lives.
Local, state and federal governments have no credibility anymore when it comes to enforcing gambling. They play with other peoples money and throw it away like a bunch of gambling addicts playing proposition bets at a no limits craps table.
So-called conservatives like Hill and Kyl are no different that thunder thighs telling us what to eat.
I honestly thought this was going to be an article about day-trading or market timing with the stock market. Not much difference.
ALOT of people were mad about the repubs trying to ban online gaming. I think it’s one of the reasons they lost their majority. This is a losing issue for the GOP. I hope they learned their leason last time.
Never voting for any RINO anymore.
I support internet gaming, it lightens the burdens of shut-ins and the elderly. License internet casinos, let Vegas franchise them.
No, John. A country which preaches libertarian do whatever you want morality is soon not free. Never notice a connection between our current Zero Tolerance society and what was preached doing the 1960s, John?
Clubs like the VFW, etc. used private gambling machines to keep afloat and give away charity from proceeds (most private clubs are non-profit)....once the machines go away that money plus related club revenue falls - charity donations plummet with the once charity recipient now begging the government/taxpayer for money.
Charity donation recipients were Police, Fire Departments, School Departments, Shelters, Food Pantries, etc. Now they all need to go to the tax payer for funding incidentals like flak jackets and food.
I may have missed the sarcasm in your post if there was any, but it seems to me that a legitimate government function would be to intervene when gambling debts go unpaid. Why should gambling debts be unenforceable? If someone borrows money to gamble, and they lose it all, that’s a matter for contract law and the courts to resolve if the debtor is unable or refuses to pay. And in this case, the government only gets involved because one party to the contract has violated its terms and the courts have been asked to intervene.
Making gambling debts unenforceable would actually be a case of the government getting involved where it doesn’t need to, since laws would have to be drafted specifically to say that such debts are unenforceable, and this would also de facto end most financing of gambling activities, which could be construed as the government flexing its legislative muscle to outlaw, essentially, something it doesn’t like.
Government gets involved in debt collection precisely to prevent abuse by private debt collection. Better to face jail and a sheriff’s auction than a leg-breaker.
Why should they leave the gamblers, cakeaters or mouthbreathers alone?
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