Register here: http://gg.gg/vcsnm
Sports betting has never been more visible in our society than it is today.
Major sports media outlets like ESPN and CBS have sections on their websites dedicated to coverage of gambling and handicapping. Al Michaels seems to allude to the point spread or over/under in almost any game he broadcasts, and recently-retired announcer Brent Musburger now heads up a sports betting information network based out of Vegas. And the Supreme Court is currently in the middle of hearing a case from the state of New Jersey, which could lead to sports betting becoming legal across the United States soon.
*In-game spending should be regulated by gambling laws and so-called loot boxes banned entirely for children, MPs say. The industry’s UK trade body responded it would ’review these recommendations.
*Online banking, online credit card applications, online shopping, online horse race betting and online pornography are all legally available in the US, but online gambling is a whole other story. Kids are going to flock to it and there is no way gambling sites can verify identities, ask for driver’s licenses, require banking information.
*Although a lot of people want gambling to be banned because according to them, the politicians will just make it as an excuse to get more money from taxes, other people want it to be legal because for them, the black market and illegal betting can be reduced. American gamblers will not need outside websites that earn more than their home country.
The most popular online poker sites are all based overseas, where online gambling is legal. This gave rise to the trade dispute between the U.S. And most of the rest of the western world. Gambling today in states where it’s legal is absolutely safe, fun, and of a high quality. The legality of it protects everyone and keeps the criminals occupied somewhere else. I’ll admit that there could be a number of other reasons why gambling should be legal, but I think these are 2 of the best.
Here’s the thing: It should have been legal a long time ago. With all forms of online gambling continuing to explode in popularity, it makes no sense that sports betting in particular is singled out as if it is an especially immoral activity.
Here are 7 reasons why it’s silly that sports betting isn’t legal.1. Everybody Does it Already
And I’m not even talking about March Madness brackets, NFL survivor pools, fantasy leagues, and Super Bowl squares, all of which are forms of sports betting as well.
According to a UMass Lowell-Washington post poll that was released in September 2017, approximately 20% of sports fans have placed a bet on a game. Meanwhile, the American Gaming Association claims that approximately $4.2 billion was wagered on Super Bowl XLIX between the Seahawks and Patriots, and that 97% of those wagers were placed illegally.
Listen, I understand the argument that just because everybody does something doesn’t mean it should be legal. If that were the case, we could all pirate movies and software to our heart’s content, or drive as fast as we want down the highway.
While downloading creative works without paying for them is stealing, and driving 100 miles per hour on the freeway puts everyone in danger, sports betting doesn’t hurt anybody (as long as it’s done responsibly and recreationally, at least). If governments are concerned about protecting gamblers from themselves, why do they allow casinos (where the house has an insurmountable mathematical edge on games like craps, roulette, blackjack, and slots) while prohibiting sports betting (where a player’s skill at least gives them a chance to win)?
If everyone’s already doing it and everyone wants to continue doing it, governments might as well legalize it and make it a safer past-time for everybody involved.2. It’s Already Legal in Certain States
New Jersey’s ongoing attempt to have the Supreme Court repeal PASPA (the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act) highlights the absurdity that sports betting is legal in Nevada, Delaware, Montana and Oregon, but prohibited everywhere else in the country.
Ironically, PASPA was first sponsored twenty-five years ago by a New Jersey senator (Bill Bradley), who was looking to stop the spread of sports betting across the country. The four states that currently offer sports betting (in some form or another, though Nevada is the only state that permits single-game sports wagering) were grandfathered into the act because of their past laws allowing it.
A lot of things have changed since PASPA was passed. Almost all states currently have lotteries, gambling in general is a lot more accepted in our culture, and the internet has enabled all of us to gamble without borders, making the Wire Act of 1961 (prohibiting gambling across state lines) obsolete as well.
The biggest issue with PASPA, however, is that it appears to be unconstitutional. According to lawyer Daniel Wallach, at least five Supreme Court justices have indicated they agree that PASPA, “Violates the 10th Amendment’s anti-commandeering principle, which forbids the federal government from commanding the states to implement federal laws or policies that would interfere with state sovereignty.”
Boiled down, it’s not fair that some states can offer legalized sports betting while others can’t.3. Sports Betting is a Game of Skill, Similar to DFS
Earlier this decade, when daily fantasy sports were first introduced into the mainstream, organizers had managed to find a loophole in anti-gambling laws. Since DFS was termed to be a “game of skill,” it wasn’t subjected to the same restrictions that sports betting faced under the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.
I can agree that DFS is a game of skill (in which the knowledge and expertise of a player gives them a better chance of winning, similar to poker), but that doesn’t mean it’s not gambling. And if DFS is allowed because it is a game of skill, then sports betting should be as well.
Sports betting is not the same as pulling the arm on a slot machine or buying a lottery scratch card. When you bet on sports, there are things that you can do to improve your chances of winning. Breaking down each team’s statistics and looking at recent performance to assess their probability of winning the next game is a skill. So is understanding odds, and so is knowing how to read the sports betting market in order to get the best possible number on your wager.
There’s still a lot of luck that goes into winning or losing a sports bet, but you can say the same thing about DFS, where an injury to a key player or a flukey interception can win or lose you your contest. If DFS is permitted in most states because it is a game of skill, sports betting should be treated no differently.4. Betting is a Big Reason People Watch Sports
Sports are the toy department of life. They’re a vice, a diversion, a way for us to escape our jobs, our stresses, and our problems for a few hours. Otherwise, investing all of this time and emotion into supporting guys we don’t know scoring more points than other guys that we don’t know doesn’t really make that much sense.
Betting on games actually makes more people watch more sports. According to the American Gaming Association, people who bet on NFL games watch 19 more games per season than people who don’t bet. And not only is watching sports a healthy past-time in my opinion, it also boosts the ratings of the TV providers, which boosts advertising revenue, which boosts the economy.
Okay, so maybe I’m getting a little bit carried away here on this point. But if we’re going to invest time and emotion into watching sports, why not get everything out of it that we can? If our favorite teams or players aren’t playing tonight, let us have some other reason to watch the games. If point spreads and over/unders didn’t exist, I can’t see many people staying tuned in for a Patriots/Browns blowout in the fourth quarter.5. Game Fixing Isn’t Going to Happen
The biggest reason that professional and college leagues oppose sports betting (publicly, at least, which is a point I’ll get into next) is the concern about game fixing.
Seriously? Maybe in 1970, when the average salary of a baseball player was around $30,000 per year. But now that even the most marginal of professional athletes is making close to 7 figures, I don’t see many taking a phone call from Fat Tony and agreeing to throw a game.
College is a different scenario in that respect, since the athletes don’t get paid (though I’d still sign up for a full ride scholarship), but that’s all the more reason to legalize sports betting. Having regulation in place brings sports betting out of the shadows and into the sunlight, providing a transparency that would make it easier for authorities to identify and investigate suspicious betting patterns.
You don’t hear much about match fixing in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia, jurisdictions where sports betting is legalized, regulated, and monitored closely. Meanwhile, over the past fifteen years in the United States, we’ve seen Toledo university football players admit to point shaving, and former NBA referee Tim Donaghy plead guilty to allegations that he manipulated the point spread outcomes of games through his calls.6. Leagues Want Legalized Sports Betting
The National Football League can pretend all it wants that it’s against gambling. We all know what the injury report is for, and why the NFL monitors teams’ adherence to it so closely. Let’s just say it’s not so that Tom Brady’s aunt knows if her nephew has a boo-boo.
I do believe there was a time when other sports leagues were genuine in their anti-sports betting stance, but that time is now over. Leading the charge is the NBA, with former commissioner David Stern and current commissioner Adam Silver both recently going on record with their pro-betting regulation views.
“Let’s go all the way and have betting on sports. It’s okay. It’s going to be properly regulated… that gives a way for states to make more money, for leagues to be compensated for their intellectual property and for the federal government to take (away) illegally bet money and put it through the federal coffers,” Stern said in a public statement in 2015.
Silver went one step further by writing a column for the New York Times, concluding it by saying, “I believe that sports betting should be brought out of the underground and into the sunlight where it can be appropriately monitored and regulated.”
The NHL granted an expansion team in 2017-18 to Las Vegas, where it has held its annual end-of-season awards show for years. The NFL’s Oakland Raiders will be moving to Vegas as early as 2019. Major League Baseball maintains that they’re anti-gambling, yet have partnered with DFS sites in the past.
Let’s drop the charade. Sports leagues know it’s in their best interest to have regulated and legalized betting on their games. Their only hesitation is that they haven’t yet figured out the best way to capitalize financially on it themselves.7. Regulation Would Generate Lots of Tax Dollars
Nevada was one of the states hit hardest by the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008, when many people suddenly found their home worth significantly less than the amount they still owed on their mortgage. But residents of the state might have been much worse off had the Nevada government not been benefiting from sports betting-related income for decades.
Even though Nevada charges its casinos just 6.75% tax on gross gaming win (the total profit after paying customers’ winnings), gambling continues to line the pockets of the Silver State. According to a Nevada Resort Association estimate, gaming revenue collected by the tourism and hospitality industries accounted for about 46% of the state’s general fund in 2010.
Other states have already turned to lotteries and casinos as a way to raise money for education, public safety, transportation, and other needs of their residents. But by keeping sports betting illegal, they’re missing out on a massive cash cow.
According to Forbes contributor Darren Heitner, the legalization of sports betting across the United States could generate more than $6 billion annually in tax revenues by the year 2023. The states would need to sell an awful lot of scratch tickets to come up with that sort of revenue.
If we learned anything in the United States from prohibition, it was that making something illegal doesn’t stop it from happening (and usually makes it worse). The history of gambling in the US is surely interesting and it’s something we still have to fight for til this day.
I think that when it comes to so-called “vices” in society, there’s always going to be someone arguing against them from a moral standpoint. That’s exactly what we saw in the 1930s in the days of prohibition. Huge numbers of people who argued against the legal sale of alcohol were primarily church goers who argued almost solely from a position of morality.The argument can make sense on the surface. Some people have problems with alcohol. Some people abuse it.
When they abuse it (or become full alcoholics), they can be violent and a drain on society.
So if we outlaw it, people will stop drinking! People who might have become alcoholics will be safe and protected from this evil scourge. Society as a whole will benefit.
This leaves out all the positive benefits of alcohol of course and assumes that the role of government is to protect people from themselves and restrict their freedoms, but honestly, that’s a bit beside the point here.
Here’s the real point—did it work? And would it work for gambling?
If you know anything about prohibition, you know that it didn’t.
First of all, we can thank prohibition for organized crime in this country. Sure, there was organized crime before to a degree, but they really struggled for funding. When alcohol, which was and is hugely profitable and popular, was suddenly made illegal, the demand didn’t disappear. If anything, it got worse.
There was profit to be made, but all legal alcohol producers were out of business. Some entrepreneurial criminals (who were already committing crimes anyway) say “Gee, we should sell this stuff! Beats the heck out of beating people up for money and robbing banks.”
And they did. And they made an enormous amount of money.
Drinking didn’t stop. During prohibition, it’s estimated that upwards of 90% of all sitting U.S. senators continued to drink.
Were these men alcoholics? Certainly a handful may have been, but the vast majority were normal people like you and me.
They enjoyed their drinking, and they didn’t like being told what to do. That’s pretty much how you could describe the entire country.
You can apply the same line of thinking to any type of problem you name that’s been made illegal. Making gambling illegal will absolutely not stop gambling.
Hollywood casino amphitheatre st louis parking tips. Instead, it will drive gambling underground.
And that’s where we start to run into problems.1- People Are Going to Gamble Whether It’s Legal or Not
Just like people were going to drink during prohibition despite it being illegal, people are going to gamble no matter what.
I think where people get really tripped up on this issue is that, in their eyes (the prohibitionists), gambling is basically evil (obviously it’s not). But let’s look through their eyes. They see gambling as a sin, and they often see it on the same level as murder or theft. It’s wrong no matter how they look at it.
But for the average person, this is obviously flawed thinking. Murder and theft are crimes that have direct victims. It is impossible for me to steal something without there being a victim.
The same is not the case with gambling or drinking.
Now those who think it should be outlawed will argue that there are victims, that when someone gambles all their money away (which happens extremely rarely), that their families or friends are harmed. I certainly don’t deny that.
The difference is that those victims are not happening in every case. In fact, people become victims so rarely that you have to wonder if it’s really the gambling or alcohol that’s responsible at all. Something like 2.6% of people in the U.S. have a problem gambling. That means that over 97% of people who gamble do so just fine, without creating victims.
So these people think that because victims are marginally possible that the practice should be outlawed completely? That’s way different than theft or murder, which produces a victim in every case.
By that line of thinking, cars should be illegal. Most people don’t know someone who has a problem gambling (because it’s so rare), but almost everyone knows someone who has had their life changed because of a car wreck.Do we outlaw cars? No. That would be silly. Cars have benefits and drawbacks. So does gambling.
Then they might say, “Well cars serve a purpose! Gambling doesn’t. It’s just a bunch of games.” First of all, I would argue that games serve a hugely positive purpose in society, but let’s lay that aside for a moment. By this line of thinking, all sports should be illegal. Soccer can be dangerous. People drink too much at games. Sometimes there’s even stampedes.
Yet where are the advocates to shut down soccer entirely? They’re hard to find.
Gambling is absolutely a victimless crime. The people who are committing crimes who happen to also gamble are the ones responsible for the problems, not the gambling. If you take away the gambling, they’ll find some outlet for their problems.
So because gambling is a victimless act (just like drinking), people aren’t going to view it the same as theft or murder. They’re going to partake anyway because they just don’t feel bad about it (and they shouldn’t!).
Almost all adults can drink alcohol just fine and act responsibly. The same is true for gambling. Alcohol and gambling are not directly responsible for issues that problem gamblers or problem drinkers cause—the problem gamblers and problem drinkers are the problem.2- Legalized Gambling Eliminates the Criminal Element (And Reduces It in Other Ways)Why Online Gaming Should Be Banned
When prohibition took place back in the 1930s, alcohol began being created and distributed by criminals. No business could get away with it, and any that tried would have to have a large operation that would almost certainly get found out.
So what happened is that most alcohol was being produced by small numbers of people who had deep levels of trust with each other (or who operated completely alone). Their goal was to make money, and they did.
They weren’t exactly worried about health standards.
This led to a number of problems. When alcohol was legal, there were standards and rules as to how it was made. If a business was selling alcohol that was low quality or actually poisoning people, they’d quickly go out of business, so that became rare. In fact, the best way to make money was to produce high quality alcohol, so suppliers employed people who had a great deal o
https://diarynote.indered.space
Sports betting has never been more visible in our society than it is today.
Major sports media outlets like ESPN and CBS have sections on their websites dedicated to coverage of gambling and handicapping. Al Michaels seems to allude to the point spread or over/under in almost any game he broadcasts, and recently-retired announcer Brent Musburger now heads up a sports betting information network based out of Vegas. And the Supreme Court is currently in the middle of hearing a case from the state of New Jersey, which could lead to sports betting becoming legal across the United States soon.
*In-game spending should be regulated by gambling laws and so-called loot boxes banned entirely for children, MPs say. The industry’s UK trade body responded it would ’review these recommendations.
*Online banking, online credit card applications, online shopping, online horse race betting and online pornography are all legally available in the US, but online gambling is a whole other story. Kids are going to flock to it and there is no way gambling sites can verify identities, ask for driver’s licenses, require banking information.
*Although a lot of people want gambling to be banned because according to them, the politicians will just make it as an excuse to get more money from taxes, other people want it to be legal because for them, the black market and illegal betting can be reduced. American gamblers will not need outside websites that earn more than their home country.
The most popular online poker sites are all based overseas, where online gambling is legal. This gave rise to the trade dispute between the U.S. And most of the rest of the western world. Gambling today in states where it’s legal is absolutely safe, fun, and of a high quality. The legality of it protects everyone and keeps the criminals occupied somewhere else. I’ll admit that there could be a number of other reasons why gambling should be legal, but I think these are 2 of the best.
Here’s the thing: It should have been legal a long time ago. With all forms of online gambling continuing to explode in popularity, it makes no sense that sports betting in particular is singled out as if it is an especially immoral activity.
Here are 7 reasons why it’s silly that sports betting isn’t legal.1. Everybody Does it Already
And I’m not even talking about March Madness brackets, NFL survivor pools, fantasy leagues, and Super Bowl squares, all of which are forms of sports betting as well.
According to a UMass Lowell-Washington post poll that was released in September 2017, approximately 20% of sports fans have placed a bet on a game. Meanwhile, the American Gaming Association claims that approximately $4.2 billion was wagered on Super Bowl XLIX between the Seahawks and Patriots, and that 97% of those wagers were placed illegally.
Listen, I understand the argument that just because everybody does something doesn’t mean it should be legal. If that were the case, we could all pirate movies and software to our heart’s content, or drive as fast as we want down the highway.
While downloading creative works without paying for them is stealing, and driving 100 miles per hour on the freeway puts everyone in danger, sports betting doesn’t hurt anybody (as long as it’s done responsibly and recreationally, at least). If governments are concerned about protecting gamblers from themselves, why do they allow casinos (where the house has an insurmountable mathematical edge on games like craps, roulette, blackjack, and slots) while prohibiting sports betting (where a player’s skill at least gives them a chance to win)?
If everyone’s already doing it and everyone wants to continue doing it, governments might as well legalize it and make it a safer past-time for everybody involved.2. It’s Already Legal in Certain States
New Jersey’s ongoing attempt to have the Supreme Court repeal PASPA (the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act) highlights the absurdity that sports betting is legal in Nevada, Delaware, Montana and Oregon, but prohibited everywhere else in the country.
Ironically, PASPA was first sponsored twenty-five years ago by a New Jersey senator (Bill Bradley), who was looking to stop the spread of sports betting across the country. The four states that currently offer sports betting (in some form or another, though Nevada is the only state that permits single-game sports wagering) were grandfathered into the act because of their past laws allowing it.
A lot of things have changed since PASPA was passed. Almost all states currently have lotteries, gambling in general is a lot more accepted in our culture, and the internet has enabled all of us to gamble without borders, making the Wire Act of 1961 (prohibiting gambling across state lines) obsolete as well.
The biggest issue with PASPA, however, is that it appears to be unconstitutional. According to lawyer Daniel Wallach, at least five Supreme Court justices have indicated they agree that PASPA, “Violates the 10th Amendment’s anti-commandeering principle, which forbids the federal government from commanding the states to implement federal laws or policies that would interfere with state sovereignty.”
Boiled down, it’s not fair that some states can offer legalized sports betting while others can’t.3. Sports Betting is a Game of Skill, Similar to DFS
Earlier this decade, when daily fantasy sports were first introduced into the mainstream, organizers had managed to find a loophole in anti-gambling laws. Since DFS was termed to be a “game of skill,” it wasn’t subjected to the same restrictions that sports betting faced under the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.
I can agree that DFS is a game of skill (in which the knowledge and expertise of a player gives them a better chance of winning, similar to poker), but that doesn’t mean it’s not gambling. And if DFS is allowed because it is a game of skill, then sports betting should be as well.
Sports betting is not the same as pulling the arm on a slot machine or buying a lottery scratch card. When you bet on sports, there are things that you can do to improve your chances of winning. Breaking down each team’s statistics and looking at recent performance to assess their probability of winning the next game is a skill. So is understanding odds, and so is knowing how to read the sports betting market in order to get the best possible number on your wager.
There’s still a lot of luck that goes into winning or losing a sports bet, but you can say the same thing about DFS, where an injury to a key player or a flukey interception can win or lose you your contest. If DFS is permitted in most states because it is a game of skill, sports betting should be treated no differently.4. Betting is a Big Reason People Watch Sports
Sports are the toy department of life. They’re a vice, a diversion, a way for us to escape our jobs, our stresses, and our problems for a few hours. Otherwise, investing all of this time and emotion into supporting guys we don’t know scoring more points than other guys that we don’t know doesn’t really make that much sense.
Betting on games actually makes more people watch more sports. According to the American Gaming Association, people who bet on NFL games watch 19 more games per season than people who don’t bet. And not only is watching sports a healthy past-time in my opinion, it also boosts the ratings of the TV providers, which boosts advertising revenue, which boosts the economy.
Okay, so maybe I’m getting a little bit carried away here on this point. But if we’re going to invest time and emotion into watching sports, why not get everything out of it that we can? If our favorite teams or players aren’t playing tonight, let us have some other reason to watch the games. If point spreads and over/unders didn’t exist, I can’t see many people staying tuned in for a Patriots/Browns blowout in the fourth quarter.5. Game Fixing Isn’t Going to Happen
The biggest reason that professional and college leagues oppose sports betting (publicly, at least, which is a point I’ll get into next) is the concern about game fixing.
Seriously? Maybe in 1970, when the average salary of a baseball player was around $30,000 per year. But now that even the most marginal of professional athletes is making close to 7 figures, I don’t see many taking a phone call from Fat Tony and agreeing to throw a game.
College is a different scenario in that respect, since the athletes don’t get paid (though I’d still sign up for a full ride scholarship), but that’s all the more reason to legalize sports betting. Having regulation in place brings sports betting out of the shadows and into the sunlight, providing a transparency that would make it easier for authorities to identify and investigate suspicious betting patterns.
You don’t hear much about match fixing in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia, jurisdictions where sports betting is legalized, regulated, and monitored closely. Meanwhile, over the past fifteen years in the United States, we’ve seen Toledo university football players admit to point shaving, and former NBA referee Tim Donaghy plead guilty to allegations that he manipulated the point spread outcomes of games through his calls.6. Leagues Want Legalized Sports Betting
The National Football League can pretend all it wants that it’s against gambling. We all know what the injury report is for, and why the NFL monitors teams’ adherence to it so closely. Let’s just say it’s not so that Tom Brady’s aunt knows if her nephew has a boo-boo.
I do believe there was a time when other sports leagues were genuine in their anti-sports betting stance, but that time is now over. Leading the charge is the NBA, with former commissioner David Stern and current commissioner Adam Silver both recently going on record with their pro-betting regulation views.
“Let’s go all the way and have betting on sports. It’s okay. It’s going to be properly regulated… that gives a way for states to make more money, for leagues to be compensated for their intellectual property and for the federal government to take (away) illegally bet money and put it through the federal coffers,” Stern said in a public statement in 2015.
Silver went one step further by writing a column for the New York Times, concluding it by saying, “I believe that sports betting should be brought out of the underground and into the sunlight where it can be appropriately monitored and regulated.”
The NHL granted an expansion team in 2017-18 to Las Vegas, where it has held its annual end-of-season awards show for years. The NFL’s Oakland Raiders will be moving to Vegas as early as 2019. Major League Baseball maintains that they’re anti-gambling, yet have partnered with DFS sites in the past.
Let’s drop the charade. Sports leagues know it’s in their best interest to have regulated and legalized betting on their games. Their only hesitation is that they haven’t yet figured out the best way to capitalize financially on it themselves.7. Regulation Would Generate Lots of Tax Dollars
Nevada was one of the states hit hardest by the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008, when many people suddenly found their home worth significantly less than the amount they still owed on their mortgage. But residents of the state might have been much worse off had the Nevada government not been benefiting from sports betting-related income for decades.
Even though Nevada charges its casinos just 6.75% tax on gross gaming win (the total profit after paying customers’ winnings), gambling continues to line the pockets of the Silver State. According to a Nevada Resort Association estimate, gaming revenue collected by the tourism and hospitality industries accounted for about 46% of the state’s general fund in 2010.
Other states have already turned to lotteries and casinos as a way to raise money for education, public safety, transportation, and other needs of their residents. But by keeping sports betting illegal, they’re missing out on a massive cash cow.
According to Forbes contributor Darren Heitner, the legalization of sports betting across the United States could generate more than $6 billion annually in tax revenues by the year 2023. The states would need to sell an awful lot of scratch tickets to come up with that sort of revenue.
If we learned anything in the United States from prohibition, it was that making something illegal doesn’t stop it from happening (and usually makes it worse). The history of gambling in the US is surely interesting and it’s something we still have to fight for til this day.
I think that when it comes to so-called “vices” in society, there’s always going to be someone arguing against them from a moral standpoint. That’s exactly what we saw in the 1930s in the days of prohibition. Huge numbers of people who argued against the legal sale of alcohol were primarily church goers who argued almost solely from a position of morality.The argument can make sense on the surface. Some people have problems with alcohol. Some people abuse it.
When they abuse it (or become full alcoholics), they can be violent and a drain on society.
So if we outlaw it, people will stop drinking! People who might have become alcoholics will be safe and protected from this evil scourge. Society as a whole will benefit.
This leaves out all the positive benefits of alcohol of course and assumes that the role of government is to protect people from themselves and restrict their freedoms, but honestly, that’s a bit beside the point here.
Here’s the real point—did it work? And would it work for gambling?
If you know anything about prohibition, you know that it didn’t.
First of all, we can thank prohibition for organized crime in this country. Sure, there was organized crime before to a degree, but they really struggled for funding. When alcohol, which was and is hugely profitable and popular, was suddenly made illegal, the demand didn’t disappear. If anything, it got worse.
There was profit to be made, but all legal alcohol producers were out of business. Some entrepreneurial criminals (who were already committing crimes anyway) say “Gee, we should sell this stuff! Beats the heck out of beating people up for money and robbing banks.”
And they did. And they made an enormous amount of money.
Drinking didn’t stop. During prohibition, it’s estimated that upwards of 90% of all sitting U.S. senators continued to drink.
Were these men alcoholics? Certainly a handful may have been, but the vast majority were normal people like you and me.
They enjoyed their drinking, and they didn’t like being told what to do. That’s pretty much how you could describe the entire country.
You can apply the same line of thinking to any type of problem you name that’s been made illegal. Making gambling illegal will absolutely not stop gambling.
Hollywood casino amphitheatre st louis parking tips. Instead, it will drive gambling underground.
And that’s where we start to run into problems.1- People Are Going to Gamble Whether It’s Legal or Not
Just like people were going to drink during prohibition despite it being illegal, people are going to gamble no matter what.
I think where people get really tripped up on this issue is that, in their eyes (the prohibitionists), gambling is basically evil (obviously it’s not). But let’s look through their eyes. They see gambling as a sin, and they often see it on the same level as murder or theft. It’s wrong no matter how they look at it.
But for the average person, this is obviously flawed thinking. Murder and theft are crimes that have direct victims. It is impossible for me to steal something without there being a victim.
The same is not the case with gambling or drinking.
Now those who think it should be outlawed will argue that there are victims, that when someone gambles all their money away (which happens extremely rarely), that their families or friends are harmed. I certainly don’t deny that.
The difference is that those victims are not happening in every case. In fact, people become victims so rarely that you have to wonder if it’s really the gambling or alcohol that’s responsible at all. Something like 2.6% of people in the U.S. have a problem gambling. That means that over 97% of people who gamble do so just fine, without creating victims.
So these people think that because victims are marginally possible that the practice should be outlawed completely? That’s way different than theft or murder, which produces a victim in every case.
By that line of thinking, cars should be illegal. Most people don’t know someone who has a problem gambling (because it’s so rare), but almost everyone knows someone who has had their life changed because of a car wreck.Do we outlaw cars? No. That would be silly. Cars have benefits and drawbacks. So does gambling.
Then they might say, “Well cars serve a purpose! Gambling doesn’t. It’s just a bunch of games.” First of all, I would argue that games serve a hugely positive purpose in society, but let’s lay that aside for a moment. By this line of thinking, all sports should be illegal. Soccer can be dangerous. People drink too much at games. Sometimes there’s even stampedes.
Yet where are the advocates to shut down soccer entirely? They’re hard to find.
Gambling is absolutely a victimless crime. The people who are committing crimes who happen to also gamble are the ones responsible for the problems, not the gambling. If you take away the gambling, they’ll find some outlet for their problems.
So because gambling is a victimless act (just like drinking), people aren’t going to view it the same as theft or murder. They’re going to partake anyway because they just don’t feel bad about it (and they shouldn’t!).
Almost all adults can drink alcohol just fine and act responsibly. The same is true for gambling. Alcohol and gambling are not directly responsible for issues that problem gamblers or problem drinkers cause—the problem gamblers and problem drinkers are the problem.2- Legalized Gambling Eliminates the Criminal Element (And Reduces It in Other Ways)Why Online Gaming Should Be Banned
When prohibition took place back in the 1930s, alcohol began being created and distributed by criminals. No business could get away with it, and any that tried would have to have a large operation that would almost certainly get found out.
So what happened is that most alcohol was being produced by small numbers of people who had deep levels of trust with each other (or who operated completely alone). Their goal was to make money, and they did.
They weren’t exactly worried about health standards.
This led to a number of problems. When alcohol was legal, there were standards and rules as to how it was made. If a business was selling alcohol that was low quality or actually poisoning people, they’d quickly go out of business, so that became rare. In fact, the best way to make money was to produce high quality alcohol, so suppliers employed people who had a great deal o
https://diarynote.indered.space
コメント