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What do you think about gambling? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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Could be in any context. I do it a little on UFC fights but that's a relatively low amount and I can afford I to lose any time I do. It seems like it's becoming a really wide spread problem though, at least in the US. At the same time I don't see why it should be illegal. Granted I also don't think any drug should be illegal.

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[–] Almacca@aussie.zone 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

John Ralston Saul's The Doubter's Companion - The Dictionary Of Aggressive Common Sense sums it up pretty well:

GAMBLING, STATE - RUN When governments raise money by acting as croupiers, the systems they manage are degenerate and are closer to their end than to their beginning.

The Burmese, for example, could always tell when a dynasty was close to falling; it would set up a state lottery. Early in the 1970s, Western governments turned to licensed gambling to provide the funds which TAXATION no longer seemed able to raise. This initiative has been blamed on many specifics: the financial crisis, tax reform which drastically reduced the contribution of the large corporations, the cost of social programs. The combined result was a lack of money which turned into DEBT and that debt into chronic restraint.

From the moment a government encourages its citizenry to finance the state by gambling — which means by idle dreaming — instead of through creativity, work and productivity, that state is in an unacknowledged crisis.

The only nation to have prospered via gambling is Monaco, which is not a nation. It is a corporation specializing in tax avoidance presided over by a croupier prince.

Personally, I think it's a mug's game.