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Government Delays New Ban On Internet Gambling
The Installer writes with this quote from the Associated Press:
"The Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve are giving US financial institutions an additional six months to comply with regulations designed to ban Internet gambling. ... The delayed rules would curb online gambling by prohibiting financial institutions from accepting payments from credit cards, checks or electronic fund transfers to settle online wagers. The financial industry complained that the new rules would be difficult to enforce because they did not offer a clear definition of what constitutes Internet gambling. They had sought a 12-month delay in implementing provisions of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act that Congress had passed in 2006. ... US bettors have been estimated to supply at least half the revenue of the $16 billion Internet gambling industry, which is largely hosted overseas."
Is there any American out there who can explain to me how it's somehow "wrong" when somebody chooses to risk their money betting on poker or blackjack games, but it's perfectly acceptable (and even promoted as a "patriotic duty") to gamble in corporate stocks that often offer greater risk and worse returns?
A site called zookz tried this. $9.99 per month for unlimited downloads of 1500 movies & 50000 music tracks.
They claimed a WTO ruling allowed them to do this. It disappeared after about 3 days.
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
I think the government should only be involved in online gambling to prevent fraud and enforce contracts.
Anti-gambling advocates would claim that telling customers "you can win" is itself fraud.
This situation aside, I don't believe the prohibition failure is a universally applicable example that can be cited every time the government wants to regulate something that's inherently hard to regulate. It's a balance between the cost associated with enforcement and the cost of allowing the activity to occur unregulated.
If you don't apply the calculus correctly then you could argue that murder is hard to prosecute, therefore we should just allow it. After all, prohibition failed. Ditto for all hard drugs. Should we allow unrestricted use of heroin and cocaine? There may be some callous people who would argue that banning drugs is interfering with Darwinian mechanisms, but the reality is that many youth don't know what's good for them, and need to have access to hard drugs removed to protect themselves from making poor decisions in the period they are still learning to evaluate choices maturely.
Apply the prohibition lesson sparingly, as it can lead to manifestly unjust and dangerous policy decisions if invoked carelessly.
I hate printers.
Why can't we have on line sports betting in the us?
We can tax it and make money off it vs not getting tax on the people who sent there money to places out side of the us to do the same thing.
Prohibition is a great example because drugs and gambling have two things in common: there's no victim. Someone can gamble away their last cent if that's really how they want to spend their mortal life; this doesn't force you or me to do anything. As I view the protection of civil rights to be the main reason why government has law enforcement powers, and no one is using force or fraud to infringe anyone's civil rights here, I am having a hard time understanding why government is even involved. This is exactly like Prohibition, during which some people wanted to drink alcohol, didn't force anyone else to drink if they didn't want to, and still the government felt a need to create a victimless crime. Just like with alcohol, this seems to be based on some kind of Puritannical outrage and has little to do with logic and reason.
If you think drug prohibition has removed the street availability of drugs, it's because you frankly haven't done the slightest research on it. For many youths, alcohol is actually more difficult to obtain than illegal drugs for the simple reason that the store clerk wants to see ID but the drug dealer doesn't. People might go into drug withdrawals because they cannot afford heroin and cocaine, but not because they don't know where to find them. The War on Drugs has been a total failure in this regard, just like alcohol Prohibition was a total failure. A total failure unless, of course, your goal was to expand the police powers of government, in which case it has been quite successful.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Callously worded, I'll grant you, but I don't think it's entirely wrong. That is:
You are not a victim of the fact that gambling exists. You are a victim of your stepfather's addiction. This doesn't make it any better for you, but it's worth realizing.
Trying to outlaw gambling to prevent that is a bit like trying to outlaw alcohol -- there are many victims of people in a drunken rage, but it doesn't get better when we try to outlaw it, and there are plenty of people who can drink responsibly. The problem is not the alcohol itself, it's the people who can't tolerate it.
In fact, if we try to outlaw everything that might be a dangerous addiction, we could start with alcohol, then move on to World of Warcraft, caffeine, television, and so on. I'd be amazed if we had anything left by the end of it.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Internet gambling is just one facet of the real problem.
Somewhere along the line we changed from being citizens of the government to dependents of the government. We lost much of our freedom to do as we wish with minimal intrusions by the government. Phrases such as "For the good of all", "It's for your own good", "It will save many lives.", and of course the classic that's applied to far to many situations, "It's for the children.".
I'm not saying there isn't a place for government meddling, just that it should be kept to a bare minimum with a very high burden of proof to create and just to make sure, it should regularly expire and have to pass the same burden to reenact.
The real fact is, you are not free unless you have the right to fail. Gambling away your life or house is fail. I believe they used many of the same arguments to enact prohibition as they are using for gambling now. Think about it.
Ward
. Silence! Be thankful thy species is unpalatable! .
Callously worded, I'll grant you, but I don't think it's entirely wrong. That is:
You are not a victim of the fact that gambling exists. You are a victim of your stepfather's addiction. This doesn't make it any better for you, but it's worth realizing.
Trying to outlaw gambling to prevent that is a bit like trying to outlaw alcohol -- there are many victims of people in a drunken rage, but it doesn't get better when we try to outlaw it, and there are plenty of people who can drink responsibly. The problem is not the alcohol itself, it's the people who can't tolerate it.
In fact, if we try to outlaw everything that might be a dangerous addiction, we could start with alcohol, then move on to World of Warcraft, caffeine, television, and so on. I'd be amazed if we had anything left by the end of it.
Thank you because I might have been a bit harsher without really intending it. The GP exhibits just the sort of emotionalism that needs to be REMOVED from these discussions entirely, at least if good public policy is our goal. Shit happens and sometimes people get traumatized by this. When traumatized, they look for something to blame, preferably something easier to blame than the individual human being who was responsible and could have chosen differently. Something easier to blame may include an inanimate object (drugs, guns) or a voluntary activity (gambling). This illogical, grief-driven process of scapegoating is quite understandable but we should not base policy decisions on it.
No casino forces anyone to gamble. No drug forces anyone to ingest it. No gun forces anyone to pick it up, load it up, point it at another person, and fire it. Those things are all completely passive elements. Without humans to actively engage them, the casino will become an abandoned building, the drug will rot and spoil, and the gun will rust. Sorry but his uncle's gambling problem is not a reason to take away EVERYONE'S right to choose to gamble, just like one car accident is not a reason to ban all automobiles.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
If you don't apply the calculus correctly then you could argue that murder is hard to prosecute, therefore we should just allow it.
Murder directly hurts another human being. More technically, it denies them of basic rights, like the right to live.
Neither alcohol nor gambling does this. A father might beat his kid in a drunken rage, or bankrupt the family (even make them homeless) from gambling debts, but in this case, it is the father who is doing each of these. The alcohol, for one, is an inanimate object.
Ditto for all hard drugs. Should we allow unrestricted use of heroin and cocaine?
Yes.
Why shouldn't we?
the reality is that many youth don't know what's good for them,
And that is the real problem -- so educate them on what's good for them.
And again, drugs are inanimate objects. It's possible to abuse cough medicine, after all, just as it's possible to use cocaine properly -- consider coca tea.
need to have access to hard drugs removed to protect themselves
So, that works about as well as prohibition.
That is: These kids have about as much access as they always did. As causality says, these drugs may be easier to obtain than alcohol. Telling them "don't try it" is about as effective as abstinence-only education.
Now, I still haven't tried drugs and alcohol, but my parents actually went out of their way to explain the differences between drugs. They made it clear that they don't approve, but they also didn't lie to me about things like marijuana, which probably wouldn't be that harmful, versus cocaine and heroin, which would probably destroy my life.
to protect themselves from making poor decisions in the period they are still learning to evaluate choices maturely.
If it's about maturity, why are hard drugs illegal at any age, but alcohol is legal at 21?
It's also worth mentioning: The war on drugs, like prohibition, has significant collateral damage. Leaving drug convictions aside, there's still the massive network of organized crime that would utterly collapse if we started making and selling drugs legally. It would also cut the balls off of the real, bloody war that's happening in Mexico -- seems we can tolerate drug prohibition because the violence is down there, rather than in our back yard, as it was with alcohol prohibition -- but with Americans growing their own drugs, there wouldn't be so much traffic through Mexico.
There's also the deal the American government has struck with Peru, which includes an attempt to eradicate the Coca plant from Peru. Coca, as you may know, can be used to make cocaine, if processed and insanely concentrated. By itself, though, the coca leaf makes a mild tea, much milder than coffee -- and it's an important part of their culture, which we are killing off, because someone might make cocaine out of it.
Consider a world in which coffee was illegal. Sure, if you drink too much coffee, you get jittery, and the withdrawal headaches are painful. If you drink enough coffee, you could probably kill yourself. And coffee is fairly dilute -- suppose you took the syrup used to make fountain drinks, and just drank that straight, or snorted it. Don't you think that'd be dangerous? Clearly, we should regulate coffee to protect kids from themselves.
Apply the prohibition lesson liberally, until it sinks in. If you can't tell the difference between murder and alcoholism, you clearly haven't learned the lesson of prohibition.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
No, there wasn't any loan shark. His "buddies" just wouldn't play with him until he paid off what he owed them. Also, the arson wouldn't have been so bad if the insurance money had gone to a new house instead of being gambled away.
As I said in another post, I don't think banning gambling (or any other vice) is a solution. I just hate the argument that there are no victims when I've seen them and been one.
But that's just it. You're not a victim of gambling. You're a victim of your uncle's inability to confine his vices to himself and prevent them from affecting others. To give an analogy, you could consider drinking to be a vice. However, if I stay home, get drunk, watch a movie, and sleep it off, then I am confining the effects to me. Any liver damage, other health problems, or other dangers will be mine alone to experience. On the other hand, if someone gets drunk and then decides to drive drunk, they are endangering everyone else on the road. Other people who do not drink will suffer either the real damage of a car accident that was completely preventable or the potential damage of a much greater risk for one. The person who drives drunk has failed to confine his vice to himself.
So what's the difference between the person who uses alcohol appropriately and the person who drives drunk? Personal responsibility. But the flaw of driving drunk is in the person who refuses to be responsible. It's not found in the carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen atoms that constitute the ethanol. People who are hit by drunk drivers are not victims of ethanol; they are victims of irresponsible people.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Peripheral damages are certainly a viable reason for prohibition.
I demand that you stop driving; it can kill people. I wonder how many more people are killed by cars than drugs? Cars kill ~40000 in the US. Drugs kill ~17000. Poor diet killed ~365000.
"Actual Causes of Death in the United States, 2000," Journal of the American Medical Association, March 10, 2004, Vol. 291, No. 10, pp. 1238, 1241.
Consumer protection, environmental, and public health initiatives all contain fine examples of that.
You will note that those programs are far from unopposed. The health issue in particular attracts a huge amount of debate.
SSC