Most of the opposition to legalized gambling is based on the negative social consequences that it can have - desperate gambling addicts, mob activity, etc.
Yet there are people who speak as if the act of gambling is wrong in and of itself. Is it? If so, why?
**
I think the mob has all but left Vegas these days. Now the casinos are run by corporations who don’t need to launder money.
Gambling isn’t wrong any more then drinking beer is wrong. Some people cannot control their actions when doing either one. I enjoy gambling on very few occasions having spent my honeymoon in Vegas and some time in Tunica, Mississippi. Both times I took X amount of money I was willing to lose and gambled it away.
As long as you gamble money you can afford to lose then there’s nothing wrong with it.
Marc
Because they are uneducated. The next time someone tells you gambling is wrong, ask them if insurance companies are immoral. Insurance companies are essentially bookies that will accept a wager on how long you will live, or how long you can go without wrecking your car or sustaining injury. They make educated guesses, set up the ‘line’ and make a profit because the math breaks in their favor. But they also take on a lot of risk. A rash of bad luck almost wiped out Lloyds of London a couple of years ago.
Anyone who decides to go to college instead of work is gambling - they are betting their tuition and years of their lives that their education will result in better jobs and lives. This is by no means a certainty - if the economy should change, your job specialty loses demand, you become ill, etc., you may wind up with no job and a huge student loan debt.
Anyone who invests extra money for retirement is gambling, because they may die before they ever get to use the money.
In short, any time you make a decision with an element of risk, you are gambling. If you leave your steady job to own your own company, you are taking a huge gamble. Yet the typical ‘anti-gambling’ foes would see all of this things as virtues and not immoral acts. Because they don’t know any better.
Then there are day traders and other market amateurs who are gambling every day.
If we arbitrarily limit the scope of the discussion to casino gambling, it simply becomes a matter of risk/reward, or the cost of entertainment. I can go to a casino, and knowing the math as I do can figure out exactly what my hourly cost will be to play blackjack, and what the outer limits are for how much I could win or lose if I get very lucky or very unlucky. If, knowing that, I still choose to play, then I am simply buying entertainment with my disposable income. You’d have a hard time showing me how it’s immoral to blow $5,000 in a weekend in Vegas, when it’s not immoral to blow $5,000 on a weekend cruise along the Riviera. Different people like different things.
The big problem with gambling, other than addiction, is lack of education. People lose much more than they can afford because they don’t understand the risks they are taking, and have no grasp of the mathematics behind games of chance. But then, how many people who didn’t know any better lost huge scads of money when the dot-com bubble burst? They were gambling too. Most day traders will lose money. Many of them will lose everything they own. Are they immoral?
The answer is that you are behaving unethically when your actions have an undue negative impact on those to whom you are responsible. If you are gambling with your kid’s education money and the rent, you are acting unethically. But the same would be true if you blew the rent money and the kid’s education fund on that Riviera trip. The ethical problem comes from the abuse of a form of entertainment, and not from the intrinsic nature of the entertainment itself.
BTW, I used to be a professional gambler, so I know this subject quite well.
Some thoughts:
Gambling is unproductive, nor does it contribute to culture, physical fitness, etc., as many other pasttimes do.
IN addition to the “desperate gambling addicts,” many others lose enough to do harm. We’re all aware of the old-fashioned image of a man who gambles (or drinks) away money needed by his family.
I am personally opposed to state lotteries because they amount to an inefficient, regressive tax. Also, their ads promote the fiction that playing the lottery is a good idea.
The gambler’s approach to life is unhealthy. That is, presumably a healthy approach is to set goals and go about achieving them in a sensible way, rather than hoping for luck.
Some thoughts:
1. Gambling is unproductive, nor does it contribute to culture, physical fitness, etc., as many other pasttimes do.
But is that the criteria for a “bad” pasttime? If that’s the standard, then playing (off-line, at least) computer games is heinous.
2. IN addition to the “desperate gambling addicts,” many others lose enough to do harm. We’re all aware of the old-fashioned image of a man who gambles (or drinks) away money needed by his family.
True. However, any activity, even “healthy” ones, can be harmful when taken to extremes - a health nut falls into anorexia, or the football player (not necessarily professional) who keeps playing through concussions and ends up in serious trouble.
3. I am personally opposed to state lotteries because they amount to an inefficient, regressive tax. Also, their ads promote the fiction that playing the lottery is a good idea.
No argument here - not that it stops me from playing when events in my life are just so - “If I win the lotto, I won’t have to take that Con. Law. exam.” 
4. The gambler’s approach to life is unhealthy. That is, presumably a healthy approach is to set goals and go about achieving them in a sensible way, rather than hoping for luck.
That confuses the attitudes of gamblers with gambling itself. It’s also wildly inaccurate.
Take me, for example. I’m a gambler. I play on average about 4 times a year, usually with a stake of around $500.
a. In my “real life” I’m a lawyer, and disturbingly goal-oriented; and
b. I don’t “hope for luck” - I’m a card counter. According to the computer models, the only way I lose is if I have bad luck, or if I’m not focused on the game (i.e., not “goal-oriented”).
I think both Sam Stone and december make good points.
I also think they’re talking about different aspects of gambling.
Insurance is applying mathematical techniques to provide a useful service. Actuaries put in a lot of work to give those premium rates.
Technically this is gambling, but it’s certainly not the same as december’s points about gambling addicts.
State Lotteries are indeed an inefficient and regressive tax. Here people are being encouraged not to analyse or use skilled training, but to gamble money away thoughtlessly.
Here in the UK, about 50% of money is returned as prizes. The odds of winning the jackpot are about 14,000,000 to 1.
No professional gambler would touch it with a bargepole!
Sam Stone said:
The answer is that you are behaving unethically when your actions have an undue negative impact on those to whom you are responsible. If you are gambling with your kid’s education money and the rent, you are acting unethically. But the same would be true if you blew the rent money and the kid’s education fund on that Riviera trip. The ethical problem comes from the abuse of a form of entertainment, and not from the intrinsic nature of the entertainment itself.
Absolutely true, but the problem is that gambling by the ignorant involves the stronger temptation. There is much less ‘attraction’ in spending money you can’t afford on trips (although the consequences are the same).
I have taught poker to pupils at my school. We play for sweets. If they lose, they have to watch the winners eating.
Gambling is similar to alcohol. If you have a couple of drinks, it’s sociable. If you lose control, it’s a terrible problem.
glee, I have no argument with your post (but I will point out that both december and I are examples of your referenced actuaries :)).
However I will point out that your analysis of the lottery is not entirely appropriate. It should be centred around the concept of how much the money is “worth” to the gambler - this is known as utility and no discussion on insurance OR gambling can be complete without it.
Simply, £1 to you when you only have £100 is almost certainly “worth” more to you than if you had £1,000,000. We say its utility is higher.
We can express utility as a function U(W) of wealth W.
Then rather than looking at expected wealth as a result of the gamble, we should look at the expected utility. Since winning a million will change a person’s life whereas losing a pound will pass largely unnoticed, you may well find that the expected utility from playing the lottery is positive, meaning that it is a gamble worth taking.
Of course the problem with such an analysis is that each person’s utility curve is unique and all but impossible to determine.
pan
kabbes,
I have no problem with your post either!
You’re just going deeper into the subject, which is interesting.
Of course you know that I thought both december and Sam Stone made good sense, but were covering slightly different aspects of gambling.
OK, so a poor person has a higher utility when buying a lottery ticket than a rich guy.
I also agree that the poor person winning again has a higher utility.
Leaving aside for the moment that some poor people don’t spend their winnings wisely, what is the formula for deciding if a financially-challenged person should play the lottery?
Let me offer a mathematical example:
Assume it costs £1 to get a unique Lottery number.
The first (and only) prize is £1,000,000.
There are 2,000,000 numbers used in the draw (all equally likely).
All tickets are sold.
A poor person has £20 a week to spend on ‘luxuries’ (alcohol / cinema / night out).
Please feel free to define (as an example) how much they ‘enjoy’ spending the £20,
and also how much they would ‘enjoy’ the first prize.
I would like to see the formula in action.
P.S. How many actuaries does it take to change a light bulb?
It depends - you have to examine a statistically significant selection of previous cases, eliminating bias as much as possible. 
An actuary is someone who likes you to be dead on time.
OK - utility functions. They tend to be concave (assuming I’ve remembered my definitions of concave vs convex), i.e. start steep and then flatten. This makes sense from a “your first pound is worth more than your millionth pound” point of view.
As a simple example, let U(W) = ln W. If you have £1 then your utility is 0, if you have £100 it is 4.605 and if you have £1m it is 13.82. Of course in this example you have negative utility if you have less than a pound, but since this is only a simple illustration we won’t worry too much about the boundaries.
Well then. Suppose you have £1000 which means a utility of 6.90776. Should you play the glee lottery? Let’s look at the two possibilities if you play:[list=A][li]Play and LOSE. In this case you now have £999 and a utility of 6.90675.[/li]
[li]Play and WIN. In this case you now have £1,000,999 and a utility of 13.8165.[/list=A]Your expected utility from playing is equal to 1-in-2million times 13.8165 plus (2million - 1)-in-2million times 6.90675. This comes to 6.90676[/li]
And 6.90676 < 6.90776. Hence in this case the lottery is just about not worth it. But only in the 5th significant figure!
Compare this to expected wealth from playing, which is £999.50 (half way between 1000 and 999). Note that expected wealth from playing is 99.95% or wealth from not playing, whereas expected utility from playing is 99.99% of *utility * from not playing.
Unfortunately my randomly chosen example hasn’t been very good at creating a good dichotomy between wealth and utility, but it still demonstrates that there is a difference. A different function may well have resulted in a situation where it IS worth playing, despite the fact that the expected wealth is lower.
Shall I try again, or is this understandable?
pan
The arguments I’ve heard from Christians who assume some intrinsic evil in gambling are, not surprisingly, tied to some scripture. For the record, I’m as heathen as they come and I’m simply relaying my recollection of a Christian admonition against gambling.
From 1 Timothy 6:10
“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.”
And from Hebrews 13:5
"Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.”
The first verse seems to suggest that gambling is a manifestation of a ‘love of money’ and nothing more. While the second verse implies that gambling is not putting one’s faith in God to provide.
Note: I recognize the fallacies inherent in these examples, but I offer them because I think this is, at least, one answer to the OP.
If we’re talking about the morality of gambling, I think the real issue is with the bookmaker, not the punter. It’s not actually immoral to bet money without total appreciation of the true odds or the utility of your stake and so forth although it probably qualifies as stupid. On the other hand, I think there’s more of an issue with taking the same stupid punter’s money, week after week. Especially if you know they can’t actually afford it. There were reports in Britain of poor families spending their entire income on scratchcards in the belief that buying 200 rather than 1 significantly improved their odds. And I’d have to say that profiting from that level of stupidity and desparation is immoral.
That line of reasoning is completely wrong.
If you’re going to call the bookmaker unethical for continuing to take the business of someone who can’t afford it, then what about the car salesman who sells you a car you really can’t afford? The banker that lets you borrow too much money? The bartender who continues serving you every night when you should be home with your family?
Do you really want to live in a world where everyone is everyone else’s keeper? Do I have to plead with my local bartender for a beer because *he doesn’t think I should have one (public intoxication notwithstanding)? I certainly don’t want to live in a world like that.
Quite frankly, these are private matters that should be left up to the individual. I have owned my own business, and when customers wanted to buy things from me, the only question I had was whether or not they had the money. It is absolutely no business of mine if the customer is buying my product with the money he stole from his kid’s piggy bank, and I’d be WAY out of line (and probably breaking the law) if I even asked him where he got it.
As for the service bookies provide - they set a line, and allow you to wager on it. For their trouble, they take a ‘vig’ which is usually about 5-10%, which is very reasonable considering the risk they take. More than one bookie has been wiped out by a run of bad luck.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by kabbes *
**Incidentally, there’s a famous economics paper by Milton
Friedman and Leonard Savage which finds a utility function that would justify a person gambling to increase his risk, but would also justify his purchasing of insurance to reduce his risk.
Some US cities and states have a paradoxical approach to gambling. It’s illegal to bet privately on horse racing (away from the track) or the “numbers racket”, but the government runs Off-Track betting parlors and lotteries.
Is that a logarithmic function? (It’s a long time since I did maths!).
Oops! I forgot that not everybody uses these things every day. Glee it is indeed the natural (base e) lofarithm. A ln button will be found on any scientific calculator.
But if you don’t like that, you can use the square root (or cube root or…) of W as your utility function. The example will work in the same way.
pan
Better than a world where people’s only interest is themselves. There’s a difference between bookmakers and other business people that I’ll come to later but for now…
Car salesmen: if they know that by buying the car you and those (if any) that you support will suffer materially, then they are taking advantage of your ignorance of this, or your poor judgement. If this is a hire purchase, whereby the poor are charged more than the rich, for the same car, I would say that this was definitely more immoral than not.
Bankers: Absolutely. Consider the massive loans, made without due diligence, by banks awash in petro-dollars, to third world countries. Consider the extent to which these countries are being dragged under by the swingeing interest payments of these loans. The banks are as responsible for this situation as the leaders of the countries were. Immoral.
Bartenders: Again, absolutely. If you were a bartender, would you serve a drink to a customer you knew to be alcoholic? Would serve another drink to a woozy customer you knew was intending to drive home? I’ve been a bartender and refused service to people who were, in my opinion, too drunk, and I’m glad I did and I’d do it again. These people were no longer responsible for their actions, and some of them thanked me the day after.
**
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I would guess that your customers had a very clear idea of the value of what they were buying, that you were not disguising your profit motive, and that there was no established history of a compulsion to buy your product. The problem with gambling is that to make money off it bookies have to offer unfair odds, as you pointed out. The true odds at a roulette table, or on a dog race, or in the lottery, are not reflected in the relationship between the stake and the prize. It is, essentially, a con. I say this because bookmakers of all sorts advertise their services as offering a reasonable expectation of making money (some would even have you believe it was a near certainty) and generally ensure that the punters are ignorant of the true odds.
If, while running your business, you had a customer whose sporadic visits became more regular, who spent more and more money without ever professing satisfaction with good/service you provided, whose demeanour was one of desparation, whose appearance deteriorated over this time, and who yet continued to throw away his money, would it seriously never occur to you that taking his money was harming him (and any dependents)?
amrussell, I have a lot of sympathy for your position. A lot. But you are misrepresenting the bookmaking business somewhat.
The odds reflect the bookie’s intial opinion and the betting so far plus a margin. As more and more bets are placed, so the odds approach the position of entirely reflecting the betting so far.
This means that the odds can easily be “better” than fair. If a horse is unknown by the general betting public but actually very good then it can easily be a much longer odd than it should be. There is therefore opportunity for the wiley punter to make money.
The lotteries and casinos, however, are another matter.
pan
amrussell: It’s not actually immoral to bet money without total appreciation of the true odds or the utility of your stake and so forth although it probably qualifies as stupid. On the other hand, I think there’s more of an issue with taking the same stupid punter’s money, week after week. Especially if you know they can’t actually afford it.
Yeah, I kind of agree. This is sort of along the lines of what Daniel Deronda says in George Eliot’s eponymous novel:
And I kind of see his point. Then, of course, there was my (mathematician/engineer) father’s opinion that mathematicians in particular should not gamble (or even play games of chance without gambling) because it’s unbecoming in somebody who understands the laws of probability to be entertained by trying to beat them. 
(So ever since Daddy’s little girl graduated with a math major, I’ve never felt really comfortable even buying a raffle ticket. ;))
However, I don’t think these moral/ethical considerations are really appropriate for the state to be weighing when it comes to regulating gambling in the private sector. When it comes to the state running lotteries on its own account, however (not to mention advertising them with rhetoric that helps mislead people about their actual chances of winning), that’s another matter. I don’t think the government belongs in the business of actually encouraging people to risk their money stupidly. Moreover, as amrussell points out, poor people often spend a disproportionate amount of money on lotteries; furthermore, state lottery revenues are often spent disproportionately on the non-poor, so it’s really a very regressive way to generate revenue.
Interestingly, the Catholic Encyclopedia doesn’t have much of a problem with gambling. To paraphrase: if you’re not betting the mortgage, and the game is fair–go for it. Just watch out for excess and bad companions, and it’s probably not a good idea under any circumstances if you’re a priest.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06375b.htm
Catholics can be surprisingly liberal in some cases.
And of coure, religious opposition to gambling has never stopped many churches from raising money through Bingo nights, or accepting money from the government that comes from gambling revenue…