The cosmic spanking

Tumon, Guam, would be even more glitzy if it has casinos, but the voters didn’t see things that way, and Tinian has thus kept its monopoly in the Mariana Islands casino realm (such as it is).

I don’t know what it is about gaming that turns some people into frothing-at-the-mouth Puritan lunatics. Is gambling immoral? If so, then why not shut down the stock market? In fact, the stock market is far more rigged than a casino is. When you sit down to play, say, blackjack or craps, the odds you face are well known; you can look them up in any number of books. No mystery there. Little wonder, then, that more people have been wiped out by the stock market than by gambling. Enron wasn’t a casino, and the Great Depression wasn’t about roulette.

I could, if I wanted, lose all my earthly wealth in five minutes by logging onto my brokerage account and placing big bets that go bad. It would not be possible for me to do that in a casino, since I’d probably fall asleep at the table before going broke playing five buck minimum blackjack.

So it’s not the risk, or the gambling, part of gaming that makes some folks angry. It’s the “fun” part. Gambling in the stock market is a royal bore. Gambling at casinos is fun, that’s why I like casinos. So, evidently, having fun and taking risk is immoral, but being bored and taking risk is fine and dandy. OK, got it.

Of course, not every casino owner in the world is a squeaky clean choir boy, but when these morality issues boil up in the Mariana Islands I get a bit confused, since corruption is widely tolerated. By contrast, I’ve never been ripped off in a casino, I’ve never been shaken down for a bribe at the blackjack tables. And as for the gaming center of the world, Las Vegas, Nevada, that’s one of the world’s greatest economic success stories. Would it be more “moral” for people there to sit around on welfare instead of having jobs in casinos…and in the hotels that are supported by them…and in the restaurants in the hotels…and in the whole array of goods and services businesses that grow around a gaming industry? Many of these jobs are entry-level service jobs, exactly the kinds of jobs that the less fortunate folks need to get them participating in the job environment. And many good jobs are built on this foundation. One of my old college room mates is a professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, and there would be no such university if there wasn’t gaming in Vegas, since Vegas would be just a barren stretch of desert. I’d say that university professor is a pretty good job, wouldn’t you?

And as for the local economy, I helped initiate helicopter service from Saipan to the Tinian Dynasty Hotel and Casino a few years back. I’d say that helicopter management is a pretty good job, wouldn’t you? Anything immoral in that?

True, maybe gaming is a stupid way to spend your money…but it’s not as bad as spending it on a mind-rotting television set, or on booze, or on cigarettes, or on unhealthy food, or on sugar laden soda pop. Gaming doesn’t kill you. Booze, cigarettes, fatty foods, and too much sugar can darn sure kill you, and in slow, expensive, torturous ways, too. Take a stroll through the halls of CHC if you doubt me on that one. So it seems to me, then, if immoral expenditures are going to get pared back by decree, my potato chips should be confiscated long before my casino chips are.

Blackjack (also known as “21″), by the way, is a heck of a lot more intellectually stimulating than watching the boob tube. A mathematics professor by the name of Edmond Thorp wrote a book on blackjack called Beat the Dealer, and it is a very compelling read. The root of this stuff is probability theory, and probability theory is one (of many) topics in which the general public is totally clueless. Blackjack is one of the world’s most educational tools in the field of probability.

But don’t think I’m making an impassioned plea one way or the other about gambling. I enjoy seeing these arguments, this is all amusement to me. If risk is immoral, then I’d say the universe, which is ruled by chaotic randomness, is so immoral that it’s in for a real spanking. If people want to get hopping mad about it, that’s fine with me.

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Correction to last week’s column: I mistakenly listed the price for PopUpCop software as “free.” The cost is $19.95.

(Ed Stephens, Jr. is an economist and columnist for the Saipan Tribune. Ed4Saipan@yahoo.com)