Posted on 09/09/2014 7:20:39 AM PDT by Kaslin
I believe the mistake many make is that they keep on playing when they win something instead of stopping and take the money and run
I’ll call and raise
My nominee for the stupidest government to pursue gambling has to be Mississippi. The state had a beautiful little stretch of pristine Gulf Coast, but when the powers that be decided that they needed casinos, they required them to be floating, like casinos on riverboats. The casinos bought up prime Gulf Coast beachfront, floated the actual gambling part of the hotel/casino complex, and ruined the beach in the process.
They should have required the boats to actually move up and down the river while gambling took place
Politicians got campaign funds walking around money. Union bosses got payoffs. Construction companies, law firms, materials suppliers - the entire Democrat funding apparatus was well rewarded by supporting this project.
The author is using the wrong metric. The casino was a huge success, from the perspective of everyone except a taxpayer. :)
I’m curious as to the tribe which is big on education. I believe the state-of-the-art diabetes clinic is run by the Navajo Nation, right?
Gamblers are very narcissistic and while usually bright, given to magical thinking that borders on the delusional. No, not easy to treat successfully.
My whole view of gambling is that it’s extreme speculation. People speculate all the time, or try to give themselves a best projection of a possible outcome. Gambling appears to be a case of speculation taken to an extreme extent. Crossing lines within a normal desire seems tough not to do once you have done it.
The perpetrators even went so far as to change the name, from "gambling" to "gaming," which they seem to think is more benign. IDK how much difference that has made, but if you hear someone talk about "gaming" you know he is not neutral, but a shill for the industry. Take what he says accordingly.
Delaware state government recently did a bailout of their casinos. I wonder how dependent the NASCAR stadium was on casinos. But it appears to be enormous.
Maybe casinos failed because it was in NEW JERSEY! The armpit of the nation!
Like I say, magical thinking. There may well be stock speculators with these characteristics, but they don't last long.
When they happen to be together, gamblers call themselves and each other "degenerates" and the cliche even they repeat is "gamblers die broke."
Truthfully, I’ve not heard of the education tribe before or since. But it is the Pima Indians that have horrific problems with diabetes.
The Pima are an odd bunch. Often black in skin tone, but a purplish black, not a brownish black like Negroes. The theory is that after centuries of living in near starvation conditions, their livers became extremely efficient, to the point where a hard working adult Pima could comfortably survive on 600-800 calories a day. (Hard working White Americans need over 2000 for adult women and 2800 for adult men.)
But there’s more. One of the main staples of the Pima diet was flour from ground mesquite bean pods. It is very low on the glycemic index, so diabetes was unheard of in the Indians of the time.
Yet you feed a Pima Indian a white style diet and they will balloon up.
BTW, my opinion on gambling is that it is a lot like drugs or alcohol: it’s a diversion or entertainment when used occasionally in small doses, and most people can take it or leave it, but some people will become addicted to it. OK, maybe you can’t really be “addicted” to gambling by the strict meaning of the word, but clearly some people have great trouble controlling themselves when it comes to gambling. And they will do things to keep getting their fix that they never would have done otherwise.
That’s not to say that I would prefer gambling was re-criminalized, but I do find it ironic that the same governments that are forever trying to protect us from ourselves by stamping out smoking, discouraging drinking, prohibiting drugs, passing seatbelt and helmet laws, etc, seem to be doing everything it can to promote gambling, despite knowing the destruction it causes in some people’s lives. I see little difference between a drug addict and a gambling addict, in terms of the harm done to themselves, and the harm they cause their families, friends and communities. Well, except that I’ve never heard of anyone embezzling a quarter million dollars to support their drug habit.
It was a very tough life back then. Some of my Ute relatives used to war with the Navajo way back when. Both were damn proud of the fact that the Spanish never succeeded in enslaving them.
They had that in common with the Pima and Pueblo, though some in the Pueblo group did eventually surrender to the Spanish and come into the Missions. These ancient wars come with deep regret even to this modern day because we really didn't hate each other. We were just trying to survive the Spanish, Comanche and other more aggressive groups that wouldn't just leave us alone.
Some say we always lived in what is now the American Southwest. Some say we may have moved there to escape the deprivations of the Aztec further south. Probably some of both. My Navajo friend claims dependency from the Anasazi which, as you probably know, predate the Aztec by at least a millennium.
Sorry.
Now, we're well on our way to slots on every street corner. A Senior can get on a bus for $1 and be left off at the casino. The money they spend there isn't being spent on the family, at local businesses, to improve their houses. And towns depend on local income taxes for budgets. I'd think the casinos are putting more money with the state and less with the communities, that are already suffering.
How do you treat a person with a gambling problem if the casino is a $1 bus ride away?
Yes Indiana was making a killing with casinos because we were in early. Now everybody in the Great Lakes has them and the take has plunged. I can see a few Atlantic City style bankruptcies coming.
Interesting. Had a bf who was an addictions counselor, having cleaned up alcohol and drug probs of his own decades ago. But at the casino, he was an idiot. I actually made money there, and so did he, but his went back into the machines while mine went into my pocket. I couldn't drag him away.
He liked to gamble; I liked to win. Big difference. No way I could get him to stop loosing…maybe loosing is an addiction, which raises lots of psychopossibilities.
No, I haven't been back to the casinos since we stopped seeing each other.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.