Why is gambling so restricted in the USA?

To avoid...

THE ECSTASY OF GOLD!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV0wPBYDQ6Y

 

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Well, it depends on what you mean by 'gamble'. A business is a form of gambling... :shrug:

 

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Note that it's a British article.

They typically can. The way it works is that people (either directly or by means of their elected representatives) have the right to vote on whether or not they want to allow legalized gambling in their jurisdiction, and if they do, what kind of gambling they want.

People in the UK must have heard of Nevada, and especially Las Vegas. That's probably the biggest gambling resort in the world, certainly in terms of casino over-the-topness and numbers of hotel rooms. In Nevada, you encounter slot machines in supermarkets and everywhere you go. Nevada once had the smallest population of any state. There's nothing much there except desert, kind of scenic in an austere way but without very much economic potential. So Nevadans voted to approve gambling that they could tax for state revenue and all hell broke loose. In the 1960's Las Vegas arose from the desert like a shimmering neon-lit mirage intended initially to serve gamblers from Los Angeles. Vegas prooceeded to put in a huge airport and began attracting visitors from around the world. Today 2 million people live in Vegas and many millions more visit every year. It's a very big deal.

Here in California, where I live, we have a state lottery with lottery machines everywhere. There's one next to the ATM in my supermarket. We allow limited forms of poker gambling in many communities. Here in Silicon Valley some towns allow card clubs and some don't.

And maybe twenty years ago Californians voted to allow Indian tribes to offer all sorts of gambling, up to and including full casino gambling, on their tribal lands. So ostensibly Indian casinos have sprouted all over California and a number of those have grown into huge operations that rival Vegas casinos with vast hotels, heavy TV advertising, top entertinment acts and helicopter pads where they fly in high-rollers.

It's not just California. Arizona has big-time Indian gaming and so do a number of other states. Along the lower Mississippi there's been a major revival of riverboat gambling. There's gambling all over the place, in many parts of the country, if anyone wants to seek it out.

That, of course, helps explain resistance to gambling initiatives. There are big gaming firms that specialize in this, and they invest huge amounts of money in their casinos, hotels, entertainment and other operations. So naturally they don't like competition. I'm sure that the Vegas interests were actively funding anti-gambling proponents here in California for example, during our state referendums on gambling. The less gambling California has, the more Californians are going to cross the line to gamble in Vegas.

And local communities do sometimes vote 'no' on gambling initiatives for reasons that have nothing to do with religion or prudishness. Large gaming operations have associated costs related to things like crowds, traffic and infrastructure needs. They lure in and prey upon many people of limited means who probably shouldn't be gambling their paychecks. And there are associated alcoholism and crime concerns.

In a way, deciding whether to build a casino in a community is like the choice whether or not to build a big ugly pollution-belching industial plant there. It might create jobs, but maybe not the kind of jobs that people in that community want or need. It will probably produce lots of revenue for local government, but it could also create lots of additional costs.

If a local community is proud of its quiet up-market village-like atmosphere, then it's apt to say 'no way, we don't want that here'.

Because ideally at least, the United States is a bottom-up system in which the people are soverign, making choices for themselves on the local level and then communicating them to their rpresentatives in the capital to administer. That's opposed to top-down system in which leaders in the capital, composed of a 'better sort of person' naturally, make all the choices and exercise all the leadership, expecting all of the 'lesser people' out in the provinces will obediently do as they are told.

Sadly, the United States seems to be moving away from its founding principle of Athenian-style popular soverignty toward a more European-style top-down centralism, but popular democracy still remains the American ideal.

That's why the US can seem fragmented. Because different people, in different places and at different levels of government, have the opportunity make choices for themselves. At least ideally (this is fading as we speak), one of the strengths of America has been that it lets different Americans choose different and even inconsistent things according to their own circumstances and desires.

 

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