Like so many zombies, the casino issue has risen from the dead with a vengeance. And it's worse than ever — Bob DeLeo is an unreconstructed fan of putting slots at the race tracks — “racinos”. And the governor says slots-n'-ponies will get thrown into the big horse-tradin' fun. You call that a “resort casino”, governor?
Let's consider two reasons why slots at the track are a hideous idea.
Gambling to “extinction” is the whole point of slot machines. That means hooking people so hard on the machines that they spend every last penny they have on them. “Addictiveness” is a common way to describe a video game, and there's probably some real neurological truth to it. But no matter how hooked you get on Guitar Hero, your Wii doesn't continue to suck money from your pocket with every play.
MIT Researcher Natasha Dow Schüll sums up the effect the new machines:
Discussion of problem gambling typically focuses on individual gamblers and their “predisposition” to addiction. This focus elides the fact that some activities are more addictive than others. The aim of the gambling industry is to increase its bottom line, not to create addicts. But in effect, its efforts to make slot machines so effective at extracting money from people yields a product that, for all intents and purposes, approaches every player as a potential addict — in other words, someone who won't stop playing until his or her means are depleted.
(Actually, I think she lets the gambling industry off way too easily — Of course they want to create addicts!)
In 1999, the US Congress-commissioned National Gambling Impact Commission gave its report. While not absolutely opposed to all gambling, among its recommendations was this:
3-12 The Commission recommends that states should refuse to allow the introduction of casino-style gambling into pari-mutuel facilities for the primary purpose of saving a pari-mutuel facility that the market has determined no longer serves the community or for the purpose of competing with other forms of gambling.
Can there be any doubt whatsoever that propping up dying facilities is precisely why DeLeo wants the slots at the track?
It is very sad indeed that the governor, speaker, and Senate President seem to be choosing the most cynical, the most exploitative, corrupting, and counter-productive way to juke tax revenue. This is not what many of us signed up for.
Adults should be allowed to gamble in a casino if they want to — just like they should be allowed to do things that are much more dangerous than gambling like rock climb, skydive, and ride motorcycles.
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p>Forbidding casinos is just like earlier laws that forbade selling liquor on Sundays, outlawed certain kinds of books, and even, in the earliest days, mandated religious belief.
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p>The public is solidly behind resort casinos, just as a note, from the article you cited:
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p>As a practical matter, the current ban on casinos in Massachusetts just results in millions of dollars sent south to CT each year. That money could do more good invested here.
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p>Racinos, however, exactly as you point out, are just a way to try to prop up a business, horse racing, that is no longer popular for whatever reason. It’s like building a superhighway for use by horse and buggies: the world has moved on. Racinos won’t offer the benefits of a proper casino but will bring costs and should be opposed.
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There could be some revenue to be had there.
We can talk about drug policy next.
As they do, almost, with casinos.
that this idea is never seriously talked about, even though it’s long been up and running in NV (it’s also apparently sort of legal in RI, at least as of last year). We’re all still basically Puritans.
It’s flat out legal.
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p>You can’t solicit in person outdoors. But, you can advertise in print or elsewhere, have a telephone call, go to the location, work out the arrangements and the payment, and then engage in the services.
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p>All legal.
but not going to a casino. If you have more casinos, the ones in CT don’t go away. They might lose some business, for sure. But very likely, you have more gambling when it’s more readily available.
Not all gambling is bad. In fact, the vast majority of gambling is arguably good insofar as people appear to enjoy it.
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p>If you mean that there would be more abuse of gambling if we had a casino in Massachusetts that’s something worth discussing. It’s pretty easy to gamble in Massachusetts right now, though, so I’m not sure how big an increase there would be. I find it hard to believe it would be massive considering we already have the lottery and the proximity of casinos in CT.
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p>In any event that cost, which no one denies, has to be set against the net benefits of allowing the practice — just like it would be a pity to start banning books again just because there are unpleasant ones that encourage people to do unfortunate things, and like it would be unfortunate to shut down every bar in the Commonwealth because some people abuse alcohol.
Bob, your tendency to argue by (specious) analogy makes it really difficult to discuss pros and cons of what’s actually being proposed. It’s confusing, and lends itself to red herrings.
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p>I fail to see the similarity between preventing gambling from getting a foothold in MA, and book-burning.
The general principle is that in most human activities, a subset of them are seriously problematic, even if the majority of them are not. Yet our response varies depending on the activity, and it’s not that easy to figure out why.
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p>So with alcohol: drinking is generally allowed, even though we know that a substantial minority of drinkers will drink too much; drive drunk and harm others; become alcoholics and lose their ability to be productive members of society; etc. Apparently, the benefits (basically, that a lot of people like to drink alcohol) outweigh the costs.
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p>And with books: book-reading is generally allowed, even though we know that some books expressly advocate socially undesirable activities and contain detailed how-to manuals, and that some people will take advantage of those books to harm others. Yet we conclude that the benefits (reading is good for society) outweigh the costs.
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p>On the other hand, prostitution and drugs are generally illegal in the US (though, as noted in this thread, prostitution is legal and regulated in most NV counties), even though if they were legal, it could be argued that many people would engage in those activities without major societal harm. Further, the argument goes, regulation is a better way to deal with the social ills than a ban, which only encourages criminal activity.
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p>Where does gambling fall in that spectrum?
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p>Some of the more problematic, however, are not combined: fr’instance, we don’t allow the combination of alcohol and driving. Driving itself is an inherently dangerous activity that we don’t allow without education and testing (licensure). And, we require drivers and drinkers to have achieved a specific age before being allowed to engage in these activities, presumably on the theory that people of a specific age are more adept at judgements and perceptions than those younger.
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p>This has actually not always been the case. Widespread literacy is, in fact, a relatively new development (past hundred years of so) that was previously reserved for persons of some status. Martin Luther broke with the Catholic Church (in part) on issues of laity access to scripture. William Tyndale was burnt at the stake for the crime of translating and publishing the bible into English.
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p>Nor has the principle of ‘reading is good for society’ ever really been formalized and/or codified: public education in America began more as a means of warehousing the children of immigrants and the urban poor during farming off-seasons. (ever wonder why attendance was compulsory? Yet you get the entire summer off?) Only slowly, over time, has public education morphed into a clear public good, and that because of the skilled workers it produces.
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p>I think gambling falls close to driving: it’s an activity that is almost certain to hurt you if you don’t educate yourself. Innumeracy, unfortunately, is rampant and leaves people particularly prey to casinos. Of course, if more people were numerate, they would realize what a bad deal casinos are and not gamble. A cycle that feeds on itself. How is it that, with a straight face, casino proponents proffer a system of probabilities to a populace, without offering to educate the people about probabilities?
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p>Seriously… would you even approach a slot machine without knowing the probabilistic distribution of outcomes? Why would you bet on something without knowing the actual chance that your outcome will occur? That seems to me, not to put too fine a point on it, insane…
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p>In addition, I firmly believe that whatever casinos are built in this state ought to be banned from serving alcohol. On the same theory that drinking and driving are dangerous, drinking and gambling are a likewise ill-conceived combination. Even highly numerate people are known to throw caution to the wind after a few drinks, thus significantly upping the casinos take..
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p>So, I guess I could live with casinos if there was sufficient education and testing such that those who wish to gamble can do so armed with the knowledge of the odds. Of course, I also believe that, should sufficient amount of the populace become numerate in this way, casino attendance would drop off to the point that it would not longer be profitable for the casinos to operate. That alone ought to tell you all you need to know about casinos/gambling.
if the rabble were only as educated as I am, I would let them gamble at casinos, because then they wouldn’t want to.
Give me a break.
… and I will have to when/if casinos are legalized in Mass. It’s not up to me what they do. That doesn’t me I have to STFU when I see demonstrable insanity at play.
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p>If I saw somebody picking your pocket on the train, would you yell ‘gimme a break’ then?
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p>If we were to eat together in a restauraunt and the waiter charged you double for your meal, would you accuse me of the same form of arrogance if I pointed out where you didn’t do the math to figure it out for yourself?
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p>I think you owe me a ‘break’.
and since apparently there isn’t, therefore you can’t live with casinos.
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translation “if the populace were educated, they wouldn’t gamble.” Not true, P.H.D.s gamble and so do rocket scientists.
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p>I never told you to STFU.
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p>If you only allowed me to eat at that restaurant after I become educated enough to catch the waiter’s mistake, then yes you would still be as arrogant.
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p>I stand by my original comment. You are arrogant.
I don’t support building casinos in Mass and I don’t gamble, not even the lottery, but I just don’t feel I have the right to tell others how to spend their free time and money, or to punish the many for the problems with the few.
Both are examples of one group trying to prevent another group from doing something they disapprove of. In both cases there is nothing inherently harmful about the behavior to be be prohibited (reading or playing cards, which do not in themselves hurt anyone), just the supposition on the part of the regulating group that the activity will have a harmful future result in some cases (i.e. reading Ulysses will cause people to become depraved; gambling will cause people to spend all of their money and destroy their lives). In both cases, the danger is real in some instances (people do get dangerous ideas from books, and they do destroy their lives by gambling) but the benefits have been deemed to outweigh the dangers (at least, with respect to books, the lottery, and track racing in this state). So, no, I don’t think the parallel is obtuse. In fact, I think the people who banned books in Boston a few decades ago were filled with the same kind of sincere conviction that what they were doing was morally and practically right as fuels many (not all) opponents of casino gambling. Times change, however, and it appears attitudes toward casino gambling in Massachusetts have become more liberal than in the past.
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p>I, personally, believe that all gambling is bad. Some is acceptable (in the same way that some colds are acceptable: can’t do anything about them…) and can’t be avoided but it’s certainly not good.
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p>I wonder A) why people enjoy it? And, 2) would they enjoy it if they truly knew the odds?
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p>As to why: I suspect, but don’t know (as I don’t gamble) that there is an adrenaline rush (helped along by the gee-whiz lights, sounds and general atmosphere of places like casinos) that is pleasurable.
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p>But that begs the question 2) would they enjoy it if they knew, mathematically, that their adrenaline has no release? The thought of a big ‘score’ might excite someone and get the juices flowing, so to speak. But would the adrenaline flow, do you think, if they knew the outcome, while not being ‘fixed’ per se, is weighed very very heavily and not in their direction?
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p>You drink. You get drunk. There’s a ‘payoff’ there. If you read you either enjoy the book or you don’t (or learn something from it). But if you thought that every third drink you took you’d win a hundred dollars, you’d keep drinking and the ‘payoff’ of getting drunk gets shifted to the backseat. Likewise, suppose somebody slipped a hundred dollar bill into a book in your personal library. If they didn’t tell you which book you’d have to go through them all, no?
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p>Where’s the enjoyment in that?
I gamble and hang out with people that gamble and I can tell you the vast majority of people that gamble know that the odds are stacked in favor of the house. Yet they partake anyway. Either they are addicted or they derive some form of enjoyment. The question is does the existence of the former group warrant denying access to the latter group? If yes, what to do with alcohol, cigarettes.
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p>And I’m still waiting for someone to explain why adding a couple of casinos in a state with more than 7,500 lottery outlets (not to mention the plethora online gambling sites) will have a material impact on the amount of gambling that occurs here.
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p>Your logic here crumbles upon even the most cursory of inspection: there is ‘enjoyment’ to be had in nearly everything that is addicting. One can, simultaneously enjoy something (or think they are enjoying something…) and be addicted. Addiction isn’t a blatant bugbear that leaps out of a closet and instantly immiserates your life. The former group and the latter group can be one in the same.
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p>Insofar as your knowledge that the odds are stacked in favor of the house you should make clear if you’re speaking of casino gambling or oddsmaking (like a football pool, or a fight or other sports bet) which is an entirely different kettle of fish. You have much better odds with a bookie, who optimizes bets, via the spread and other odds, in order to make certain enough people bet for and enough bet against a specific outcome. The bookie lives of the commissions and isn’t particularly concerned with the outcome one way or the other. While I detest all forms of gambling, I at least can say that oddsmakers are really proffering a product that can be called ‘gambling.’ Also, many people are sufficiently expert at analyzing a sports teams chances, or a fighters potential, to mitigate some of the more deleterious aspects of innumeracy in this regard.
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p>Insofar as slots are concerned, you’re pretty much not gambling at all, you’re just throwing money away, as there is little chance you’ll get any money back and the games are mathematically set to optimize ‘play to extinction’, the pithy casino term for picking ones pocket bare.
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p>Casinos games like blackjack, roulette and craps are little better than slots and you’d be crazy to play them without a deep understanding of the probabilities involved. The casino is particularly concerned, in many cases, with a specific outcome and has a variety of ways to maximize the chance of that outcome happening.
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p>Your premise seems to be anyone that gambles is addicted. You see no basis for enjoyment/recreation so the only explanation for why one would waste their time and money gambling is some level of addiction. I disagree completely. I have seen this first hand for a long time. I am not relying on google searches and “independent” studies. I’ve actually been to a race track and a casino.
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p>Your assertion that bookmakers don’t care about the outcome of games is absurd. The only state of the world in which it is true is one where the same amount of money is wagered on both sides of the same game. This virtually never happens. Bookies are gamblers too. The odds are in their favor but they often lose and lose big, especially the dumb ones.
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p>The house edge in sports gambling is significant. One must win about 52.5% of his bets (assuming all are of equal value made at odds of 11/10) in order to break even.
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p>I don’t play table games like blackjack and craps but I’m pretty sure if you are smart and make the right decisions the house edge is very small (around 1% I think). It is somewhat larger in roulette and larger still in electronic games (slots, video poker, etc.). I think anyone that plays these games is nuts, but they are getting substantially better odds in a casino than at the local superette when they buy their lottery tickets, which return less than $0.60 on the dollar.
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p>And the beauty of the lottery is, of course, that the state doesn’t have to share the profits with the bookie that runs the casino, because with respect to the lottery, the state is the bookie. (And at the same time the state commits significant amounts of scarce law enforcement resources to arresting “bookies” that take sports bets. Our tax dollars at work. What a farce.)
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p>I’d still love an answer to riddle of why a couple of casinos will materially impact the amount of gambling that occurs in this state.
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p>Not at all. you posited the antithetical: either (you stated) there was entertainment or there was addiction. I merely point out where you are mistaken.
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p>You just refuted your own refutation. The exact and only idea behind the point spread is to get people to bet on both sides of the wager. Duh. And, while it’s never the exact same amount of money it’s always close enough to make the bookie happy. The more enticing the spread, the more bets on either side. That’s. the. point. duh.
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p>Blackjack (and poker) are considered ‘games of skill’. At a casino, however, blackjack is played with multiple decks thus mitigating the skills used (memorization, counting and knowledge of probability.) Poker is actually a game of skill. Craps is almost pure chance, as is roulette.
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p>Because a couple of casinos in Connecticut (a state with it’s own lottery as well as participation in the tri-state lottery and relatively easy access to Atlantic City) has had a significant impact. Mohegan Sun is the second largest casino in the world.
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p>You shouldn’t gamble. You don’t understand numbers or ratios.
… about me and about a world in which you never visit.
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p>Let’s start with me. I have degrees in accounting and economics and have been in the investment business for over 25 years. No one has ever accused me of innumeracy before, but they don’t know me the way you do.
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p>I gamble an infinitesimal amount of my earnings online playing poker and sports betting. I would rarely if ever visit a casino if one were built here. But I think there are a lot of people that would enjoy it and I think it would be a good source of revenue for the state. And I don’t think it is right to tell people what they can and can’t do with their time and money.
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p>Point spreads, while designed to induce equal amounts of action on both sides, often do not. The simplest example (but there are many others) would be a local bookie taking action on Patriots games. The vast majority of his clients are going to bet the Patriots every week. The majority of his action will be on the Patriots game on a given Sunday. He will try and “lay off” his excess exposure to the Pats but other bookies will not take the layoff bets if they are in the same predicament. If the Patriots cover he most likely loses money that day. If the Patriots go on a streak, like they did in the first half of the 2007 season, they can (and did) put smaller bookies under. Under capitalized bookies run a very great risk of bankrupting themselves because there is significant variability in their results.
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p>I agree that counting cards in blackjack is not easy to do in multi deck games. It requires an enormous amount of training and discipline. Very, very few people are capable. Otherwise, if you follow the basic rules of when to hit and when to not (which casinos hand out to players for free), the odds are very slightly slanted in favor of the house. If you play long enough you will lose, but there is a lot of variability over short time spans that give people the chance to win if they are disciplined and quit while they are ahead.
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p>I disagree that a two or three high end resort style casinos situated away from urban areas would materially change the amount of gambling done by residents of the state, particularly the less well off among us. The poor will not take the time to travel to a casino. But fortunately, they will continue to pour their gambling dollars into the lottery. The goal should be to capture as many of the gambling dollars currently flowing to CT from both Mass and non Mass residents, particularly higher end tourists. I don’t see why the total amount of gambling activity would change much because if someone has the itch to gamble today there are no shortages of places to go to scratch.
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p>Oh dear.
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p>It’s amazing, innit, what is revealed when you think your revelations are safe…?
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p>Well, there are limits, no? I don’t see a brothel coming to Mass anytime soon. Opium dens? Mercenary training camps? Some people might want to spend their time and money dressing up like Nazi’s and hoping to get a spanking from Charlotte Rampling. I don’t see that happening anytime soon. (Happy 63rd to Charlotte, btw…)
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p>In point of fact, a goodly amount of people might want to be what you (presumably) call ‘communist’: a lot of people, it seems to me, want to spend their time and money in/on a society of redistributive wealth where nobody is homeless and everybody has heat in the winter. Such efforts are often stymied by a vocal and persistent minority. Why is that, do you suppose? Interestingly (to me, at least) nobody ever uses the argument you proffer, to argue for it… “I don’t think it is right to tell people what they can and can’t do with their time and money.”
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p>In fact, I fail, utterly, to see where and/or why you think this line of reason is, in any manner, compelling. You may, in fact, think such things are wrong, but they get done all the time. It’s called civilization. If the word ‘democracy’ has any meaning whatsoever, it’s that a portion of the people (called a ‘majority’) get to dictate the limits of everybodies actions. The beauty of a democracy is that you gots to have good reasons for why you think things should be the way you think they should be… in this way, you convince people and they join your majority. I think I’ve been at pains to point out my reasoning why I think a majority of people, if they could, ought to vote against casinos. I’ve done nothing more (nor less) than that.
that’s why we have the Constitution, to protect the rights of the minority from the majority.
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p>I also have to assume pbrane was talking about legal activities when he/she talks about telling people what they can and can’t do with their time and money. The majority has decided gambling is legal, with certain limitations. You feel is it unwise to gamble, a losing proposition, fine-don’t gamble. Personally I agree with that but who the hell am I to judge the foolishness of how or what pbrane spends on entertainment. My entertainment dollars are spent on my boat, and all that goes with it. Believe me it’s a losing proposition. I never really know from year to year what my expenses will be, so I guess we shouldn’t allow people to own boats.
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p>Not exactly. We’re in the middle of the debate now, about whether to overturn existing law that makes casino gambling illegal. A good portion of the MGL (chapter 271) explicitly spells out what is illegal. A good deal of what gambling infrastructure exists today derives from quasi-legal (read: gray area) sovereignty issues and/or maritime exceptions.
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p>In 1950 a majority rejected a state lottery by ballot initiative, only to see the lottery created in 1971 (only twenty-one years later) by the lege as a response to the need for revenue in the face of a political inability to effectively raise taxes.
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p>In other news: recently, a majority voted to end dog racing in the state.
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p>And getting more slot machines in more places has been a constant uphill battle, with proponents, apparently, unable to take the hint…
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p>So I’m not comfortable with the blanket statement “the majority has decided gambling is legal.” I think the majority is still out on that one.
I didn’t research it the issue either. I just figured since we have a state sponsored lottery, and therefore I can engage in state sponsored gambling at thousands of locations across the state it must be supported by the majority.
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p>I understand we’re discussing casinos here, I just can’t create the great divide that others can between one form and another. As previously stated I don’t gamble, but I don’t care if you do, or anyone does, or how or where, you or they, do it.
Some (not you I’m sure) might posit that, unlike brothels and opium dens, this great Commonwealth of ours has already embraced gambling (you remember the part about the state being the BOOKIE with respect to the lottery, right? Where’s the outrage on that?).
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p>Massachusetts, a single party state and one of the most liberal states in the country, can’t even pass a graduated income tax regime. We spend more time fighting about whether to have an income tax at all. The silent majority of communists at work again I suppose.
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p>I don’t recall ever suggesting that you or anyone else can’t or shouldn’t express your views on this or any other issue. Let the people speak. Like it or not, it looks like the vocal minority is about to rise up once again.
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p>see above with respect to the ’embrace’ of gambling. It’s somewhere between a hug and a heisman stiff-arm… Not quite the embrace you’re thinking of.
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p>And I have plenty of outrage over the lottery. Best not to get me started, if only for my own health…
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38 years of state run gambling is a peck on the cheek, I guess. Of course, the barriers to getting ballot initiatives teed up are so great here that I can understand why it hasn’t been put in front of the voters for 59 years.
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p>It’s obviously a huge reach to suggest that killing dog racing (wasn’t it dead already???) was a referendum on gambling.
Why in none of the racino discussions does anyone bring up how if we allow slots at racetracks, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act kicks in and the tribes will be able to set up slots on their land without any permission from the state or local authorities?
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p>Am I missing something? When we talk about casinos, slots are it — Class III gaming. Once that snowball starts rolling downhill, we can’t stop it.
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p>An argument can be made for one or two resort casinos, but racinos are the worst of all possible suggestions.
And one that seems to have been forgotten until now.
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p>Link (admittedly, that post went up a couple of minutes after this comment).
Tut, tut.
There must be better ways to create jobs and balance budgets.
My State Representative, Tom Conroy of Wayland, authored a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the three resort casino proposal promoted by the Governor.
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p>This analysis focused on the revenue and job creation “benefits” of casinos and concluded that they were a bad idea. It did not take any moral stance, pro or con. It played a major role in the debate leading up to the defeat of casinos in the last session.
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p>To view and download a copy, go to:
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p>http://www.waylanddems.org/Cas…
It’s like dumping a cup of rat poison into the Quabbin Reservoir. The effect would be pretty much nothing. Same’s true of a casino in say, Palmer or Middleboro. i.e. a casino into a $150 billion dollar economy. I’m thinking the dilution effect would make the casino and all its ills as benign as Foxwoods is to all of Connecticut. Bring it on.
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p>/the casino, not the rat poison
//have you even seen Palmer, MA?! Yikes.
that I hope you’re right.
Where do you think the water supply is going to come from to feed a mega casino if it is sited in Palmer? Why doesn’t western MA just stop sending water to eastern MA and sell it to the casino investors?
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p>Home rule!
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p>Gary, it’s not about dilution, it’s about impact and the lack of mitigation in any formula to offset the impact.
Home rule works. Palmer has voted its approval for a casino.