Fair Gaming

The NC Senate is working on patching a law that will do away with Internet Sweepstakes shitholes.  This is not a bad thing,  but I am not sure banning gambling is.  I think it is time to take a leap and make NC a state with real gambling.  Sure we have Cherokee but one casino with shitty odds is no better than Internet Sweepstakes in my opinion.

My problem with the Internet Sweepstakes is not that they prey on lower income people or that they are a sin,  it is that they offer no real odds at winning and it is a missed opportunity for taxes and jobs.  Most video based machines need to meet a payback level set by the regulators in the state in which they operate.  These are usually lower than the payout made by the machines as the casinos offer higher payout to try and attract customers from other gaming venues.  Indian Casinos don’t usually have to meet this requirement, which means Cherokee with no competition is paying lower as they are the only place to gamble in the area.

People seem to want to gamble, some to levels that are not healthy.  Smokers and drinkers also fall into the category where too much of a bad thing is bad.  We tax the hell out of these people, we regulate it, we offer educational programs,  but people still smoke and drink themselves to death.  So the argument that gambling is a sin and bad for people is bullshit,  we allow other things that are bad for people,  when you allow something you can regulate it and make it work for you as much as possible.

Recently I was buying a couple cans of Sparks from a gas station near my house.  The woman in front of me was buying toilet paper, some other sundries and a stack of lottery tickets.  She commented to the cashier, “I need to try and win some money back that I lost at the casino.. I mean sweepstakes.”  The other gas station near my house has a dedicated line for lottery tickets.  They also have a few gaming machines,  not sure how they work in terms of putting money in and getting money out.

This shows me that people want to gamble.  The “Education” Lottery provides fair and published odds but no real interactive features.  People want to go out for the night and have an experience.  Right now they are doing it in strip malls and getting robbed.  The only solution is open up real gambling establishments.

Give people fair odds on video machines, and some table games.  Let them go have some drinks,  lose some money, and do so in a controlled environment.  Jobs, taxes, and tourism sound like good things for the state.  If done correctly we could bring in people from all of the surrounding states for a good decade before they legalize and build casinos of their own.  We regulate the industry so that we do no overbuild,  say 2 casinos per 100 radius.  Enough to allow competition but not enough to cause issues when the industry slides.