Thread: Prohibition II

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15265338/site/newsweek/

Prohibition II: Good Grief

When government restricts Americans' choices, ostensibly for their own good, someone is going to profit from the paternalism.

Oct. 23, 2006 issue - Perhaps Prohibition II is being launched because Prohibition I worked so well at getting rid of gin. Or maybe the point is to reassure social conservatives that Republicans remain resolved to purify Americans' behavior. Incorrigible cynics will say Prohibition II is being undertaken because someone stands to make money from interfering with other people making money.

For whatever reason, last Friday the president signed into law Prohibition II. You almost have to admire the government's plucky refusal to heed history's warnings about the probable futility of this adventure. This time the government is prohibiting Internet gambling by making it illegal for banks or credit-card companies to process payments to online gambling operations on a list the government will prepare.

Last year about 12 million Americans wagered $6 billion online. But after Congress, 32 minutes before adjourning, passed its ban, the stock of the largest online-gambling business, Gibraltar-based PartyGaming, which gets 85 percent of its $1 billion annual revenue from Americans, declined 58 percent in one day, wiping out about $5 billion in market value. The stock of a British company, World Gaming PLC, which gets about 95 percent of its revenue from Americans, plunged 88 percent. The industry, which has some 2,300 Web sites and did half of its business last year with Americans, has lost $8 billion in market value because of the new law. And you thought the 109th Congress did not accomplish anything.

Supporters of the new law say it merely strengthens enforcement; they claim that Internet gambling is illegal under the Wire Act enacted in 1961, before Al Gore, who was then 13, had invented the Internet. But not all courts agree. Supporters of the new law say online gambling sends billions of dollars overseas. But the way to keep the money here is to decriminalize the activity.

The number of online American gamblers, although just one sixth the number of Americans who visit real casinos annually, doubled in the last year. This competition alarms the nation's biggest gambling interests - state governments.

It is an iron law: When government uses laws, tariffs and regulations to restrict the choices of Americans, ostensibly for their own good, someone is going to make money from the paternalism. One of the big winners from the government's action against online gambling will be the state governments that are America's most relentless promoters of gambling. Forty-eight states (all but Hawaii and Utah) have some form of legalized gambling. Forty-two states have lottery monopolies. Thirty-four states rake in part of the take from casino gambling, slot machines or video poker.

The new law actually legalizes online betting on horse racing, Internet state lotteries and some fantasy sports. The horse- racing industry is a powerful interest. The solidarity of the political class prevents the federal officials from interfering with state officials' lucrative gambling. And woe unto the politicians who get between a sports fan and his fun.

In the private sector, where realism prevails, casino operators are not hot for criminalizing Internet gambling. This is so for two reasons: It is not in their interest for government to wax censorious. And online gambling might whet the appetites of millions for the real casino experience.

Granted, some people gamble too much. And some people eat too many cheeseburgers. But who wants to live in a society that protects the weak-willed by criminalizing cheeseburgers? Besides, the problems - frequently exaggerated - of criminal involvement in gambling, and of underage and addictive gamblers, can be best dealt with by legalization and regulation utilizing new software solutions. Furthermore, taxation of online poker and other gambling could generate billions for governments.

Prohibition I was a porous wall between Americans and their martinis, giving rise to bad gin supplied by bad people. Prohibition II will provoke imaginative evasions as the market supplies what gamblers will demand - payment methods beyond the reach of Congress.

But governments and sundry busybodies seem affronted by the Internet, as they are by any unregulated sphere of life. The speech police are itching to bring bloggers under campaign-finance laws that control the quantity, content and timing of political discourse. And now, by banning a particular behavior - the entertainment some people choose, using their own money - government has advanced its mother-hen agenda of putting a saddle and bridle on the Internet.

Gambling is, however, as American as the Gold Rush or, for that matter, Wall Street. George Washington deplored the rampant gambling at Valley Forge, but lotteries helped fund his army as well as Harvard, Princeton and Dartmouth. And Washington endorsed the lottery that helped fund construction of the city that now bears his name, and from which has come a stern - but interestingly selective - disapproval of gambling.

My question is this, instead of completely prohibiting this activity that obviously millions of Americans enjoy, why didn't the government just legalize it and bring some kind of regulation to it?

Originally Posted by kniggit

My question is this, instead of completely prohibiting this activity that obviously millions of Americans enjoy, why didn't the government just legalize it and bring some kind of regulation to it?

They will when they figure out a way to get $$ from it.

Thats just it, Party Poker, PokerStars etc make probably a million dollars a day without any kind of regulation at all. There is no guarantee that once you send them money that you will get it back if you win, but yet, millions of Americans do it out of their own free will. Sports betting is another multi-billion industry that is affected by this law that also has millions of Americans participating. Both of these things are legal in numerous places in the US but now it cannont be done online in the privacy of your own home.

Why doesn't the government start a regulatory commitee with checks and balances and allow gambling online and keep some of this money in the United States instead of pushing it further undeground and into banana republics?

I would rather have the government make a little money off of it instead of trying to legislate morality!

Having played at PokerStars for the past year I can assure you that if you win you will get your money. The credits go right onto the credit card account you registered with. Big Goobermint is just PISSED that they're not making any money on it!

I know that you will get paid at Stars but there is nothing that says they can't just close up shop and keep your money. This has happened at quite a few sportsbooks over the years. The point is instead of trying harder to prevent it the gov should be trying to institute some kind of oversight to try and prevent some of the con artists. Instead they just say that you can't do that anymore online in the privacy of your own home.

Why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as well as prohibition did, in five years Americans would be the smartest race of people on Earth.

Will Rogers

I know from experience the Gov has allready used credit cards in this way it was done with buying cigarettes on the internet, you can no longer buy them using a credit card isnt that a bunch of bull crap? Maybe we need to threaten our credit card people if we can only use them for what the gov. chooses to let us buy with them we should have a big bonfire and burn the durn things! More and more gov is telling us what we can and can not do, but it is only for our own good right? We need to put a stop to this crap and do it right now!