Video gambling is a variation of a Ponzi scheme
I didn’t have time to write a post today. I’m posting material I had already written but not posted about video gambling. I haven’t decided yet if I’ll stay with video gambling the rest of the week or return to “Global Warming.”
When I was young, I used to gamble (poker) for money upon occasion. My freshman year of college we occasionally had a Thursday night poker session among the students who lived in our off-campus house. None of us had much money so not much money changed hands. However, in those poker sessions as in any gambling, only one of three possibilities could happen. Some people won money, some people lost money, and occasionally some people broke even. If $50 came to the table, $50 left the table but the mix was probably different.
Once I became a Christian, I stopped gambling altogether, almost. I’ve never purchased a lottery ticket. I’ve never been given a lottery ticket as a “gift” as sometimes suggested by State sponsored lottery advertisers. (Wait for their Christmas advertisements. “What better gift than $50 worth of lottery tickets?” For almost all, $50 in cash!) In fact, when a lottery program was first suggested in Arizona (either by initiative or referendum, I don’t remember which) I worked actively against it. It passed.
There was one and only one exception to my not gambling once I became a Christian. Living in Arizona, I thought I might visit Las Vegas and see what it was like. I consequently researched the best deal. The deal I selected basically paid for my hotel room and, among other inducements, included “free” slots—$50 in tokens to play the slot machines.
I researched slot machines and read among other things, that “looser” slots—slots that were more likely to pay out more often—were located at the end of aisles so that other patrons were more likely to “observe” a winning pull. That made sense to me since I knew that grocery stores pushed items by placing them at the ends of aisles. I visited Las Vegas in the dead of summer when I thought there would be less people. It was over 100° each day I was there but then I like hot weather. As a cultural experience, I walked from one end of the strip to the other. It was dirty. Garbage—mostly in the form of paper—was everywhere. The city was not going green at that time.
I picked an end of the aisle slot machine that was close to the entrance of the casino—another suggestion from my research. When I had won $20.00, I walked away with the twenty I had won plus the original fifty. If I had lost the fifty, I would have stopped. I had NO intention of using my own money. However, if I had NOT walked away, I would have eventually lost everything because all machines, no matter how “loose” they are designed to be, eventually make everyone a loser.
The casinos are there to make money not to lose it. How can the casino afford to give away such money losing deals? They know based upon statistics that not everyone is going to walk away. Some will keep coming back, and coming back, and coming back until they’ve lost everything—they will play to extinction! If the casinos didn’t make money by enticing people to gamble, they would not spend the money to do so. When the old suckers dry up, they always need new suckers.
What has this got to do with a Ponzi scheme? What is a Ponzi scheme? My dictionary provides the following: “Ponzi scheme n. [Charles A. Ponzi … American (Italian born) swindler] (1973): an investment swindle in which some early investors are paid off with the money put up by later ones in order to encourage more and bigger risks (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, tenth edition; Merriam-Webster, Incorporated;
Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S.A. © 1995; page 905.) If an early investor walks away after making his thirty percent, he has made money. If he keeps reinvesting the money until the scheme implodes, he has LOST everything invested or much of everything invested.
But, video gambling machines don’t fit that definition. No. However, I said it was a variation of a Ponzi scheme. In fact, slots, the prototype of video gambling machines, were around before the actions of a Ponzi scheme were defined as such—although the principle has been around much longer. Two things must be present under both: 1) greed—the desire to get something for nothing or get more for something than is normal
2) the illusion that one is getting more than normal/the illusion that one can beat the system and win.
No one would fall for a Ponzi scheme if he didn’t think he was somehow “beating the system”—getting a greater return on an investment than other people can and are getting from similar investments. Paying old investors a 30% return instead of 5% does two things. It encourages him to invest more and it encourages him to recruit more investors to “beat” the system. Those new investors help pay the “high investment return” to the old investors. The scheme must eventually end when the swindler disappears, or he runs out of new investor money to pay “the high returns” to the old investors, or he gets caught!
Notice that each investment victim had a choice. Each investor had an illusion of winning and each investor was driven by greed. Each could have chosen not to invest. Each did not. Yet each is considered a victim. Why aren’t gamblers also considered a victim? They also have an illusion of winning. They also are driven by greed. One is a victim and one is not?
Could it be that the investors are more likely considered to be a victim because they tend to be wealthier? Could it be that the investors are likely considered to be a victim because investing is more reputable than gambling? Although some addicted gamblers certainly are wealthy, don’t gamblers tend to be individuals who have less money? They tend not be people who can “gamble” thousands of dollars on investments so their “investment” is lower and in the form of gambling directly—lotteries, poker, dice, other card “games” (I’ve NEVER accepted the idea that gambling is a sport or a game. People gamble for money for one primary reason—to make more money, certainly not to intentionally lose it.)
One basic premise of investing is NEVER invest money that you can’t avoid to lose. Investing is risk taking. Investing that provides a higher rate of return is also a higher risk. Gambling is risk taking too except the odds are much higher and the risks are much greater. It is also addictive. However, many lower income people see it as the only way to get a high return. Video gambling is the “crack cocaine” of gambling. And yet it seems that governments want to legalize it through the State to take advantage of this risk taking and this addictive quality? How low will government go for MORE money? When does it stop?
In video gambling, there has to be some winners to keep the illusion going that the odds can be beaten. New gamblers don’t receive payouts from newer gamblers but rather from older gamblers who are financing the winnings of newer gamblers.
Using a very basic explanation, each machine starts a new day with zero money. Let’s say a machine is programmed to make a $30 payout after every $130 dollars played. The first players lose $120 and each has decided “it’s just not my day” and walks away. The next player uses $10 to win $30. He has tripled his money. What a glorious day!
However, more money was lost and more money will be lost than will ever be won. If not, the establishment doesn’t make any money, the government doesn’t make any money, and gambling doesn’t happen because it is not profitable. Parasites don’t own and operate gambling machines to give other people their (the parasites’) own money. They are profit driven!
The system steals $130 from some people, gives $30 to one person—the “lucky” winner—and KEEPS the rest! In Illinois under the new video gambling law, the $100 then will be split in the following way. $30 goes to the State, $35 goes to the establishment that operates the video gambling machines, and $35 goes to the maker/owner of the machines. If the winner of the $30 keeps gambling, he will statistically lose it all since the video gambling machines are all geared to losing. (By the way, if I remember correctly and I didn’t take the time to check, by law the same person or company can not own both the establishment where video gambling is occurring and the actual gambling machines—my addition.)
The only way to insure winning and remaining a winner is to walk away and not gamble again once you have won more than you’ve lost. However, to do that, you’d better win the first time you gamble. Otherwise, you are chasing a loss and it is hard to break even and even harder to come out a winner. Obviously, it can be done and the casinos don’t mind it happening occasionally because that helps entice the losers to keep chasing their losses!
However, the gambling parasites, including governments that allow it and benefit from it, know that there are ALWAYS enough people who will come back and back again thinking they will win it all back and more. Or, if already a winner, they think they can win even more because they are “lucky”. Statistically, almost all of the true winners are the owners, the operators, and the government because they prey off of the greed and illusion of winning from the suckers who keep coming back time and time again to try to “get something for nothing.”
There ALWAYS has to been more LOSERS than winners moneywise. ALWAYS!!!
Ponzi schemes are illegal and they should be. The State of Illinois has now legalized an estimated 45,000 video gambling machines to steal millions of dollars mostly from their own citizens and mostly from financially poorer members of society. And Illinois becomes MORE and MORE a GANGSTER GOVERNMENT!
Historically, gangsters used gambling and other prohibited, immoral behavior as a means to prey upon and benefit from the weaknesses of men and women. Now, our own government has decided that it too should prey upon the weaknesses of men and women just as gangsters have throughout time. It now has become legal to destroy the lives of addictive-prone men and women for the sake of raising money for government.
How immoral must we become before we wake up as a nation? Will we ever wake up? Or has greed at all levels taken control of the United States? Governments have now become the STALKER of certain men and women instead of the protector of society—GANGSTER GOVERNMENT is alive, well, and growing.
I didn’t have time to write a post today. I’m posting material I had already written but not posted about video gambling. I haven’t decided yet if I’ll stay with video gambling the rest of the week or return to “Global Warming.”
When I was young, I used to gamble (poker) for money upon occasion. My freshman year of college we occasionally had a Thursday night poker session among the students who lived in our off-campus house. None of us had much money so not much money changed hands. However, in those poker sessions as in any gambling, only one of three possibilities could happen. Some people won money, some people lost money, and occasionally some people broke even. If $50 came to the table, $50 left the table but the mix was probably different.
Once I became a Christian, I stopped gambling altogether, almost. I’ve never purchased a lottery ticket. I’ve never been given a lottery ticket as a “gift” as sometimes suggested by State sponsored lottery advertisers. (Wait for their Christmas advertisements. “What better gift than $50 worth of lottery tickets?” For almost all, $50 in cash!) In fact, when a lottery program was first suggested in Arizona (either by initiative or referendum, I don’t remember which) I worked actively against it. It passed.
There was one and only one exception to my not gambling once I became a Christian. Living in Arizona, I thought I might visit Las Vegas and see what it was like. I consequently researched the best deal. The deal I selected basically paid for my hotel room and, among other inducements, included “free” slots—$50 in tokens to play the slot machines.
I researched slot machines and read among other things, that “looser” slots—slots that were more likely to pay out more often—were located at the end of aisles so that other patrons were more likely to “observe” a winning pull. That made sense to me since I knew that grocery stores pushed items by placing them at the ends of aisles. I visited Las Vegas in the dead of summer when I thought there would be less people. It was over 100° each day I was there but then I like hot weather. As a cultural experience, I walked from one end of the strip to the other. It was dirty. Garbage—mostly in the form of paper—was everywhere. The city was not going green at that time.
I picked an end of the aisle slot machine that was close to the entrance of the casino—another suggestion from my research. When I had won $20.00, I walked away with the twenty I had won plus the original fifty. If I had lost the fifty, I would have stopped. I had NO intention of using my own money. However, if I had NOT walked away, I would have eventually lost everything because all machines, no matter how “loose” they are designed to be, eventually make everyone a loser.
The casinos are there to make money not to lose it. How can the casino afford to give away such money losing deals? They know based upon statistics that not everyone is going to walk away. Some will keep coming back, and coming back, and coming back until they’ve lost everything—they will play to extinction! If the casinos didn’t make money by enticing people to gamble, they would not spend the money to do so. When the old suckers dry up, they always need new suckers.
What has this got to do with a Ponzi scheme? What is a Ponzi scheme? My dictionary provides the following: “Ponzi scheme n. [Charles A. Ponzi … American (Italian born) swindler] (1973): an investment swindle in which some early investors are paid off with the money put up by later ones in order to encourage more and bigger risks (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, tenth edition; Merriam-Webster, Incorporated;
Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S.A. © 1995; page 905.) If an early investor walks away after making his thirty percent, he has made money. If he keeps reinvesting the money until the scheme implodes, he has LOST everything invested or much of everything invested.
But, video gambling machines don’t fit that definition. No. However, I said it was a variation of a Ponzi scheme. In fact, slots, the prototype of video gambling machines, were around before the actions of a Ponzi scheme were defined as such—although the principle has been around much longer. Two things must be present under both: 1) greed—the desire to get something for nothing or get more for something than is normal
2) the illusion that one is getting more than normal/the illusion that one can beat the system and win.
No one would fall for a Ponzi scheme if he didn’t think he was somehow “beating the system”—getting a greater return on an investment than other people can and are getting from similar investments. Paying old investors a 30% return instead of 5% does two things. It encourages him to invest more and it encourages him to recruit more investors to “beat” the system. Those new investors help pay the “high investment return” to the old investors. The scheme must eventually end when the swindler disappears, or he runs out of new investor money to pay “the high returns” to the old investors, or he gets caught!
Notice that each investment victim had a choice. Each investor had an illusion of winning and each investor was driven by greed. Each could have chosen not to invest. Each did not. Yet each is considered a victim. Why aren’t gamblers also considered a victim? They also have an illusion of winning. They also are driven by greed. One is a victim and one is not?
Could it be that the investors are more likely considered to be a victim because they tend to be wealthier? Could it be that the investors are likely considered to be a victim because investing is more reputable than gambling? Although some addicted gamblers certainly are wealthy, don’t gamblers tend to be individuals who have less money? They tend not be people who can “gamble” thousands of dollars on investments so their “investment” is lower and in the form of gambling directly—lotteries, poker, dice, other card “games” (I’ve NEVER accepted the idea that gambling is a sport or a game. People gamble for money for one primary reason—to make more money, certainly not to intentionally lose it.)
One basic premise of investing is NEVER invest money that you can’t avoid to lose. Investing is risk taking. Investing that provides a higher rate of return is also a higher risk. Gambling is risk taking too except the odds are much higher and the risks are much greater. It is also addictive. However, many lower income people see it as the only way to get a high return. Video gambling is the “crack cocaine” of gambling. And yet it seems that governments want to legalize it through the State to take advantage of this risk taking and this addictive quality? How low will government go for MORE money? When does it stop?
In video gambling, there has to be some winners to keep the illusion going that the odds can be beaten. New gamblers don’t receive payouts from newer gamblers but rather from older gamblers who are financing the winnings of newer gamblers.
Using a very basic explanation, each machine starts a new day with zero money. Let’s say a machine is programmed to make a $30 payout after every $130 dollars played. The first players lose $120 and each has decided “it’s just not my day” and walks away. The next player uses $10 to win $30. He has tripled his money. What a glorious day!
However, more money was lost and more money will be lost than will ever be won. If not, the establishment doesn’t make any money, the government doesn’t make any money, and gambling doesn’t happen because it is not profitable. Parasites don’t own and operate gambling machines to give other people their (the parasites’) own money. They are profit driven!
The system steals $130 from some people, gives $30 to one person—the “lucky” winner—and KEEPS the rest! In Illinois under the new video gambling law, the $100 then will be split in the following way. $30 goes to the State, $35 goes to the establishment that operates the video gambling machines, and $35 goes to the maker/owner of the machines. If the winner of the $30 keeps gambling, he will statistically lose it all since the video gambling machines are all geared to losing. (By the way, if I remember correctly and I didn’t take the time to check, by law the same person or company can not own both the establishment where video gambling is occurring and the actual gambling machines—my addition.)
The only way to insure winning and remaining a winner is to walk away and not gamble again once you have won more than you’ve lost. However, to do that, you’d better win the first time you gamble. Otherwise, you are chasing a loss and it is hard to break even and even harder to come out a winner. Obviously, it can be done and the casinos don’t mind it happening occasionally because that helps entice the losers to keep chasing their losses!
However, the gambling parasites, including governments that allow it and benefit from it, know that there are ALWAYS enough people who will come back and back again thinking they will win it all back and more. Or, if already a winner, they think they can win even more because they are “lucky”. Statistically, almost all of the true winners are the owners, the operators, and the government because they prey off of the greed and illusion of winning from the suckers who keep coming back time and time again to try to “get something for nothing.”
There ALWAYS has to been more LOSERS than winners moneywise. ALWAYS!!!
Ponzi schemes are illegal and they should be. The State of Illinois has now legalized an estimated 45,000 video gambling machines to steal millions of dollars mostly from their own citizens and mostly from financially poorer members of society. And Illinois becomes MORE and MORE a GANGSTER GOVERNMENT!
Historically, gangsters used gambling and other prohibited, immoral behavior as a means to prey upon and benefit from the weaknesses of men and women. Now, our own government has decided that it too should prey upon the weaknesses of men and women just as gangsters have throughout time. It now has become legal to destroy the lives of addictive-prone men and women for the sake of raising money for government.
How immoral must we become before we wake up as a nation? Will we ever wake up? Or has greed at all levels taken control of the United States? Governments have now become the STALKER of certain men and women instead of the protector of society—GANGSTER GOVERNMENT is alive, well, and growing.
posted by Christian Gunslinger at 4:41 AM
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