Brian: You got money on this game?
Nathan: No. I’m just really worried about the fate of the Anaheim Angels.
Brian: I thought they were the Los Angeles Angels, again.
Nathan: They’re the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, now.
Brian: This world is messed up.
I gamble.
If you read The Nate Way during football season, you probably already knew that. But it bears repeating for those who don’t read The Nate Way (editor’s note, you should read The Nate Way). I’m not ashamed to admit that I gamble.
If I were allowed to usurp the AMA and the FDA and become King of America for a day, the first thing I would do is legalize open containers of alcohol in public. The second thing I would do is legalize gambling.
Gambling is ridiculously easy to do nowadays anyway because of the internet. Hell, a nine year old kid could open an online gambling account with their parent’s credit card in about two minutes flat. Gambling accounts are easier to procure than real maple syrup, juicy tomatoes or rare hamburgers (which I really miss).
Now, why would something so easily done and so harmless to others be illegal? I mean, has placing fifty bucks on the Yankees really ever hurt a person? The answers to the two above questions are “I don’t know” and “Yes, but only because the Yankees have been sucking lately.”
“I can drop $200 bucks on a penny stock as easily as I can drop $200 on the Yankees.”
By keeping gambling illegal, the American government is essentially keeping organized crime in business. And because that’s a tough business, I understand that its members need all the help they can get, but I don’t think that help should come from the federal government.
And if gambling were legal, wouldn’t it become easier to settle debts when a person fails to pay? Wouldn’t second mortgages replace appendage destruction? I think they would. Of course, we all know that I don’t know much. I went to the University of South Florida (motto: We’re Actually Located in Central Florida).
Now, some will tell you that gambling is stupid, that it’s no way to make money and that the gambler, in the end, is likely to lose big time. And maybe they are right, but so what? I can drop $200 bucks on a penny stock as easily as I can drop $200 on the Yankees and lose all my money either way, but no one seems to be looking to protect the casual investor from his stupid decision. Maybe the casual investor and the casual gambler make a lot of mistakes, but who’s to say exactly which type of stupidity the government gets to protect us from?
Oh yeah, the lobbyists.
For some dumb reason, the American government seems to think that it is their job to tell us where we can gamble. Gambling is fine on rivers and in Atlantic City and Las Vegas, and certain parts of Mississippi, and in that one casino in New Orleans, but anywhere else gambling is wrong and immoral.
And the reasons stated for exactly why gambling is illegal in most of America are vague and ever-changing at best, much like the reasons that this country got involved in the Iraq War which, from what I’ve been told, is perfectly moral.
Look, I pay my taxes, and if I haven’t earned the right to put $50 on Yankees while drinking out of an open container in front of my local convenience store then why in the hell have so many of my relatives fought and died in so many wars?
$100 says it’s because they believed in freedom.