Image via Reason.com
The Supreme Court’s 6-3 vote to strike down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act is a victory for sports “investors”. This opens the flood gates for legalized sports wagering in every state that chooses…….and rest assured most will. To think otherwise is to think that they will leave a trunk full of cash on the table.
For years, this issue has been haunted by the Demons of Sports Gambling, who are as follows: Addiction; Integrity; Sin. Let’s condemn all three to heaven…..I mean to hell, once and for all.
The Demon of Addiction insists that legalized sports gambling will increase the number of folks addicted, especially youth. This sinister troll from hell’s bunker totally misrepresents the essence of addiction, which is a form of self-medication. Since self-medication is its objective, it will engage in such behavior, be it through sports gambling, substance abuse, shopping, sex, or whatever other vice might be at its disposal. The continued suppressing of legalized sports only insures that another vice will be used.
Then there is the Demon of Integrity, which supposedly undermines the authenticity of the game. This abomination of truth is an outdated relic from the era when professional athletes were paid so little that most had to take off season jobs. Those days are long gone. Simply put, today’s professional athletes make so much money, to the point that they are virtually bribe-proof. In fairness, such is not the case for college athletes, and they would indeed still be vulnerable to this dishonest specter. But this is all the more reason to continue the movement to pay them as well.
The third Demon and arguably the most powerful is Sin. His powers are the broad default of the anti-sports gambling fringe. When his demon cousins of Integrity and Addiction fail, Sin is always there to pick up the mantle and be cited, even though most of his advocates cannot tell you exactly what the hell is wrong with a little sports action. Furthermore, a significant number of Sin’s advocates never miss Wednesday night’s church Bingo game. This Demon is but another example of how Sin has been unfairly tarnished for all of world history. If Sin were so bad, why do all of us indulge?
None of this is to say that there will be no victims of nationwide legal sports gambling. One will be the underground betting world, which has been primarily the domain of organized crime. By legalizing sports gambling, the worst the degenerate has to concern him with is a dinged FICO score or garnished paycheck. But he no longer must look over his shoulder for fear that Guido will break his knee caps.
The other loser will be off-shore gambling which has primarily taken place online. One report cites that one off shore entity currently gets 97% of its action from Americans.
But these are off-set by the projected $8.4 billion in new tax revenues and over $22 billion to the nation’s GDP. I’ll not cite the new jobs added because most will be minimum or non-living wage service industry jobs with little, if any, benefits. But still the math is in the black on this issue.
What is most frustrating about this issue is why the hell has it taken this long? We have a historical precedent called prohibition that made it crystal-clear that trying to suppress human urges by law NEVER work. In fact, the case can be made that by attempting to do so, one only increases whatever negative aspects of the behavior and activity that do exist. There is nowhere to go to resolve an unpaid, illegal bet. So let’s finally be adults and accept that folks are going to gamble…be it legal or illegal. The only reasonable plan is to bring the activity above ground, tax and regulate the inevitable.
