Imagine that you go to the grocery store and pick
up a delicious chocolate cake. A government officer tells you that
eating cake is bad for you and will make you fat. You tell him that you
get regular exercise and that eating the cake won't affect your health,
and that he has no business telling you what you can or can't eat, but
this falls on deaf ears because there's a law that bans bad eating
habits.
Ridiculous, right? This is exactly what's happening with legal
bans on gambling, such as bans on online gambling proposed by
Congressmen Bob Goodlatte and Jim Leach. I'm a mathematics student, so
I'm the first person to tell you that gambling usually is not a
profitable endeavor. But I'm also the first person to recognize your
prerogative to decide what is or isn't a good way to spend your money.
Laws such as the ones discussed in the article "Congress
bills attempt to ban online gambling" (April 11) are exactly the
opposite; they suppose you're too stupid to know when you should or
shouldn't gamble online. All people have the right to choose how to
spend their own money.
Supporters of laws limiting gambling might claim that gambling
tempts people to throw away their rent money; so do big-screen TVs, and
yet no one would request laws limiting Best Buy's right to sell 57-inch
plasma screens. They might claim gambling leads to an increase in
crime; so do large banks, since without them there is no vault to rob.
But banning banks in order to reduce crime is unthinkable; the answer
is to punish criminals, not prevent private individuals from possessing
property.
They might claim that we must protect gambling addicts from
themselves. But the only way for obsessive gamblers like these to learn
anything is by letting them suffer the consequences of their actions;
coming home from Vegas to an empty bank account is a powerful learning
tool. But ultimately, no matter how little they learn, they harm only
themselves; it's obscene to limit the liberties of all men because some
don't know what to do with them.
All proponents of bans on gambling adhere to one basic
principle: that you are too weak to control yourself, so the government
has to control you. We must stand vehemently against all forms of
government baby-sitting. We are rational adults who can make decisions
about gambling for ourselves.
The Daily Bruin
