Casino City

There's an opinion piece in the Straits Times today, about the gambling thing, and whether Singapore should develop a resort that features a casino and other family entertainment. The gambling that is currently everywhere in Singapore: Toto, lottery, 4D, that kind of thing, betting on soccer, whether a nuclear holocaust with occur in our lifetime...

There are jackpot machines in some places, but it seems to be only in country clubs, as far as I can tell. So if people get addicted to fruit machines, at least they are somewhat rich. But the thing about Toto and 4D and stuff is that it's also "convenience gambling", just go NTUC can buy Toto, and this type of gambling is done in full view of kids and it can become quite routine that it doesn't even seem like gambling anymore. Not like when you go casino then you dress up and maybe set aside a wad of money to "invest". You just do your groceries and when you've paid for the milk powder you take the change and use it to buy some Toto.

The article quoted some US study about the socio-economic effects of gambling, they somehow managed to get some figure of about $5 billion spent in the US to like deal with problem gambling, and a figure of about $166 billion to deal with problem drinking (in the US).

Should Singapore have a casino? Is it akin to prostituting itself to tourists? The casino will probably make a lot of money, which the government can get a cut of and disburse to the general public, but where will this money come from? Also, casinos and the entertainment industry in general are really really "inefficient", in a sense. They spend so much money making the place look grand and expensive because they have a huge profit margin, so ultimately the people who gamble pay for these excesses when they lose money. Then the profit that comes out is still huge, but probably quite significantly reduced.

In a way it would be better if casinos could be bare-boned and then instead of building fantastic palaces, that money goes to feeding the poor.

I don't think gambling is a good thing, really, because it's not really rational. Basically, the odds are against you, and there isn't really anything you can do to change that. Ideally, people should be educated about things like these, but you can't actually guarantee that educated people are going to be rational, or even want to try to be.