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Gambling: A Preliminary Inquiry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Lisa Newton
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Abstract

In all the criticisms that have shadowed the financial industry in recent years, the burden seems to be, that the reckless (as opposed to malicious) bankers too often took money of which they were the appointed stewards, and used it for speculation, especially in junk bonds. As Shaheen Borna and James Lowry argue in their “Gambling and Speculation” (the only article on gambling that I was able to raise on my computer) business speculation is probably wrong, since it is very like gambling, which everyone knows is wrong. But why is gambling wrong? If we, as the ethicists of business, are to adopt an uncharacteristically judgmental posture toward the most venerable American institutions, occupying the tallest and closest of American buildings, by calling their residents “gamblers,” then surely we ought to be able to provide an account of the blameworthiness of gambling itself. That, at any rate, is the challenge I set myself for this paper.

Type
Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 3 , Issue 4 , October 1993 , pp. 405 - 418
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 1993 

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References

Notes

1. Journal of Business Ethics 6(3):219-224 (April, 1987). That isn't quite true, actually. The computer search showed a fascinating literature, now over ten years old, on John Harris' proposal (in the spirit of Jonathan Swift) for a mandatory “survival lottery”—requiring an unlucky “donor” to be sacrificed if two or more persons with otherwise terminal diseases could be saved by the use of his organs. The proposal can be shown to maximize survival if not happiness, and to accord with certain rules of justice, but the thought of it makes some of us a little queasy. See Harris, John, “The Survival Lottery,” Philosophy 50 (191): 81–87 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (January 1975); Hanink, J. G. “On the Survival Lottery,” Philosophy 51: 223–225 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (April 1976); Morillo, Carolyn R. “As Sure As Shooting,” Philosophy 51: 80–89 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (January 1976); Singer, Peter, “Utility and the Survival Lottery,” Philosophy 52: 218–222 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (April 1977); Green, Michael B., “Harris's Modest Proposal,” Philosophy 54: 400–406 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (July 1979); Trammell, Richard L. and Wren, Thomas E., “Fairness, Utility and Survival,” Philosophy 52: 331–337 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (July 1977); Harris, John, “Hanink on the Survival Lottery,” Philosophy 53: 100–101 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (January 1978). All of which brings us back to the original question: since the profession seems to have no problem tackling the issues of games of chance when they are far-fetched and imaginary, why the avoidance of games of chance real, actual, and grossing a billion dollars a day all around us?

2. We may note in passing that the industry under consideration here, the industry that provides and draws its profits from the slot machines and card games of Las Vegas and Atlantic City, prefers to call itself the “gaming” industry, not “gambling.” “Gaming” certainly sounds better, conjuring up visions of children playing games for amusement. We take the two activities to be conceptually distinct: “Gaming” means playing games, no more or less; “gambling” means placing property at risk, as described below in the paper. We are concerned with the ethical implications of the latter, not the former, so we retain the term “gambling” to describe our subject.

3. Hart, H. L. A., The Concept of Law, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961.Google Scholar

4. See the report by the American Friends Service Committee, Struggle For Justice: A Report on Crime and Punishment in America, New York: Hill and Wang, 1971;Google Scholar also Troy, Duster, The Legislation of Morality, New York: The Free Press, 1970;Google Scholar Gilbert, Geis, Not the Law's Business? An Examination of Homosexuality, Abortion, Prostitution, Narcotics, and Gambling in the United States, National Institute of Mental Health, Crime and Delinquency Monograph Series, Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1972;Google Scholar The Knapp Commission Report on Police Corruption, New York: George Braziller, 1972; Herbert, L. Packer, The Limits of the Criminal Sanction, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1968;Google Scholar Edwin, M. Schur, Crimes Without Victims, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1965;Google Scholar Schur, Labeling Deviant Behavior, New York: Harper and Row, 1971;Google Scholar Schur, “The Case for Abolition,” in Victimless Crimes: Two Sides of a Controversy, by Edwin Schur and Hugo Adam Bedau, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1974. All of these have something to do with gambling; other literature on publicly condemned consensual transactions (for instance, the Report of the Wolfenden Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution, Home Office, London, 1972) base their conclusions on similar observation and argument.

5. See Wallace, Turner, Gamblers' Money: The New Force in American Life, Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press, 1965;Google Scholar Ed, Reid and Ovid, Demaris, The Green Felt Jungle, New York: Trident Press, 1963;Google Scholar Ovid, Demaris, (How Greed, Corruption and the Mafia Turned Atlantic City into) The Boardwalk Jungle, New York: Bantam Books, 1986.Google Scholar See also, for a gamblers' eye view of gambling, Stuart, Winston and Harriet Harris, M.D. Nation of Gamblers: America's Billion Dollar A Day Habit, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1984. 5.Google Scholar

6. Appendix C contains a sample of such discussion.

7. John, Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971.Google Scholar

8. Or so Gilbert Geis argues, citing abundant sources. Geis, op.cit pp. 225 ff.

9. See George, F. Will, Statecraft as Soulcraft: What Government Does, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983.Google Scholar

1. Clyde, Brion Davis, Something for Nothing, Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1956. Cited Geis, op. cit. p. 226 Google Scholar

2. Note that no amount of property is specified; we might want to exclude the wagering of insignificant amounts from consideration. Random from the point of view of the placer: the three numbers of the numbers game could, for all intents and purposes, come from the bottom line of the city's hospital care expenditures for that day, by no means a “random” amount. But from the point of view of the bettors, it is.

3. loc. cit.

1. Edmond, Bergler, The Psychology of Gambling, New York: Hill and Wang, 1957.Google Scholar (reprinted 1985, International Universities Press, Inc., no city of publication given), p. 7.

2. Ashton, J., The Nicker Nicked, or the Cheats of Gaming Discovered, orig. 1619;Google Scholar 1898 edition cited in France, C., “The Gambling Impulse,” American Journal of Psychology, 13: 364–407 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (1902), cited Jim, Orford, Excessive Appetites: A Psychological View of Addictions, New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1985, p. 30.Google Scholar

3. Dostoevsky, op.cit. p. 188.

4. Cited Bergler, op.cit. p. 52.

5. Stuart, Winston and Harriet Harris, M. D. Nation of Gamblers: America's Billion-Dol-lar-A-Day Habit, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1984.Google Scholar

6. op.cit.

7. Orford, Jim, Excessive Appetites: A Psychological View of Addictions, New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1985;Google Scholar Holliday and Fuller, The Psychology of Gambling, New York: Harper and Row, 1975.