Lotto, gambling, and good judgement

[Smber2c]

I’ve always had worries about gambling and the lotto, I’ll put up my question, then my answers, and you love to hear your answers…or your opinion of my and other answer. (I think I just explained exactly what a message board is… …well now the few who didn’t know that do and knowing is half the battle)

My questions:

1. Is any gambling at all immoral? (like even just betting your brother $2 you will crush his next fast ball)
2. In theory, is casino style gambling immoral?
3. In theory, Is the lotto immoral?
4. With the reality that many abuse casino gambling, is it immoral?
5. With the reality that the vast majority abuse lotto, is it immoral?

My opinions:

1. No.
2. No.
3. No. Like at the Church fair or for the Boy scouts.
4. This has concerned me because many of the families I know who don’t have the money to be wasting on this go blow thousands at Casinos every year.
   I think that some people I know really do use Gambling as entertainment. They take 50 or 100 buck and spend an evening at the Casino. They aren’t looking to make the rent money, they are willing to accept losing it all (and stats say they’ll lose more than win) and would consider those nights as “no more expensive than if I’d gone and watched a NFL or NBA game.”
   Still, there are many that abuse the system and it concerns me. But people abuse driving and we don’t outlaw cars.
   In the end, I think casinos are acceptable, but with all the $$$ they make casinos should have to help those who are addicted by also funding some counciling or maybe run ads like the beer companies do about not driving drunk. “Don’t come gamble here if you are using the grocery money.”
5. The lotto, as it works in society. The big money lotto. I don’t mean the church raffle or the Boy Scouts. I’m talking about the $155 million Power Ball stuff. I think this isn’t moral at all.

I feel it equates to a Poor Tax or and Uneducated Tax. Most the people I knew growing up were upper middle class, not a one of them played the lotto. First they we’re desperate for cash and second they understood that the odds are way against them. Some people don’t realize these things, or are desperatly seeking that big break. Of the couple middle lower class families I knew, the majority played the lotto, and played it heavily. They would have 10 or 12 tickets out and would get all excited when the news came on. I found it very sad.

You can tell who buys them just from where they sell best. Gas stations in nice areas usually have a couple forms of lotto tucked back behind the counter out of view. Low class areas - they have 32 sorts of scratch off lottery completely framing the outline of both cash registers.

No, the lotto doesn’t make them buy. But that doesn’t make it good or acceptable. These people are not in a position to make an objective/logically sound judgement - it would be nice for the government to then help keep them from errant and 99.9999% of the time useless purchases.

 

[Smber2c]

now that I got my whole idea together and posted I’m not sure if Moral Theology was the place for it.

If y’all want to move it to Social Justice or elsewhere, feel free and my bad

 

[deb1]

No, the lotto doesn’t make them buy. But that doesn’t make it good or acceptable. These people are not in a position to make an objective/logically sound judgment - it would be nice for the government to then help keep them from errant and 99.9999% of the time useless purchases.

i am not certain what the government could do. i don’t like the idea of the government deciding who can spend their money on what.

i am probably in the lower middle class category. maybe once a month i spend a dollar on a single lottery ticket. its a fun daydream, nothing more. i know the chances of me winning are nearly zil and even if i won, such sudden wealth would probably cause me more problems. i figure that i am donating to my state’s educational fund. that is where the money is supposed to go anyway.

by the way, my shift key is out, that is why i am not using capital letters.

 

[Catholig]

Do I think gambling is always immoral - I’m not sure. But do I feel uneasy watching the poker show down on the Travel Channel. You betcha.

Catholig

 

[Catholig]

i am not certain what the government could do. i don’t like the idea of the government deciding who can spend their money on what.

i am probably in the lower middle class category. maybe once a month i spend a dollar on a single lottery ticket. its a fun daydream, nothing more. i know the chances of me winning are nearly zil and even if i won, such sudden wealth would probably cause me more problems. i figure that i am donating to my state’s educational fund. that is where the money is supposed to go anyway.

by the way, my shift key is out, that is why i am not using capital letters.

Anthony Colmstock opposed the expansion of the Lottery. And was somewhat successful.

CAtholig

 

[deb1]

Do I think gambling is always immoral - I’m not sure. But do I feel uneasy watching the poker show down on the Travel Channel. You betcha.

Catholig

i have never watched he poker show on the travel channel. why did it make you uncomfortable. was it the gambling or something else.

gambling, itself, has never made me uncomfortable. i dont gamble because i don’t like the risks, but i understand that some people enjoy doing gambling. as long as they aren’t betting their life savings, i don’t see anything wrong with playing poker, etc.

anything done in excess is wrong.

 

[Smber2c]

i am not certain what the government could do. i don’t like the idea of the government deciding who can spend their money on what.

I agree, I’m very hazy on the government telling people what they can and can’t do.

But then again, I can’t stand thinking that the $300 million dollars (I just picked a #, not at all factual) was donated to Louisiana public school by the poorest people in the state…oh and only after some rich lotto dudes took the $1 billion slice of the top.

Same with the smoking tax. We know it kills, we know it causes cancer. So what do we do? We tax it like crazy and say it’s okay because of the billons the tax raise for the state…except that then the state is then burdened by a sickly cancer ridden work force, who need more medical care, whose kids and spouses my soon lack a living bread winner and thus would need government aid, and who have just been introduced to addictive habits 1.0, just wait til’ they start the really good ones.

One of the gov’t major roles is protecting it’s population. Again, I’m not sure how far they can go, but I wouldn’t mind a bit further.

 

[Smber2c]

Anthony Colmstock opposed the expansion of the Lottery. And was somewhat successful.

I thought he souned familiar so I looked him up on wikipeia.org:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Comstock

after reading, “During his career, Comstock clashed with Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger.” I wanted to give the guy a high five. When I read some of the things she taught/preached, it gets me sick. She’s one of the few I have to be careful not to harbor hatred for.

Another fellow, Edward Douglass White grauated from my high school and went on to be the 9th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. It seems that these were the two biggest names in the push to have the government close down the Louisiana State Lottery Company. 1893 the company held it’s last drawing.

Of course, they’re back. I’ve read about how when the lotto was pushed out, it eventually opened in another state and started illegally shipping tens of thousands of tickets illegally. Despite most feeling it moraly incorrect, eventually Louisiana just couldn’t stand seeing the money going out instead of comming in, and the lotto returned.

There’s nothing quite like everyone agreeing to meet at the lowest common denominator.

 

[Catholig]

i have never watched he poker show on the travel channel. why did it make you uncomfortable. was it the gambling or something else.

gambling, itself, has never made me uncomfortable. i dont gamble because i don’t like the risks, but i understand that some people enjoy doing gambling. as long as they aren’t betting their life savings, i don’t see anything wrong with playing poker, etc.

anything done in excess is wrong.

They gamble millions & it leads to gambling addictions.

Catholig

 

[deb1]

They gamble millions & it leads to gambling addictions.

Catholig

who is ‘they.’

many people gamble, not all have addictions nor will their activity always lead to addictions.

almost anything can, if done in excess, lead to trouble. i had a good friend who was addicted to shopping. her husband lost a strip due to her addiction. in the air force, being irresponsible with finances and constantly bouncing checks, can get you punished. her addictions hurt her husband’s military career.

is shopping in itself bad. no, but if done in excess it can seriously hurt families.

the same can be said of gambling.

as i said before, i don’t gamble because i don’t like the risks.

i apologize for not using capitals. i hope that this is not aggravating you guys as much as it is me.

 

[CCM08]

Is betting your friend 10 bucks immoral? Probably not, is going to Vegas and giving the casinos thousands of dollars of your money for what amounts to nothing a good idea? Probably not. In many cases gambling preys on the poor, offering the unreal at unbeatable odds. It certainly attracts other social vices, prostitution, drugs, and the like.

 

[Jay2]

When taking money slated for paying legitimate debt, and gambling it on the chance of “hitting it big”… then there’s a problem.

Taking $50 - $100 of “fun-money”, and going to a Casino knowing full well you probably will lose it… is entertainment.

A friendly wager between friends on a contest/game is just that… it just adds some fuel to the excitement.

My wife & I spent 7 glorious day in Hawaii in 2000… basically for free. How you ask??
We spent $20 and bought a few tickets for our Church’s annual summer picnic/raffle… We won the “Grand Prize”!
Immoral?.. the money went to the Church. They printed the tickets, knowing how many that needed to be sold to cover the cost of the prizes offered. Frankly the cost of the trip was “Spit in a Bucket” in comparison to what was brought in (according to the Church bulletin)! It was a great way to generate revenue for our Parish.

As long as gambing doesn’t start to control your life (like alcohol or tobacco can) I see nothing wrong with a friendly bet.

 

[wjp984]

Believe it or not, the Lotto actually might be the one form of gambling when the odds could be in your favor. It doesn’t happen often but here is why:

At least in the California Lottery there are 5 numbers out of I think 47 to pick from and then 1 number out of 23 to pick. Here are the odds of winning:

5/47 x 4/46 x 3/45 x 2/44 x 1/43 x 1/23. This equals a chance of 28 in 1 billion. This is approxamately 1 in 35.7 million. Therefore, when the lotto is above this ammount providing you don’t have to split the winnings with another person, the odds are in your favor to play. I’ve seen lottos get to 100 million before which means when it gets past the 35 million mark there is a good chance you won’t have to split so it is likely for the odds to be in your favor. Oh, and just in case any of you are thinking a really rich person can just buy all the tickets up and win when it is over 35 million it doesn’t work that way. There are actually two separate drawings to win so you would need to buy all the combinations 23 times to have every ticket and that would be an astronomical cost.

 

[DL82]

Part of the question though comes down to the balance between your knowledge that you’re not doing anything wrong in theory, and the reality that the casinos you gamble in are entirely dependent on the poor suckers who spend their whole lives and incomes on the place, the addicts, and that the casino owners are happy to keep on funding their profits through such people.

If you’re talking about going to the Casino at the Dorchester Hotel or something, and if you have the kind of ‘fun money’ to burn that people at such a place consider to be small change, maybe that’s different. Still, someone with that kind of wealth could surely spend it on something more beneficial.

Even though drinking isn’t wrong, would you go into a bar that you knew was run by drug dealers and a haunt of hitmen and mobsters?

It’s similar to the issue around marijuana use in my opinion - though I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it in theory, I also realise that it contributes to more sinister things that really hurt a lot of people.

But then again, so does unethical investment in the developing world - should we also avoid putting our money in the bank account that earns the highest interest, and put it in the bank that’s the most ethical investor instead? Maybe so.

 

[CCM08]

Even though drinking isn’t wrong, would you go into a bar that you knew was run by drug dealers and a haunt of hitmen and mobsters?

40 years ago you’d have had a point. Today Reno and Vegas are corporate owned top to bottom. While I don’t neccessarily recommend watching it, the film Casino is largely about the end of the mob’s run of Vegas.

 

[BobP123]

And into what category does “investing” in the stock market fall into? Or “investing” in property? Aren’t these forms of gambling too? I have known people who have lost a heck of a lot more in these ventures than the lottery or parley cards.

 

[Malcolm_McLean]

And into what category does “investing” in the stock market fall into? Or “investing” in property? Aren’t these forms of gambling too? I have known people who have lost a heck of a lot more in these ventures than the lottery or parley cards.

Gambling is when the element of risk is artifically introduced for the purpose of creating excitement.

So if I plant a field of apples there are lots of inherent risks in that. The trees might be attacked by insects an yiled almost no fruit, or there might be drought. If it is a good year the price of apples might fall so low that I don’t cover my costs of picking them. However that doesn’t make me a gambler, it is just that almost any enterprise has a possibility of failure.

Now one thing I might want to do is reduce my risk by selling the apples beforehand at an agreed price. Then if there is a glut I won’t lose money, but if it is a normal year I will make less than I would otherwise. The other person assumes the risk and, the way markets work, normally he will demand a greater than even average return, because he is the one taking the risk. A rational investor is not a gambler either - he will do everything possible to minimise his risk, such as buying weather forecasts, or spreading his futures over several commodities. But it can attract irrational people for whom the risk is a positive. Then it becomes almost gambling, except that the risk isn’t artificial, ultimately it is based on the fact that the farmer’s apple crop might fail. It is actually just dangerous behaviour.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I don’t think gambling is sinful per se, but I do think it would be for me. I don’t gamble, primarily because I’m a “sore loser”. I can’t stand the thought of money I worked for going up in smoke on the off chance I might win something I didn’t earn. I threw away two dollars on a slot machine some thirty-five years ago, and it made me so angry, I never gambled again.

I take comfort in Mark Twain’s dictum: “There are only two times when a man shouldn’t gamble; one is when he can’t afford it, and the other is when he can.”

However, I think if someone thinks of it only as entertainment; has no particular expectation of winning and doesn’t “bet the rent”, then I would see no harm in it.

I would mightily dispute, however, those who see investing in the stock market or in real estate as gambling. Everything anyone does in life has some element of chance in it. Presumably, one educates oneself to the prospects of a company on the stock exchange or the market for particular types of real estate, in the same way he would if investing in some new product in his own business, or investing in a business at all.

 

[BobP123]

I would mightily dispute, however, those who see investing in the stock market or in real estate as gambling. Everything anyone does in life has some element of chance in it. Presumably, one educates oneself to the prospects of a company on the stock exchange or the market for particular types of real estate, in the same way he would if investing in some new product in his own business, or investing in a business at all.

In a way, though, doesn’t government cushion the blow a little bit for you? Tax breaks, bankruptcy protection, etc. Does that make it morally better than throwing money into a slot machine where you have knowledge of preset odds of winning and play for entertainment purposes?

 

[tm30]

Participating in games of chance are not sinful per se. A day at the racetrack or casual gambling is not contrary to the faith. The sin comes into play when one is gambling with money that should rightfully be designated for necessities - especially where children are involved. I’m not sure what degree it would take to be a mortal sin, but I think if someone is playing $50 a week on the lottery and Johnny’s walking to school in winter without a winter coat, that’s pretty close.

The other issue is the myriad of things going on around you while you’re gambling. An environment of excessive drinking, lewd attire, and general greed can quickly become an occasion of sin for the most steadfast Catholic. It all depends on what level of restraint a particular person can demonstrate under such circumstances.

But if we’re talking about “casino night” at the parish hall, the only thing that a person needs to be concerned with is what they can rightfully afford to lose for the sake of entertainment.