On making lemonade out of the false and, let’s face it, stupid claims upon which the lottery proposal was argued and so far approved:
Now that the Legislature has signaled that it is willing to legalize gambling, I say we take it to the next logical step, and legalize gambling for all agencies who wish to attempt to raise money in this and similar fashion.
I know of many churches and good organizations that could certainly benefit from Bingo bucks, 50-50 raffles, and the like, but cannot now do so legally in North Carolina. In fact, I visited a church in Florida this past weekend that built its community hall with Bingo in mind. They seem to support the whole place on honestly-derived chance-takers’ dollars.
If it’s no moral conflict for the schools, to use gambling proceeds here, it’s no more a moral conflict in general, so why not allow it for non-state agencies? If anything, cost/payout considerations are even greater for small independent organizatins that do not benefit from a statewide distribution system, or tax dollars to pay their employees, so we can let it be their problem to figure out how “worthwhile” gambling games are.
The argument that the state should hold the monopoly in gambling certainly doesn’t withstand scrutiny, since it would not be tolerated in virtually any other industry. If you buy the standard economics position that monopolies are always the high-price/low quantity pproducer of any service, and tend to take advantage of their consumers more recklessly as compared to competitive providers, that’s another reason to allow competition in gambling.
If we want to adopt the model of states that have an existing state-run lottery, we should go whole hog and follow suit with private gambling, too.
Last, it is interesting to note that a lottery, though regressive in its heavy reliance on lower-income citizens for support, may by perverse means do something positive–and this is stretching it. Since at least some of the lottery gamblers will be net tax consumers, rather than tax payers, we can feel a little good that we are getting back some of those tax dollars (through ticket sales) from those who otherwise do not contribute to tax revenues at all. I say a little good because, no matter what, the lottery will surely put more dollars in the hands of government, where we need it least, and skew all kinds of other incentives that need not be further skewed up by government intervention.
So?lemonade. But it’s still pretty sour.
