Blaming Addiction on the Dealer

[tanz]

If someone is addicted to gambling is it the dealers fault?

[Schwag]

Swim says:
Nope, that's their fault for getting there in the first place. Just like killing somebody with a gun, it's not the guns fault it's the person who pulled the triggers' fault. I never understood how people could get addicted to gambling. But that's just my opinion.

[tanz]

Yeah i know what you mean. Although it has been my experience that the gambling addicts were more pathetic than the other addicts i have known. So let me ask the secondary question. If a man is addicted to drugs is it the dealers fault?

[Donmeka]

no its the same deal

[Harry]

I don't have a drinking problem. I'm addicted to collecting the empty bottles. (HIC!)

oh, gamblin', nevermind then...

[lexmark]

Originally Posted by Harry

I don't have a drinking problem. I'm addicted to collecting the empty bottles. (HIC!)

oh, gamblin', nevermind then...

lol.....

[augentier]

It's never the FAULT of the dealer that someone becomes addicted - that comes down to the user's will power and sensibility. However, some will argue that dealers are feeding the addiction (read: originally their fault for giving the user a way to develop the addiction)..so who's right and who's wrong?

[D.U.M.B]

You can't blame others for your personal choices, even if those choices lead to an addiction of some sort

Unless of course a dealer lets you win loads and then starts cheating to make you lose it all. Then its their fault

[enquirewithin]

Alcohol and tobacco companies are at fault if they misrepresent their products as being safe and target the young.

[doppey]

SWIM thinks it depends on the type of "Dealer." If the guy behind the table in Vegas is sayin' to a known gambling addict. "C'mon brother, just another 50 bucks, your kids might need to eat, but you might win this one, C'MON!!!!!" Then SWIM would have to say the dealer is partly to blame.

If somebody puts themselves in a vulnerable position and somebody takes advantage of them does no fault lie with the victimizer???

SWIM says hes came across some "dealers" in his time that push their product rather than sell it. Lying about its effects, tailor-fitting exaggerated stories to rope people in and proceeding to milk them till they're dry.

Some people are just born convincers, or as Cassidy would say: "I'm a hustler, i could sell raid to a bug. I'm a hustler i could sell salt to a slug." The user may never have used the product had they not fleeced into believing it was something it wasn't.

SWIM isn't making excuses for addicts or bashing people for having good sales skills, just sayin' there is some room for blame under the right circumstance.

[bcubed]

Originally Posted by tanz

If someone is addicted to gambling is it the dealers fault?

I dunno; ask Bill Bennett...

Let me take this slightly away from drugs and run with the thought (after all, this is SFA)

SWIM made mid-to-upper four figures at online poker. SWIM knows that, say 50% of booze is drunk by 10% of drinkers, and he expects at least 50% of his fiscal gains came from 10% of poker players.

Knowing that his gains came largely from pathological (or stupid) players, is this "blood money" to any extent? SWIM always felt the money was earned, as a result of his skill, but to some extent, he was preying on the addicted...though he'd love to think he had some of Willie's $$$...

[zera]

Originally Posted by bcubed

I dunno; ask Bill Bennett...

Let me take this slightly away from drugs and run with the thought (after all, this is SFA)

SWIM made mid-to-upper four figures at online poker. SWIM knows that, say 50% of booze is drunk by 10% of drinkers, and he expects at least 50% of his fiscal gains came from 10% of poker players.

Knowing that his gains came largely from pathological (or stupid) players, is this "blood money" to any extent? SWIM always felt the money was earned, as a result of his skill, but to some extent, he was preying on the addicted...though he'd love to think he had some of Willie's $$$...

Ironically what you describe makes up a very big part of one of Americas largest exports, financial services. I just finished working the summer on Wall Street and a huge, growing chunk of business done there is in exotic options. A regular option on a stock will work by for example say if the stock is at $55, I might pay you $5 today and in a years time I get the option, but not the obligation, to buy the stock from you for $60. Well these things do generate real economic value they transfer risk from one party to another thats more suited to handle it.

However these exotic options that are becoming more and more popular have crazy structures, like if the stock goes above $60 in the first three months or above $65 by the end of the year then I have the right to buy the stock from you for either the six month moving average or $55, depending on whats lower, and if the stock dips below $50 during the time period than I get an extra bonus payoff of $5. Just all kinds of crazy shit that really cant possibly be generating any economic value for anyone but an investor with the most precise needs. Yet investors, particularly asian investors are gobbling this shit up, mainly because they have a gambling mentality when it comes to investing. Wall Street can replicate these positions using advanced mathematics and vanilla options and then sell them to these asian investors and jack up the price way past what it cost to build them. In essence they are exploiting the irrational pathologies of Asian investors.

So I digress, dont feel bad about it, or at least dont feel as bad about it. There are people in New York and West Palm Beach who definitely are taking a lot more blood money than you, and generally are getting praised as upstanding titans of industry. Given how much of our current accounts balance this stuff makes up you could say that America as a whole is getting all these cheap textiles and electronics from Asia based on exploiting their pathologies.

[keats]

Unless its literally forced on you it's no one's fault but your own, period. If you're going to blame someone else it should be whoever introduced you to drugs/gambling to begin with, or the "bad influences" in your life, but you shouldn't be blaming them either. Dealers (whether of drugs or cards) are simply people providing a service to others requiring it. That's what capitalism is, it's no more (and SWIM would argue in some cases less) immoral than the way banks prey on customers with bad credit and unsound finacial planning to turn a profit. SWIM has been addicted to a nasty hard drug and at times wanted to place the blame for that addiction on others, but in the end his dealers were just giving him what he wanted, and if they hadn't he would have gotten it somewhere else.

[coffeeorsomething]

IMO addiction is not a condition but a personal life choice. Either a person is responsible for all their actions, including those that are harmful to them such as gambling too much or abusing as opposed to using a drug, or they are responsible for none of them and the state really does have the right, even the duty, to tell them what they can and cannot do to themselves. Currently America seems to have a fascination with the idea that all the things you to do yourself that aren't good for you aren't really your fault, but this is nothing but a comforting illusion. Americans are hiding from reality and they will pay for it by losing their independence.

Also, remember the power of suggestion...if someone believes strongly enough that it's not their fault they gamble too much because they just can't help it at all, it will probably become true, and vice versa.

All of which is to say, even though a dealer may manipulate or take advantage of a gambler, it's still the gambler's responsibility to look out for himself, not the dealer's.

[Harry]

Originally Posted by bcubed

I dunno; ask Bill Bennett...

Let me take this slightly away from drugs and run with the thought (after all, this is SFA)

SWIM made mid-to-upper four figures at online poker. SWIM knows that, say 50% of booze is drunk by 10% of drinkers, and he expects at least 50% of his fiscal gains came from 10% of poker players.

Knowing that his gains came largely from pathological (or stupid) players, is this "blood money" to any extent? SWIM always felt the money was earned, as a result of his skill, but to some extent, he was preying on the addicted...though he'd love to think he had some of Willie's $$$...

I confess to being a daily online player, and as well count on the (let's be generous on the %, some say 10% make most of the $) 85% of people who sit down to what I consider to be a game of skill, of wits, of math. Probabilities, if you will.

I honestly don't feel our sort of 'gamblin' can be compared to other forms put forth by casinos, which is just about EVERY other form, where the house truly has an edge. In the long run, the house always wins. I'm not saying the degenerate gambler doesn't exist within poker, for as I am sure you know, it truly does. What I suggest is that it is a more honest aspect of gambling, in comparisons to the lure the casino's put out, the bright lights, the oxygen pumped row upon row of slot machine filled rooms, etc etc.

I wouldn't feel too bad my friend, for being on the winning side of poker. It is a level playing field from the moment you decide to sit in with your chips. What you do on the field, is clearly up to you.

- Harry