Fox News: Against the Internet gambling ban
Related Articles
Fox News published an article by Radley Balko earlier this week that’s been garnering even more mainstream attention to the US policies on online gaming, specifically including poker.
Ah, but it gets worse.
The U.S. could have actually resolved all of this and preserved its precious gambling prohibition by simply making the prohibition uniform. But that wouldn’t do. Just as important as the ban on Internet gambling itself were the carve-outs for politically-protected special interest groups—lotteries and horse racing. So the tens of billions the U.S. government is paying to settle the trade dispute is not only to preserve the gambling ban, it’s to preserve the congressionally-granted monopoly on online wagering for interests with more political clout than poker players.
There are likely many people whose reaction to all of this is “so what?” It’s tough to get too worked up over a ban on something as seemingly niche and targeted as a ban on Internet gambling. Who other than Internet gamblers should care?
Part of the problem is the mentality that comes with this kind of legislation. The gambling ban seems to have been supported by two similar approaches to governance that, although they come from opposite sides of the political spectrum, are generally quite similar.
Full thing here.
