Why They Want to Make You Sick
by Wentworth Sutton, assistant vice-principal, Mitchell Hepburn Collegiate Institute, Don Mills, and president emeritus, Semiologico-Hermeneutic Institute of Toronto
January 25, 2007
As I have pointed out in another article, and as others have pointed out, in recent years people have started defining several types of compulsive behaviour as addictions. The latest culprit is the British Medical Association, no less, which in a recent report (click here for a press release; follow the link at the bottom of the page to get a PDF of the full report) calls for the British National Health Service to provide treatment for so-called gambling addiction.
Of course, medical associations have an interest in medicalizing problems, and this suggestion of the BMA’s reveals to us one of the motivations – more money for therapists! Using the same logic as the BMA, we could argue that municipal governments should stop purifying the drinking water and instead put more money into therapy for E. coli infection. But, you may be thinking, that analogy is wrong, because drinking tap water isn’t an addiction!
No, drinking tap water isn’t an addiction. And neither is gambling. As my earlier article points out, the so-called psychological addictions are not addictions at all – that is, they are not behaviours undertaken to eliminate the discomfort of withdrawal. They are rather learned behaviours. The learning isn’t accidental, either – these behaviours are taught.
And who’s teaching people to gamble? These days, it’s chiefly the government. And who’s creating problem gambling? Same folks.
As the earlier article points out, many gambling games bear a distinct resemblance to the Skinner box, a standard tool experimental psychologists use in training animals. When a pigeon in a Skinner box pecks a key, its initial pecks are frequently followed by presentation of food. It starts to peck more rapidly, and food (reinforcement) can then be presented less and less frequently without making the pigeon work any more slowly. You can eventually get a pigeon to work like mad for less food than it needs to survive.
And what does that sound like? Doesn’t that seem to you to bear a strong resemblance to a slot machine? Put in your money, press the button, occasionally get a reinforcer. Thanks to the superiority of the human brain to a pigeon’s, the initial stage of frequent reinforcement can be skipped; the players can manage to persuade themselves that a big payoff can come later even if no payoffs are coming now. I gather, actually, that many slot machines these days are programmed to provide bigger payoffs for a while after they have sat idle – the better to get the hook into the sucker. In a short time the player is trained to keep popping money into the machine. Similarly, a video lottery player can be trained to respond so frequently that he or she ends up on welfare.
The problem is not that government doesn’t pay for gambling therapy, but that it creates the problem gambling in the first place. It does that by eagerly promoting gambling on games of chance. Games of chance are ones in which no action of the player’s can affect the likely payoff. Slot machines, video lottery terminals, lotteries, roulette, and craps are examples of games of chance. In these games the player has no option available to him or her which will increase his or her chances of winning. They pay their money, a number is picked at random, they lose their money. It’s fairly easy to get suckers hooked on these games, and consequently fairly easy to fleece them. Governments do the fleecing by paying back far less in prizes than they rake in in bets.
The BMA, though, doesn't want the government to stop its morally questionable behaviour. Instead it wants the government to keep acting in morally questionable ways while at the same time paying medical professionals to treat the consequences of the government's morally questionable ways. The BMA avoids suggesting that maybe government should stop providing games of chance to suckers. The closest the BMA gets to recommending the government cease and desist is to recommend that “some specific gambling options such as slot machines should be specifically reviewed to ensure they are not accessible to adolescents.” How about making them inaccessible, period? Does the BMA consider that the fleecing of suckers is a legitimate role for the government of a democratic society?
The BMA is following the marketing model outlined in my earlier article – manufacture a problem, then get people to pay for treatment for it. The best treatment of all, of course, is treatment that doesn’t work, since that keeps the suckers coming back for new, improved treatment.
Treatment for problem gambling is unlikely to work simply because government insists on shoving opportunities to be fleeced into our faces at every turn. You can’t go into a store to buy a carton of wholesome milk without being confronted with gaudy government advertising for the opportunities it’s offering you to lose your money – sorry, I mean for its lotteries.
As another article here points out, lotteries cause no great harm as long as ticket prices are low and people confine themselves to buying one or two tickets. Promoting those hundred-dollar lotteries, though, is like putting E. coli in the drinking water. As any player of games of skill can tell you, when you don’t have an edge the best thing is not to bet at all; it is certainly not to plop down a brownie a pop.
An “edge”? An edge is gambling jargon for an advantage in betting. That is, you have an edge when you are likely to make a profit on your bet. In games of skill – poker, for example, or playing the ponies – occasions arise on which you can get an edge. Government does its damndest to reduce them to the bare minimum, but you can still get them. Games of skill are games in which the player can do things which increase the likelihood that his bet will be profitable. For example, in no-limit poker players routinely force other players to fold by increasing the pot to a size where their opponents would lose their edges by calling.
Problem gamblers don’t need no stinking therapy. They need the government to stop picking their pockets. Here are some things government could do:
- outlaw slot machines, video lottery terminals, keno, roulette, and craps
- set a maximum lottery ticket price of $2
- allow blackjack players to count cards
Yes, governments everywhere refuse to allow blackjack players to keep track of the cards that have been played, even though that’s how you play cards. In Ontario, the Windsor casino tried charging some card-counters (who can often be spotted by the methods they use to keep track of the cards) with cheating at play. When the case was thrown out of court (with a sensible suggestion from the judge that allowing card-counting would probably end up increasing casino profits), the provincial gaming commission arbitrarily gave casinos the right to remove card counters.
This last example shows us quite clearly what problem gamblers’ real problem is. It’s not lack of therapy. It’s government preying on them. Sure, if government outlawed craps, some people would play craps illegally. However, most wouldn’t. Furthermore, those who did would be getting fairer odds – illegal operators routinely offer better odds than legal operators. The local numbers runner, for example, pays you off at a higher rate than the government does if you win its numbers game (usually called the Pick 3).
Of course, if we took a sensible approach to problem gambling, a lot of therapists would be out of work. But then providing traffic lights and setting speed limits keeps a lot of auto-body repair shops out of business, and we don’t worry about that.
Why They Want to Make You Sick © John FitzGerald, 2007
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