Originally Posted by
redietz
Rob, you may be right about a good many things, but you may be wrong about a few things, too.
Calling out individuals you do not know, like chimp, about being an addict is an overreach. You said you think that most Seven Stars players are addicts of a sort. I actually agree with that statement, but here's the thing. Virtually everybody in American culture is addicted to something. What makes you the judge of which addictions are acceptable and which are not? What makes you the judge of what expenditures are acceptable and logical and correct and which are not?
For example, is anything more wasteful than buying a motor home? It's like wearing a bunch of gold chains that burn gas -- a lot of gas. But you chose to buy the thing and drive it, a very questionable use of resources from any practical perspective. Are you addicted to the ostentation of the thing?
Now, your buying the motor home, a decision, and your driving it, a behavior, were your choice. Both are blatant consumerism, which is an addiction. Why is your consumerism a better choice in your mind than Seven Stars' gambling? People devote resources to what they are driven to consume. Spending resources on the experience of gambling is no more objectively wasteful than spending it on giant depreciating motor homes, or petrol, or an array of solid gold chains.
It's all nuts.
Now do not get me wrong. I despise casinos for what they are, and I prefer people blow their cash on motor homes and gold chains than in casinos, but my personal tastes have no objective weight. To a poverty stricken person from Ethiopia, or someone from a thousand years ago, and maybe to someone from a thousand years hence, it's all a very odd use of resources.