Ygern wrote:How is this different from the casinos & betting venues that already exist all over Ireland, in the form of the always ubiquitous Ladbrokes and a multitude of other private establishments?
We already had them too. But there is a difference. Betting on horses requires you to study the form. pick your bets. There's a culture of chosing a few races and betting. It's not a mindless activity where you sit in a chair clicking a button for hours on end. It's also not made out to be a glamorous activity by hollywood!
Ygern wrote:
Don't get me wrong, personally, I think gambling is akin to flushing your money down the loo; but then so are a lot of other recreational pastimes regularly engaged in in this country. A supercasino isn't more evil than Ladbrokes. Punters aren't going to lose any more money at a supercasino than they already are on things like: smoking, playing the lotto, drinking, night-clubbing, buying scratch cards, putting money on a horse, putting money on the dogs, pub-crawling <insert vice of choice here>.
I think you're wrong. I think they will. I think what you have to worry about more than the ladbrokes or the super-casino is the pawn shop across the road along with the need to escape the recession.
Ygern wrote:
People spend their incomes in a multitude of ways that they deem amusing or entertaining. Their choice may not be completely to their advantage or to everyone else's liking. Point is, it is their life and their income. Trying to insinuate that this will somehow destroy a community and wreck families is just fearmongering. If anything it will provide employment to families in the area. We can't all till fields or milk cows for a living.
Employment sounds like an admiral goal, but at what cost to the community? I think a desert in the middle of nowhere is a good place for a casino. Some place where you have to spend some money and go to some trouble to get there. Maybe they should build it in the Burren. Noone is saying it shouldn't be built anywhere. But it is going to have a negative impact on the community. Addiction is a nasty illness, often dismissed by libetarians. Maybe it's the fact that I don't believe in free will (or even Dan Dennett's deminished version of free will) that we don't see eye to eye on this issue?
I just keep thinking of those damn pensioners. Vulnerable people in society pissing away their money due to an addiction that exists only because of the availability of poker machines at 8am.
Won't someone think of the pensioners?
"The fact of your own existence is the most astonishing fact you will ever have to face. Don’t you ever get used to it." - Richard Dawkins... being shrill and offensive again I suppose.
