A regular reader asked a probing question about the current push for legislation to legalize gambling.
Ian,
Was wondering if you could take up this issue in your blog?
I consider the legalization of gambling to be just as big of an issue facing Hawaii residents as rail. (Perhaps even bigger when you consider rail is mostly Oahu centric, whereas gambling has the potential to impact the entire state).
One project is being called a revenue killer (rail) and the other a revenue generator (gambling).
Now, my intent is not to create an endless thread about the merits of rail or gambling–we have all been there and done that. Instead, what perplexes me the most is the following:
When proponents of rail went to the public in search of support, a full-court press of endorsements was offered up. Big business and related organizations, social groups, influential individuals and families, as well as State and City leaders. I mean every executive and wanna be player took sides. Was there any doubt at the end of the day where most people stood?
Yet, notice the absence of voices over gambling. The same stakeholders that were more than willing to express their support (and in some cases opposition) to rail are to me–mostly and very strangely silent on whether or not they support or oppose the legalization of gambling in our state.
What gives?
Case in point: the push for gambling is being led by a single lobbyist and various shadow groups. For something with such huge ramifications for our state, I would expect more leadership from the same groups that were so vocal over rail.
My cynical side suspects that the big boys are afraid to take a public stand on gambling knowing that silence is sometimes just as effective as making noise. If gambling passes they will find a way to benefit.
Aloha,
Regular Reader
PS: as a nobody local resident who doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, I would feel much better about legalized gambling if the HTA, major hotels, Chamber of Commerce, and other doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs took this issue by the horns and told the people, “okay, if we are going to do gambling, let’s do it right”–and offer the people a vision of what can be expected.
Right now, as it is, I just don’t trust or get very inspired by any of the lesser known groups or individuals that have pushed gambling in the past or pushing it now in the present.
If gambling does pass will it really be done in a backdoor way?
In the past, I’ve remained an agnostic on the question of gambling.
But we were talking this week to an old friend who lives and teaches in Las Vegas, who said an interesting thing.
Here’s his observation: “The promises of gaming as an industry rest on the assumption that the vast majority of customers will be lose money the vast majority of the time.”
There aren’t other industries that rely so directly on consumers losing money.
It’s a viewpoint that has given me pause, despite the regular flow of Hawaii residents to Las Vegas.
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Gee,
I think a case could be made that ALL industries rely directly on consumers losing money. We live in a materialistic world and must keep up with the Jones, envy or whatever you want to call it… t’is the way it is!
Yep, just as it’s human nature to want new stuff, the desire is evidently in our beings for excitement, gambling, sports and so on.
Restrictions on personal freedoms by government and others should only be done were they adversely impact others more or less directly. At least for adults.
We are legally entitled in all but 2% of our states to gamble on Wall Street, real estate, crossing the street, etc., but it seems that some think they know better for others. Too often their own lives resemble train wrecks!
Back to your post- I agree that it’s not a question if (nor whether) but how.
Examples: limit gambling to specific casinos (strictly adults only), including shipboard, place if and where individual counties approve. Establish and maintain databases on gamblers limiting residents annual losses to something like $1000 or what ever they paid in taxes the previous year. Make a lotto and internet, but restrict as above. No keiki.
These are some suggestions, anyone else?
I agree with you about the government restricting our personal freedoms. I think you should have access to online casinos and be able to call-in bets to Las Vegas etc.
I couldn’t care less what you do in the privacy of your own home.
However – Transitioning OUR home into a “Vice Travel” destination will directly impact the lives of everyone who lives here.
IMO – It’s not so much about restricting your personal freedoms, etc… It’s more about how some people (Like myself) don’t want their happy home turned into the Las Vegas of the Pacific.
We are legally entitled in all but 2% of our states to gamble on Wall Street, real estate, crossing the street, etc., but it seems that some think they know better for others.
There are different forms of gambling that are regulated differently in each state, so to just say that Hawaii and Utah are the only states that ban gambling is not specific enough.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambling_in_the_United_States#Legal_issues
I have read that 85% of what the financial sector in the US (“Wall Street”) is trade securities — gambling, essentially. We think of Wall Street as existing to provide loans to businesses and individuals. This is what Wall Street should be doing, that is its mandate. (For example, one of the conditions of the TARP bank bailouts is that Wall Street would loan money to businesses with the loans the government was giving the banks; instead, Wall Street panicked and sat on those funds. Hence, the severity of the recession.) Now, I believe that Paul Volker and at least a few other economists have said that two-thirds of the current positions on Wall Street, despite Wall Street’s downsizing, serve no economic function for society at all, and should be eliminated. There is no Constitutional right to be a financier, it is merely a profession that the society tolerates on the assumption that the profession benefits society. But for the most part it does not, and should largely be eliminated.
Gambling might also be tolerated in real estate, but it should not be. With a little bit of basic information, real estate is not a form of gambling, it is a rather predictable and boring form of investment (real estate prices rise and fall, but they ultimately return to the rate of inflation, which makes real estate a good investment to help cancel out the prospects of hyper-inflation, but not a growth investment).
Finance and real estate become forms of gambling when less educated people get involved in it. The working class should just focus on trades like plumbing, or go to college. Those people are simply getting taken advantage of.
You are arguing that certain personal freedoms should not be infringed on, yet in terms of real estate investment and the finance sector, you cite examples of behavior that is not protected in the Constitution. Unless the Bill Of Rights has been altered last night while we were sleeping, there is no amendment to protect the right to have a bloated financial sector, or to make loans to poor people to buy McMansions.
You seem to imagine that universal human rights exist, and that these rights correspond to a pure free-market capitalism that has never existed. Even if it was like that, as you point out such rights would be illegitimate if they hurt other people. But this harm to non-participants is exactly what has happened with the abuses of Wall Street and real estate in the past five years.
My point is that the argument that you advance here for legalizing gambling not only undermine your case for legalizing gambling, but also point out the need for greater restrictions in the economy. Wall Street needs to be burned down, along with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
I’m shocked –shocked — to find that Hawaii is STILL discussing gambling!!
thank the freakin’ stars Hawaii is not debating prohibition and legalization of alcohol. instead of bookies and chicken fights, we’d have mobs, machine guns and mafia dons.
and we’d share our opinions for another decade, at least, before passing legalization that would prompt riots at a few churches and lawsuits that would drag on for years.
There is a myth out there fostered largely by Hollywood that Prohibition was especially violent.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/opinion/sunday/the-not-so-roaring-20s.html
In fact, one could argue that Prohibition saw a dramatic decrease in violence. The primary object of Prohibition was not alcohol per se, but violence against women as a result of a pandemic of alcoholism.
http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/watch-video/#id=2082675582
In terms of behavior modification, Prohibition might have been successful. If my memory serves, at the time of the American Revolution, the average American colonist drank about 7 gallons of pure alcohol a year (and alcohol consumption was limited largely to men back then, so consumption was probably double that for men); just before Prohibition, I believe alcohol consumption had fallen to 3 gallons a year; during and since Prohibition, alcohol consumption fell to 1.5 gallons a year. I don’t know if that is true, but if one compares, say, contemporary Australia and the US in terms of alcoholism and alcohol-related violence, it seems that the US is much more safer and healthier.
Now, it seems to me that Prohibition was too draconian. After watching Ken Burns documentary, my impression is that greater restrictions should have been placed on hard liquor, not things like beer. And as the documentary points out, alcohol is a great source of tax revenue. That might be true of some forms of gambling as well, I don’t know. But it seems to me that the recent banning of fireworks in Hawaii was perhaps too draconian.
Now, as for cock fighting, I see nothing wrong with it. It is small-scale and local, and it keeps money in the local economy. Like fireworks, it is part of a cultural tradition. It does not represent cruelty to animals because unlike dog fighting, it comes natural to roosters (whereas dogs have to be carefully bred for it), and it is much less inhumane than the factory farming of chickens that we all subsidize through our diet. (Cock fighting is legal in Puerto Rico and is held in boxing rings, and the roosters do not wear spurs, rather the winners are chosen by the decision of judges.)
Perhaps most importantly, legalized cock fighting would not clash with the brand that Hawaii has invested in for decades in tourism. Every year at Christmas the Hawaii Tourism Authority pays for a billboard in Time Square that simply shows a beach in Hawaii. That image stays in people’s minds not just for that winter, but for the rest of their lives. When one mentions that there is a University of Hawaii to people from all over the world, they are surprised — that’s how powerful the Hawaii brand is. (There is also a major university in Tahiti, the University of French Polynesia. That surprised me, which reflects the power of the image of Tahiti.) At an unconscious level, if Hawaii were to open a casino, it would undermine the brand that has been so difficult and expensive to establish. Even people who like to gamble would then avoid Hawaii and go to the Bahamas, which would have a more pristine, tropical image. But again, something like legalized cock fighting might not hurt Hawaii’s brand the way even a single casino might.
The same might be true with nuclear power in Hawaii. If people heard that there was a nuclear power plant in Hawaii — even people who believed in nuclear power — it would clash so much with the brand that those people might skip Hawaii. It would not be a fear of nuclear power plants that would keep them away, but the erosion of Hawaii’s unique brand by the very association of Hawaii with nuclear power.
wow, skeptical, very impressive.
now please explain Al Capone. and the rise of similar leaders in the violent mafia era in the United States.
and please explain what it would feel like if someone strapped knives to your feet and put you in a battle with someone else who had knives strapped to their feet. when you were 4 years old, and basically didn’t know what to do but fight.
come on, skeptical, we’re waiting for some more amazing insights here.
My wife and I just returned from a trip to Australia, where we learned that the famous Sydney Opera House was totally financed by lottery revenues… why couldn’t Hawaii be creative in financing rail (or supporting public education, whatever) with a lottery? At least it would be a “voluntary” tax option. The idea that it victimizes “poor” people is patronizing — when rich people lose money on bad stock bets, it’s called “investing.” And they get to write it off on their taxes!
Great Question Rich.
It all depends… Some states, like Iowa, put lottery money in the state’s general fund and who knows what it gets spent on? I guess everyone fights over it and the big-dogs eat most of it.
I lived in Colorado where lottery funds are earmarked exclusively for parks, recreation, open space, conservation and wildlife projects. Etc…
Other states earmark the lottery revenue for schools and education.
However – Even when lottery money is targeted toward a particular purpose, such as education or environmental protection, it often has little or no effect.
The lottery money does go to the intended cause… BUT – Instead of adding to the funds for those programs, legislators factor in the lottery revenue and allocate less government money to the program budgets so there is no incremental improvement in those areas.
Everyone is under the misguided assumption that the Schools or whatever will receive a windfall of cash but the overall effect is often exactly the same as if the lottery revenue went directly into the general fund.
The lottery funds in Colorado did exceed the government funding. Even after all the government funding was cut off the parks and recreation still came out way ahead.
BUT – Colorado has started having budget problems… Legislators are now warning “We need to put some of that money to education or we’ll be forced to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from the school budgets, layoff teachers, etc, etc…”
So who knows how long those funds will be used as they were intended when the people of Colorado voted to approve the state lottery.
I think most of the money generated from lotteries does not go to the projects that lotteries are supposed to fund. Most of the money raised by lotteries goes to running the lottery. This includes constant television and radio advertising admonishing the population to “Gamble! Gamble! Gamble!” That might not be a message a society wants to send to the public.
I read that there was a long history of lotteries in the US since before the Revolution, that lotteries would be started up but later disappoint expectations, and then be shut down; time would pass, the lesson learned would have been forgotten and then a new lottery would be started only to fold later. This changed with the rise of the automobile. People from states without lotteries would drive to states with lotteries and purchase hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of tickets. So even though state officials may know that lotteries don’t really raise revenues when costs are taken into account, they are compelled to have a lottery anyway because their neighboring state has one and is draining funds from them. (This is why Alaska and Hawaii do not have lotteries — no neighboring states.)
It’s the less wealthy and perhaps the less educated members of the public who play lotteries, and it is rich people who support lotteries because it means they would pay less taxes. This seems to be reflected in those who I see are most vocally for lotteries: 1) older politicians from the neighbor islands who are perhaps a little naive, and 2) affluent people who moved to Hawaii from elsewhere.
One question to ask is how a lottery would affect foreclosures in Hawaii. When people are under financial distress, they sit around thinking up dubious ways to make money. (I knew someone who inherited several hundred thousand dollars, and although he was comfortably well off and had other sources of income, on the day the inheritance money ran out, he went out and bought his first lottery ticket. And this is someone from a wealthy, educated family, imagine someone from the wrong side of the tracks….) When people panic, they might search for a snake-oil cure-all. The logic of the cure-all is like the logic of the Invasion of Iraq, or of the rail project, which is: “Sure, this is dubious if you look at the numbers and the facts. But if it does succeed, it would solve every problem in the Middle East/West Side in one fell swoop!”
As people lose sleep over their mortgages, they would turn to buy lottery tickets en masse. Ultimately, they would run out of money even faster than before, and probably default on the mortgage. This would drive down the price of houses further, more houses would go underwater, more people would buy lottery tickets in a panic, more people would go broke faster, etc., etc. (Ken Conklin states that the great dispossession of the Native Hawaiians was not the Great Mahele, but rather foreclosures. For him, that seems to make history all kosher, that there was no US imperialism. I have simply no idea, I don’t know the history. But for me, his conclusion might suggest that history is repeating itself, that a great socioeconomic calamity is at hand, and no one seems to mind. Were people back then as smugly complacent as they are today?)
If you look at the comments on Civil Beat on how the rail project is moving forward, most of the positive comments don’t mention transportation, they celebrate the coming of rail jobs. Likewise, perhaps a lottery in Hawaii would not exist primarily to fund education or infrastructure projects in Hawaii, but to create lottery jobs. It would be yet another calamity — but again no one would notice.
I lived in Colorado when three small towns in the mountains decided they wanted gambling.
They thought it would be a great attraction. More people would visit their towns, eat at their restaurants, buy stuff in their shops and more locals would have better jobs, etc… It all sounded great.
Then reality set in… The local restaurants went out of business because the casinos had restaurants and were offering things like free prime rib dinners as part of a packages that included transportation, chips and other things. The small shops mostly went out of business because they were now in direct competition with the shops in the casinos as well. Rent went way up and locals were forced out. There were more jobs but they were low paying. Most employees couldn’t afford to live in town so they commuted from trailer parks outside of town. Traffic became a nightmare on the narrow mountain roads. Parking which had always been free and abundant suddenly became incredibly expensive and rare.
Those towns hadn’t changed much over the last 100 years. They simply couldn’t visualize how quickly the casinos would change EVERYTHING about the place. They were under the delusion that the casinos would move in and more visitors would show up and spend money but just about everything else would be the same as it had always been.
People who loved the towns quickly grew to hate what had become of them after the casinos they wanted so badly opened for business.
People who loved the towns quickly grew to hate what had become of them after the casinos they wanted so badly opened for business.
Twee, Dave, very twee.
I note the 2000 Census had 118 people residing in Black Hawk, one the three towns you mention. I was saddened to hear from you that some of the 118, that’s 118 by the way, were disappointed to actually have some revenue generation.
In Cripple Creek there were 1,100 people. Maybe some of them hated the law change, too because before gambling they had a whopping per capita wage of under $20k a year. But it was good times, all the time, eh?
So, the last of your trifecta of unhappiness is Central City which had a Census of 505 people in 2000. That’s about the population of a medum condo in Kaka’ako but they fester to this day.
So, that terrible demon of gaming actually impacted under 2,000 residents. My guess is that 1,500 or more are now feeding the family meat more than once a month thanks to gambling.
Hi Richard,
You should go talk to the people who lived through the transition yourself.
And – You’re guess would be wrong. About half or more of those 2,000 residents moved off to other mountain towns because they didn’t like it there any more.
Anyway… The main point I was trying to make was that allowing casino type of gamboling into a community will bring quick and drastic changes that most people have a hard time visualizing.
I don’t know anyone from that area who expected things to change so quickly or drastically.
One day it’s a peaceful little town in the mountains… The type of place that attracts residents who moved to the mountains specifically because DO NOT want to live in or even near Denver because they don’t like the traffic, noise, stress, etc, that you find in cities.
The next it’s a festering hell-hole with that’s been overrun by busloads of of drunken assholes and has more traffic, noise, stress and parking problems, than Denver.
Just saying…. Some people are under the crazy delusion that a Casino is just like any other hotel.
I don’t understand how or why you would respond to Dave with such sarcasm. You don’t even live there, nor do you know what they went through. From Dave’s description, it sounds horrible what happened to them. However, he was gracious enough in his reply to you – I wouldn’t have been nearly so kind. Sounds like you have no problem sacrificing a few people’s lives for the enjoyment of gamblers such as yourself. Such a pity, too – Hawaii doesn’t need that kind of ‘change.’
Besides the obvious social costs of gambling, the economic benefit is questionable. If you have $5000 of discretionary spending in a year, spending $1000 at a casino only means you have only $4000 to spend at the movies, restaurants, concerts, etc.
A quick look at Nevada in general and Las Vegas in particular may be in order. Nevada’s unemployment rate is the highest in the country. In 2010, Las Vegas was ranked 199th as the worst metropolitan economy in the world; the worst being Athens, Greece. http://www.lvrj.com/business/las-vegas-economy-inching-up-from-bottom-rankings-137552723.html
From the Las Vegas Sun: The major casinos along the Las Vegas Strip suffered a $2.5 billion loss in fiscal year 2010, but it still was a better showing than the previous 12 months, the state Gaming Control Board reported today.
The net loss, which includes gaming, rooms and restaurants, was 38.2 percent less than in the prior fiscal year when the loss was $4.1 billion.
This was the first time there have been two consecutive years of losses. “The picture is not good,” says Michael Lawton, senior research analyst for the board. “The golden goose is hurting.” http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/jan/31/las-vegas-strip-casinos-posted-25-billion-loss-las/
Something to obvious to consider:
Gamboling is a “Vice”…
Look at any destination where some sort of Vice is the main attraction and you’ll see a very different type of visitor than what you might find in places where a Ski Slope or an Amusement park is the main attraction.
Not that there is anything wrong with people who visit Las Vegas or Amsterdam or book cruises because it has a casino or whatever…
I’m just stating the obvious that it’s a different type of visitor.
If we get casinos in Waikiki then we should expect that there will be a very noticeable change in the visitor demographics.
Some will think it’s an improvement and others wont.
But – There WILL be a noticeable change. Anyone who thinks otherwise is naive.
AHEM… The probing question posed to Ian by a regular reader was focused on the lobbying aspects of gaming in Hawaii. Not the merits (pro or con) of gaming.
Since casino type gambling in Hawaii would appear to fall under the visitor industry category, why do visitor industry leaders appear so vague or non-committed on the issue?
Is gaming to complex for industry leaders to decide on?
The visitor industry is usually very vocal about big issues in our state. Taxation, support for rail and even same-sex marriage.
Yet not a peep from them about an industry (gaming) that would appear to benefit them the most.
By the way, who is John Radcliffe and how did he become the lead lobbyist for gaming in Hawaii?
This is so stupid. The rest of the country has legalized gambling. Hawaii has not. So how hard is it to gamble in Hawaii? Not hard at all. Just not legal, that’s all. Football, chicken fights, obscure Asian card games, you name it. Like it will bring a lower class of tourist? Have you been on the sidewalks of Waikiki lately? Gimme a break.
Chicken fights, obscure Asian card games, etc… None of those illegal things have a major impact on our visitor industry, our home, how our home is marketed, perceived, etc, etc…
Once you legalese it and start marketing Hawaii as a gamboling destination… EVERYTHING changes and it’ll never be the same again.
Some people want this… Or they think they do…
However – I’m pretty sure that most people have a hard time visualizing and comprehending all of the long-term ramifications of transitioning our home into a gamboling destination.
Gee, I feel so bad for those poor suffering citizens of Monaco. It’s clear their quality of life has been ruined by that big, bad casino.
Richard – Every place is different…
I don’t think anyone is arguing that some cities like Las Vegas, Monaco and Monte Carlo work great as gambling destinations.
Other cities… Not so much. It all depends on the destination.
IMO – Hawaii isn’t a “Vice Travel” type of destination where people come to experience the sexy nightlife and and party scenes. Hawaii isn’t exactly a place where the addition of casinos would be an obvious next step to complement a preexisting environment where adults already come to experience party scene.
And… Hawaii will quickly transition into a “Vice Travel” destination if we allow casino gambling.
I don’t know anyone who wants to turn Waikiki into Las Vegas Beach.
Most people that I’ve met who want gambling seem to be under the crazy delusion that it won’t change anything at all about the way we market the destination, the visitor demographics, or the overall mood of the place, etc, etc…
They seem to live in a fantasy world where the addition of “Vice Attractions” like Casinos won’t turn the place into a “Vice Destination” or have any impact on the destination at all. Except for attracting a few more visitors.
This is not in direct response to Ian’s post above, but to a related Civil Beat commentary by the local lobbyist John Radcliffe who argues that legalized gambling in Hawaii would displace illegal gambling.
http://www.civilbeat.com/posts/2011/12/20/14269-legalizing-gambling-will-be-good-for-hawaii/
First of all, gambling is legal in Hawaii. Gambling among friends is perfectly legal. It’s gambling as a business that is illegal.
Second, I have heard of research that concludes that the legalization of gambling actually stimulates more illegal gambling. When gambling as a business is legalized, it supposedly becomes more of a preoccupation in society, so people gamble more illegally. Seemingly paradoxically, the legalization of gambling in Hawaii would mean more gambling dens.
Now, I have heard of other statistics that might support this supposition. The number of people addicted to gambling is generally one percent of the population, and when gambling as a business is legalized, that percentage doubles to 2%. So it is conceivable that even among the general population that is not and will not become addicted to gambling, the legalization of gambling as a business nevertheless increases (perhaps doubles?) a general fascination with gambling.
If this is true, if the legalization of gambling as a business were to occur in Hawaii, not only would there be an increase in social gambling and in illegal gambling dens, there could also be an increase in Internet gambling, something quite new. People would be gambling at work instead of reading Ian’s blog. The point is, there seems to be this feedback mechanism that exposure to gambling produces, where a little bit more of it exponentially produces a lot more of in various forms. It is not a finite quantity of interest that would be shepherded into more sanitary forms with legalization. And the Internet might provide just one more influence that would magnify the feedback mechanism if gambling as a business were legalized.
Another issue is how much of this money would stay in Hawaii if gambling as a business were legalized. A comparison could be made to agriculture. The profits from local agriculture — that is, produce that goes to the local market –generally stays in the locality. In contrast, the profits from multinational corporate monocrop agriculture (coffee, sugar) tend to get sucked out of the society that produced the crops.
Something similar happened in Las Vegas. Casinos in Las Vegas were once largely run by the Mafia. But as the Mafia became an object of scrutiny (the FBI had denied the existence of the Mafia until the 1960s), the mob was eager to cash out of such a high profile business, and the likes of Howard Hughes found a rich business opportunity. Today, corporations run Las Vegas, and the grittiness and glamour of the old days is gone. But there was an understanding in the old days that Las Vegas locals should not be encouraged to gamble. Casino workers in particular should not be encouraged to gamble because a card table operator with big debts is a potential embezzler. But publicly traded corporations compete with one another ferociously, and if a corporation’s stock price sinks, the company could be bought, the management sacked, and the company broken up and sold off in pieces. So the corporations that “Disney-fied” Las Vegas and made the place seem wholesome began to encourage not only locals to gamble, but casino workers as well. Anything to squeeze a dollar to send back to those corporate offices in Tokyo. So maybe small-scale gambling, legal or otherwise, might be preferable to the kind of corporate gambling that we like to imagine will be a windfall.
Responding to two narrow points in your post and staying away from the merits of gaming/rail, I have these thots:
1. The reason we’ve heard relatively little on gaming is that everyone knows there’s virtually no chance it will pass so no one’s getting very exercised about it; if it advances out of even one committee, opponents will marshal their troops; and
2. Although I am not a gambler (I hate to lose money), I think those of who do not gamble (or are agnostic like yourself) forget why people gamble: excpet for the addictives who feel compelled, people gamble for the entertainment value; no one seriously expects to win but the games can be entertaining and there is a chance, however small, of winning it big. To these folks, they are not LOSING money, they are SPENDING money on entertainment. So, when your friend says the gaming industry counts on people losing money, it’s really not THAT different than other forms of consumption — the basis of virtually the entire US economy — in which people spend money on things/activities of their choice.
There was a Civil Beat poll that found that two-thirds of Hawaii’s voters oppose the legalization of gambling. Lobbyists would understandably feel discouraged if they were to pursue legalization here.
One question I have is, if there is this (in)famous fascination with gambling on the part of the population of Hawaii — I hear that one out of five Hawaii residents who are travelling are going to or coming from Las Vegas — why does this same society have a deep aversion to gambling?
One question is whether the proscription of gambling in Hawaii is a religious imperative, as it is in Utah, which is the only other state to have a total ban on gambling. But how religious, or more specifically, how Christian is Hawaii? Statistics from 2000 suggest that Christians make up only 30% of the population, but a 2009 poll claims that Christians make up 60% of the population.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii#Religion
My guess is that the fact that such polls could diverge so widely might suggest that although a majority of Hawaii residents might be “Christians”, it’s a nominal form of Christianity. If true, this leads to another question, which is why would so many people in Hawaii be nominal Christians? One guess would be that an interest in religion by people who were not particularly religious reflects a deep cultural conservatism, a conservatism based on the valuation of family. American conservatives talk about “family values”, but what they mean is religion. (There are a series of sayings to this effect about Americans to this effect, that “Americans don’t have families, they have friends”, or “Americans don’t really have friends, they have people they spend time with”, and now finally “Americans don’t spend time with people, they are all on Facebook.”) In contrast, it could be that religious affiliation in Hawaii reflects a commitment to family life, and not really a deeply religious worldview. In that case, local folks go to church because it is a family kind of thing to do, like going on a picnic, but they would really be very secular people underneath it all, and rather irreligious by many standards. (And that’s not a bad thing at all.)
Now, how would this profile of a culturally conservative culture mesh with a society that had a fascination with gambling? One statistic I have heard is that small business owners who have revenues of over $1 million per year virtually never gamble. I don’t know if it is true, but the idea is that people who take risks every day with their own money gain little satisfaction with gambling. It could be that Hawaii’s population is rather risk averse in ordinary life, and that ironically shows up in a proclivity for taking big risks at the gaming tables. (The Chinese are famously enterprising, but also famous gamblers, so this seems to contradict the idea that entrepreneurs are averse to gambling. But the Chinese have a deep emotional conservatism that might underlie their sense of enterprise, so “enterprise” for them does not have the same adventurous appeal for the Chinese that it might for a Richard Branson or Steve Jobs. The Chinese never lose their tempers, they never “cut loose”. The only time they can escape from the regime of discipline is through feasting, gambling and fireworks — which is a bit similar to Hawaii.)
Now, scientists have shown that there is a genetic component to risk aversion, that it is a biologically inherited trait. (However, supposedly those who are born with greater tendencies toward risk aversion are changed by being educated, that curiosity and openness become character traits if one has a college education.) So the kind of people who immigrated to Hawaii (or migrated, in the case of Polynesian voyagers) would be supreme risk takers, and so we would be expected to be a society of risk takers par excellance. And this seems to be true in sports today in the Islands (and it might have been true when families were moving off the plantations and moving to Oahu and setting up family businesses in Honolulu and Hawaii was famous for its small businesses).
But by its nature, Hawaii has a very limited economy based on geography; people can’t take big risks economically because it’s harder to move on in Hawaii after career setbacks, instead you become a burden on your family. And that’s never going to change. (As an East West Center researcher once pointed out, we can blame the Jones Act all we want for a high cost of living, but that’s a lie, the reality is that we don’t live on a vast, rich continent.) So, again, one might expect local residents who tend to be a little more on the risk taking side — which actually might be in their blood, so to speak, because their ancestors were supreme risk takers just to come here — to either move to the mainland (in particular, to Las Vegas) or to just hunker down in daily life and cut loose once or twice (or many times) a year in Las Vegas.
Now, there might be one troubling complication to life in a (understandably) risk-averse society in the 21st century, and that is the ongoing and permanent erosion of security.
Someone pointed out to me once that when American kids graduate from college, they might backpack through Europe, or hike the Grand Canyon or teach English for a while in Japan, but when local kids graduate from UH, they immediately apply for a government job. That’s not due to a money shortage on the part of local kids, because they have enough money for Vegas; it’s a desire for security.
Now, maybe there never really was such a thing as security, but even if there was, in the future there is going to be less of it. Look at Abercrombie and the public unions. With Neil, you see a governor who loves unions and education more than he loves his own life, but he is seemingly spending the bulk of his time going up against the teacher’s union. At this point in history and onward, no matter who gets elected will face a shortage of money and they will have to act in the same ways. So, it could be that Hawaii will never have a vibrant economy where one can take risks (for geographic reasons), but now the old fallback position of seeking security instead has been permanently nixed. Gambling might be less appealing for a younger generation that never really gets a foothold or finds its niche, no matter how modest its expectations. This raises another question: Do the local kids know they are totally screwed?
“My cynical side suspects that the big boys are afraid to take a public stand on gambling knowing that silence is sometimes just as effectiveas making noise. If gambling passes they will find a way to benefit.”
The gambling industry has plenty of slime attached to it. Crime of all sorts, addiction, pitiful social costs, questionable profitability, and the loosers are mostly the poor. I think Reader is right and silence “for”keeps the risk of being outed as pro gambling to a minimum.
Your mayor and several clergymen did appear on local tv to oppose. The “For” group did not show.
They tend to operate in the backwater channels out of sight not revealing their true affiliations. Nothing new here I’m afraid. They want to be the “us” but are pretty sure they are the “them” so they stay in the shadows as you say.
Ian, I just thought that I would revisit this issue to clarify a couple of things. First, I am not against all forms of gambling. I think that churches could run lotteries of their own (raffles). I know someone who showed me a couple of lottery tickets he bought from a church, each for one hundred bucks. (He lost on both of them.) I don’t think many people will lose their homes buying lottery tickets through churches.
Second, the discourse on gambling in Hawaii tends to focus on how much locals might lose in gambling. Not mentioned is what will happen when visitors lose all. In the Occupy Movement articles, one commentator mentioned that he came to Hawaii several months ago with two secured jobs waiting, only to find them canceled. He could not afford a ticket home so now he lives in the park. You will see more of that with a casino in Waikiki.
Without assuming, comparing & guessing, I challenge all opposition including law enforcement & religious clergymen who say gambling, specifically lottery would not increase revenue for this State. Your comments are welcome. Thank You.