[jacobolus]

The airport in Las Vegas is one of the most depressing places I have ever been. There are slot machines in the waiting rooms, placed there so that people who have just gambled away big money over the weekend get one final chance to throw a bit more down the drain before boarding a plane home.

The last time I was there (a decade ago), I watched a mother compulsively dump quarters into the gaping maw while her young child literally sobbed and begged her to stop.

* * *

Casinos are pits of human suffering and exploitation. You can walk into pretty much any one of them at any time of day, head over to the slot machine section, and watch sad hypnotized people hand over their savings bit by bit to machines carefully designed by highly trained psychologists to take their money as efficiently as possible.

* * *

The big money-making gambling in modern casinos is not a “tax” on “ignorance”. It is a large-scale fraud perpetrated against the impulsive and weak willed by some very rich people and their unethical professional employees.

(I’m not talking about college students betting their next round of beers on a poker game here, or whatever. Not all gambling is inherently problematical.)