Yes, it’s wrong to gamble

I've never been to Vegas for a conference but I have flown in there for vacation, going to Zion, Grand Canyon, Red Rock Canyon, Valley of Fire, etc. One time I stayed at a casino because the room was so inexpensive, but it just felt dirty. Vegas is a vanity fair. Everything about it is set up to tempt and entice people to do things they shouldn't do, produce discontentment with what we have, heighten the allurement of quick riches, and stir up the passions of the flesh that war against one's soul. I'm always so glad to be out of there.

As far as pretending to gamble when you are really not, just for fun and games, I tend to be very careful about things like that. I don't want that fun to entice me or others into something we shouldn't do or won't be able to control. Gambling is very addictive and destructive, and so I think discretion is the better part of valor when it comes to this sort of thing.

And as for Chuck E. Cheese, I would recommend avoiding that place like the plague. :)

>>Everything about it is set up to temp and entice people to do things they shouldn’t do, produce discontentment with what we have, heighten the allurement of quick riches, and stir up the passions of the flesh that war against one’s soul.<<

To a lesser extent, over the years I started to feel the same about shopping malls. If there is something I really need, I can now order it. Going through a mall more and more seems to me an exercise in stirring up covetousness. I go as little as possible, for that reason and others, though I don’t try to paint the mall as sinful for everyone.

>>And as for Chuck E. Cheese, I would recommend avoiding that place like the plague. :)<<

I haven’t been in one in years, since my kids are grown. However, while they were young, it was an excellent reward for them. I remember taking my oldest for her 5-year-old vaccinations. We promised her that if she didn’t make a big fuss about getting the shots, she would get to go. She didn’t scream, and only had quiet tears after getting the shots, and the doctor commented that she must have been well-prepared, but I know she was only thinking about Chuck E. Cheese.

Definitely not my favorite place to go, with all the noise, etc., but the one in our area did one thing right to get the parents to bring kids — their pizza was very good (not quite NY pizza, but good close second), which was a consolation prize for parents. Plus, looking back, I wouldn’t trade the times I spent with my kids going through the hamster tubes with them, playing skeeball, etc. It wasn’t as fun for me as it was for them, but it made their night, and thus was worth it to me.

The reason I bring up Chuck E. Cheese (and yes like many on here, I haven't been there in years), it has "gambling style games", where you put a token in, gamble on when the light will hit the arrow, the ball will fall.... and if you win this game of "chance" you receive a payout (some number of tickets), which can then be redeemed for some kind of toy or prize in their "store". I think most parents would find this harmless, as at least back in the day, $25 could buy a solid 90 minutes of kids running around with their friends having fun. But the reality is that the games are in some cases basically the same you would find in Las Vegas, and in some cases identical with what you find in Las Vegas.

In reality, we exposed our kids to this. But in reality we might have gone to Chuck E. Cheese 5-7 times at most in their 18 years. So it really wasn't an addiction, nor did we ever go after they were 12 years old, as there was really no interest.

>>The reason I bring up Chuck E. Cheese (and yes like many on here, I haven’t been there in years), it has “gambling style games”, where you put a token in, gamble on when the light will hit the arrow, the ball will fall…. and if you win this game of “chance” you receive a payout (some number of tickets), which can then be redeemed for some kind of toy or prize in their “store”.<<

I understand why it came up. Over the years, my kids learned that when having to spend their own money on tokens beyond what was provided with the family meal deal, that whatever tickets they earned (from skill games or chance games) added up to only redeem something that cost substantially less than what they had paid for the tokens. Sometimes, it was worth the “entertainment” expense to them, particularly when young. As they got older, they started to realize the bad monetary transaction, and around the same time, that restaurant lost its appeal to them, same as in your family.

So overall, I think the lessons learned by my kids from their experiences at Chuck E. Cheese were overall a positive, not a negative, particularly on the value of money. As teens, they got quite tight-fisted and choosy when having to spend their own money on something they wanted.

Vegas is a special place, in my view, because it's one of the few places I've ever been where even the streets outside reek of stale cigarette smoke. Regarding the gambling, the best picture I've seen of it is an old man I saw feeding tokens or quarters into the one armed bandit, and the waitress, dressed pretty much as a prostitute in a skirtless corset outfit, brought him a drink and a sandwich--and he didn't flinch at all. I'm not encouraging ogling women in states of undress, mind you, but it was striking that the guy didn't even raise his head when she came by. To me, it speaks of the habit-forming nature of the repeated dopamine hits he was getting from the slot machine.

And the comparison to the mall and Chuck-E-Cheese (come for the games, watch your parents fight over them!) are also fairly apt, as I've come to realize that the malls of today are not the malls I grew up with, and quite frankly I remember that even the malls I grew up with were significantly filled with merchandise that could only charitably be described as shoddy.

And so, with due respect to Wally, I think this is indeed one of those things where Scripture doesn't speak absolutely to something they knew, so we have to make inferences from the other factors that exist. For casinos, is it right to expose yourself to the whole scene--strippers and all? For the lottery, is it right to give the poor further reason to impoverish themselves on "the tax on people who are bad at math"? Does the endless series of dopamine hits nourish your soul? Is this a good use for your money?

The zero sum nature of the lottery and bad stewardship are the most convincing arguments to me that gambling is wrong. Also, the inherent covetousness of it all.

The notion of a zero sum game is inherently bad, evil or otherwise. The concept is actually economic theory, and it happens all around us. Even those who may be "wise stewards" of their money in how they invest their money, may be involved in zero sum game transactions. Any kind of Derivatives trading like options, which are used by individuals or funds are a zero sum game. Investments and business expansions can be zero sum games.

I’m not an expert but I think I would disagree that derivative trading is zero sum since there is still opportunity for growth. Am I thinking of this incorrectly? In the Lotto, there are only so many tickets so each ticket I buy lowers others’ chance of winning, effectively devaluing their purchase.

Probably a derivative that many are familiar with here is agricultural futures, which farmers use a lot to lock in prices they're satisfied with. I've done it myself for that purpose. The flip side is what Hillary Clinton did in Arkansas, where she was trading cattle futures for months, earning returns that most insiders thought improbable, theoretically pocketing $100k that would have otherwise belonged to farmers and meatpackers. In reality, it was more likely a "gift" from Tyson Foods, whose executives "coached" her to the improbable series of trades, of course.

But more ethically done, derivatives can be a zero sum game by people simply playing the markets, or they can be a way of insuring against risk by people bringing products to market. How you use it determines the morality to a degree.

(side note is that "gambling" can be a great way of offering a bribe....a company I used to work for had a legend going around that they got permission to build a plant in Asia when a senior VP "lost a bet" on a golf game with a high government official)

A derivative is a well known zero sum game. Studied it in my graduate economic theory class. So are swaps. Doesn't mean they are bad, they are important financial instruments.