WAS: What Adults are Saying about our Casino Economy
Will endless "betting" forever depress living standards?
Americans have seemingly little understanding of a cultural feature that has been prevalent since the country’s birth. I’m not speaking of English as a broadly-used language, self-representation in governance, immigrants chasing a better life or even perpetual theft of Native lands. There definitely has been all of that. Equally as prominent though—since the beginning—America has been a place and idea filled with gamblers.
Not gambling in the many ways in which we breathlessly wager—legal and not—on our “sports.” There is a ton of that. Nor the so-called “social benefit” of state lotteries—a legal form of extortion where takeouts are so severe as to make shylocks blush. There is a ton of that too. Nor even the way casinos now sit on some of those Native lands as a perverse way of claiming due “reparations” is the concern here—the righteousness of which is left for others to discuss.
I’m talking about gambling as a selected way of our economic life. You know, the entire economic foundation of our culture where we overspend time and energy anointing winners and losers and never permitting the twain to meet. A premise suggesting all in our economy is a zero sum game—a pie-chart to be divided among only the grubbiest and most “successful” of hands which grab a slice—as we rats scramble “rationally” in an unending competitive market for everything.
Guidance for this pursuit comes from economic gods like Keynes, Smith, Ricardo or (god forbid) the ruinous Milton Freidman. All talked in ways about how that pie gets consumed—by whom, when, how and under what conditions. But all these saints (and many others) genuflected in lock step before an altar of gold embracing the sanctity of “free” markets as the sole way by which humans can survive. Free markets are indeed vital—especially in our Democracy. But the closed loop of zero sum is not the same as free market even though many claim so with the same certitude as discussing gravity. If only. It’s said that in a fit of humor God created economists so that astrologers would look reputable. That God—he/she/they/them—is/are a funny sumbitch!
The US, nor anyplace, doesn’t heave and ho through every day metronome-like creating only winners and losers. Though we have many institutions operating that way (our sports and Wall Street for instance where we sanitize our gambling and call it “trading”) and broad swaths of people who embrace this over simplification as indicative of how everything works. Universal zero sum is no more an American feature than our children attending school without fear of death by firearm (you know, like how it is in all other countries).
We know this because not all things work that way. The idea of a Cooperative (of varied types), a labor union or even a “win-win” situation tell us a problem can be solved with mutual benefit to all and nary a “loser” in the bunch! Even in this seriously divided time we live with abundant evidence where some “market” outcomes are better when banding together—benefiting many than simply creating or reinforcing the haves and have-nots. Too many of us treat universal zero sum as some hidden 11th commandment Moses forgot to inscribe-filled with meaning for millenia that followed—akin to when playing the “White album” backward. Such thinking is too simple and often, simple and childish thinking are correlated.
Yet this premise persists. Consider the value of the world economy is a little over $100T—with a “T”. The value of debt attached to the world economy is over $300T. In other words, the “world” is indebted to itself three times over! None of us “own” anything and the things we do wish to own need to be paid off in triplicate! That’s what zero sum metrics can tell us about the monetary value of our planet. If zero-sum is correct how can this be true where the “world’s ledger” is so imbalanced? Head scratching huh? Don’t overthink the cosmic significance of this lest you arrive at the same point where Katy, Boon and Pinto did with professor Jennings in Animal House.
Again, that God is a funny sumbitch!
All of this has a very practical side. Too much zero-sum indoctrination for too long means we begin to believe that no problem can ever be solved. Instead we wrongly believe any effort merely shifts the “burden of victim” to someone else. Given this today’s “winners” are in line to be tomorrow’s “losers”, and small-minds that hyper-focus on this matter only worry about being on the right side of things. Little our culture, government and collective humanity might do to solve anything looms an enemy.
This pernicious thinking seriously clogs life-affirming action. The logical outcomes are even worse and would have us believe:
+ National child care and parental leave policies means some “bad” for others? Which others and since when did investments in young children have a downside and create “bad” for anyone?
+ Policy upgrades to immigration can only result in some nameless, faceless folks in the bottom economic strata being further repressed by the zero-sum thinking that screwed them in the first place?
+ Firearm legislation that changes norms where Vice-Presidential candidates don’t lament school shootings as “part of life”—as though we are talking about pimples—is harmful to whom? Some group of nitwits believing words written during the black powder era apply equally in the Nuclear Age?
+ Anything that aims to reduce dependency on carbon-producing energy supplies will harm certain others? Which others—the few remaining coal miners—so emotionally an economically indebted to a 19th century way of life they need to be “protected”?
You get the idea. This so called extreme zero-sumism is just another trope aimed at reinforcing power to those who’ve already had it conferred. Any hint or strain of a change that curbs power signals danger. Meanwhile, in the real world the rest of us live ever more precariously because modern times bring modern problems. We wish to solve them with the “free-market”, we the people sensibilities conferred to all of us. In doing so we wish not to be gaslit that all, collective, mutually beneficial activity requires a scoreboard.