MIT students and former students did make it a practice to beat the casinos around the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Blackjack_Team It is at least strongly controversial that they made millions by turning the tables on casinos. Unlike casinos who ask winners to keep coming back and playing as long as possible since odds are they will lose their winnings if they continue to play.
My dad had a friend who had won tens of thousands of dollars in Las Vegas. I still remember my dad talking with him in the 1980s on the phone while he was at the table. My dad told him to take the money and run. My dad's friend lost all of it in the 40 minutes and didn't listen to his advice.
For instance, other parts of the world have moral principles more in line with "don't get caught" or "don't embarrass your superiors" or "never side with anyone against The Family" than with "do no harm".
The typical American standard of morality is set so high that no one, other Americans in particular, including the very person professing that moral standard, can be reasonably expected to live up to it. Hypocrisy abounds among those with ultrahigh moral standards. Furthermore, the details of American morals are so diverse that anyone who manages to be a paragon by one person's standard may be no more than a low-life slimeball by another's.
In contrast, compliance with the letter of the law is a far more achievable standard.
If there is anyone who is at fault here, it is the mathematically incompetent person who designed the payout system for the lottery. This was, at its heart, no different from a finance quant unraveling the details of a complex derivative to discover an arbitrage opportunity for the firm. Discovery and use of the exploit corrected the artificially high margin for the state in administering the game to one more realistic for the mathematically flawed payout model.
There used to be a sign on I-10 as you approached the Biloxi, Mississippi area. It was for a casino and said something like "Our slots have 98% payout!". I have no doubt as to the veracity of such a statement, because 2% of the money that flows through slot machines is more than enough to turn a profit from them.
These lotteries are obviously a different story since you can buy as many tickets as you want.
Lottery TV commercials literally make me want to puke every time I see them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaB28DCxFQI
My question is why would taking advantage of this system for one's own gain be unethical? The administrators believe (apparently erroneously) that they have a built-in statistical advantage over anybody playing. So by the logic that the MIT students shouldn't exploit a flaw in the system even though it is legal because it is unethical, then the lottery administrators should not be able to run a lottery for the same reason.
My point being, something doesn't have to be illegal to be wrong. In this case it's mainly strange that the lottery didn't change things when they became aware of the scheme.
It's essentially a very complicated structure of IF/THEN/ELSE conditions. If it's possible to decrease its tax burden while complying with the law, that's what a corporation is supposed to do. It's not cheating to follow the rules. If one doesn't like the outcome, one should seek to change the law.
Is it moral for the mafia to use the threat of force to take a percentage of a business's income? I'd submit that it's not and I suspect that you agree with that.(I'll concede that I don't know you and can't speak for you)
Why does that same behavior become moral if/when a government does it?
Yet, one of those entities can do it legally.
I am a member of a society which has a representative government which acts on its behalf. I have used their services and therefore I owe them money. Therefore, it is legitimate for them to demand that money from me.
And both these entities can do so legally. It would be entirely legal for the mafia to use the legal system to demand money from you in the same way the government would (or that any business or organisation you used services from would). The very fact they choose not to, suggests their claim is illegitimate.
Hate to be the guy that uses a contrived example, but how about this: "I'll just come with a bunch of my worker-buddies, and we'll mow your lawn, trim your bushes and clean your pool. Every day, 7 times more than you'd like per week. Come next Monday, we'll be expecting your dues for our services. And if you don't pay up, well we'll just legally get your employer to withhold it from you. I mean, it's not like we're holding a gun to your head to make you pay, or breaking your windows or anything to intimidate you. Right?
The whole concept of government, social contract, and "the consent of the public", along with the example you used as an argument all constitute a form of circular reasoning to me. None of it derives from base, irreducible principles, so are completely arbitrary. That's why this whole "not all immoral things are illegal" argument arose, because people can't even agree on that, nor can they accept that the majority has spoken with respect to legality representing overall morals.
The base principle is that society is made up of people and those people then choose the rules for that society. If you don't like that, you can often vote to change those rules, or you can choose another society.
Most societies have fees to be a member (known as taxes) and frankly, it's a bit late to complain about these fees when you've already used the privileges of that society to make a ton of money. It's like eating at a restaurant and complaining, after you've had 6 courses, that the food is inedible and you don't want to pay.
Or you can use the rules for your own benefit.
If the rules of the aforementioned society make it possible to reduce your tax burden, it's not a moral issue if you choose to avail yourself of them.
If your tax burden can be X or Y depending on your choices and Y < X, it's not a moral shortcoming if you choose to pay Y instead of X.
Our society uses tax policy to shape behavior. We all know this. That's why student loan and mortgage interest are deductible. It's disingenuous for people to complain when they discover that tax policy is shaping behavior.
We see this from the middle-class family who donates old clothes to Goodwill or the Salvation Army instead of throwing them away all the way up through the billionaire who makes sure that he spends at least 182 days per year outside of New York.
But that has nothing to do with the original post I replied to. You've changed the topic.
Are you conceding that your argument that taxes are equivalent to a protection racket is wrong?
Of course, taxation is legal. Using the tax code to minimize one's tax liability is legal and also amoral.
Are you sure about this?
To address your direct question, it's my position that using force or the threat of force to compel someone to pay you money -that you say they owe you- is no more moral when the government does it than when the Gambinos did it. Obviously, it's legal when the government does it but the government is not a moral entity.
Try thinking more about your own arguments and how they might practically be applied.
Debt currently works that way in the vast majority of cases.
If you don't pay Comcast or Verizon (or whomever) for your internet service, they'll stop providing service to you. They'll also report you to Equifax, Trans Union and Experian so that other people will know that you can't be trusted to pay your debts and they'll require a security deposit before they'll provide you with service.
If you overdraw your bank account and close it without settling the debt, they'll report you so that other banks know about the issue and those other banks will refuse to allow you to open a new account until the original matter is resolved.
If you don't pay your Visa bill, again, they will stop extending credit to you and you'll be reported to Equifax, Trans Union and Experian. Other credit card companies will know about your history and they will refuse to extend any credit to you.
In none of those cases is force or the threat of force used to collect a debt.
EDIT: Oh, and you're misusing the term "strawman". I was asking questions about your post, not positing an argument for you.
I never advocated such a position.
It was a strawman.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispute_resolution_organization
We're only obliged to follow the letter of the law. If there is no law against making profits where they are beyond the reach of local taxation, there's nothing objectively wrong about it.
Even using your own reasoning, if the profit is made elsewhere, the only moral obligation is to pay the legal taxes that apply in that locale.
Yes. I don't pay any taxes to the US government, for example, because I don't use any of their services.
In no other developed country (in the sense of a competitive GDP, somewhat large and somewhat well educated population) have I seen the same disdain and mistrust for government. Why is it amoral for a government to take taxes if you are - born in a hospital funded by taxes, given vaccines and medication partly funded by taxes, drive to/from home on roads built by taxes, so on and so forth. The people who thing it's unfair they have to pay taxes - what would you prefer? Living in an "AT&T country" where every single service is "privately" owned and you'd be charged fees for it? Sounds like a dream.
Comparatively, in countries such as Sweden and Norway, everyone pays taxes (much moreso than in the good old US of A), and yet the tax agency is rated the most trusted government entity in the government. Strangely enough, this "amorality" also leads to some of the best standards of living and social mobility in the world?
Is it possible that you're conflating the definitions of immoral and amoral?
born in a hospital funded by taxes
This is an assumption. There are many private hospitals.
given vaccines and medication partly funded by taxes
Vaccines are mandated. It's circular reasoning to say that the costs of someone taking vaccines are justification for taking their money when you forced them to take the vaccine.
drive to/from home on roads built by taxes
We had roads before direct taxation. The fact that we pay for them with tax money doesn't mean that they wouldn't exist without them.
Comparatively, in countries such as Sweden and Norway, everyone pays taxes (much moreso than in the good old US of A), and yet the tax agency is rated the most trusted government entity in the government.
I don't know anything of the political situation in Sweden or Norway. Does their tax collecting branch of government ever get used as a political weapon, the way the IRS does?
if( (Cost_of_breaking_law * %_chance_of_getting_caught) < profit ) {break_law;}
The problem is that the penalties for "corporate crime" are so low.
If the penalty for bank robbery was only 50% of the profit, no bank in America would be safe.
I see nothing morally wrong with that.
I do agree the law has nothing to do with morality, eg. war on drugs, slavery, etc.
Exactly - if the loan shark has his legs broken and is robbed of his ill-gotten fortune, how immoral is that?
Once you pay over your cash, it belongs to the lottery commission. Your chance of winning is infinitesimal to the point that you may as well spend your money on other things, like paying down your mortgage quicker or paying off your car quicker or whatever other debts you have - either way, the money is gone - unless what you're getting out of it is that period between purchase and draw - the _hope_ of the win, you're likely getting nothing out of your purchase. If you're getting your emotional high from playing rather than the hope of winning, then perhaps the $5 is a good purchase, it's hard to say; otherwise, I'd say it's better spent on something the _does_ have a financial or emotional reward.
Either way, I'm not really clear on what your point is... perhaps you can clarify.
It may not be worth the $5 even if it does give you an emotional high — perhaps especially so. I am reminded of http://lesswrong.com/lw/hl/lotteries_a_waste_of_hope/, which argues that winning the lottery is the wrong sort of hope to invest in, both financially and emotionally. I found that article's argument convincing.
Day dreaming is a means of escaping your existing reality... but if you take no action, then your day dreaming is just that. You need to take action to give any possibility of it ever becoming more than that. In this case, the $5 for the ticket is that step. Perhaps the fantasy is what you live for. Perhaps you spend your life with your head buried in romance novels, who knows, the effect is the same - you paid $5 for the book which gave you a few good hours of day dreaming, or perhaps even a number of days of escape. The lottery ticket gave you a couple of hours escape before you come back to reality. It's just a pleasant way to pass the time. You can tell just how many people have this mindset by the number of copies of Fifty Shades of Grey you saw being read on public transit after it came out.
There is nothing neither wrong nor immoral about such behaviour, just a huge portion of others (those who just play for fun or are envious) sees such activity as an act of jerkiness.
A while back I read about an early Microsoft employee who, once a year, goes to Vegas and counts cards at high stakes until they throw him out. Generally it takes about an hour, he makes several multiples of $10K, and donates it to charity.
Blackjack isn't really a party game.
...but I do like hanging out with my friends and occasionally agreed to join up. In the end, I just hung out and played low-stakes games, getting "free" drinks the whole time. Ended up spending about as much as if we'd decided to hang out at a moderately pricey bar, got tipsy, and had a good time hanging out with my friends.
I just looked at it like any other night out spending a few bucks on drinks and maybe a few more playing Megatouch or feeding the jukebox. At no point did I hold any expectations of winning loads of money.
I can't find anything morally wrong about card counting though, Blackjack is presented as a game where skill can affect the outcome, even though in absense of card counting it's a game of luck. I'm sure that a fair number of habitual players develop some kind of card-counting heuristic innately, and in that case people who really count cards (without using some kind of device) are just better players and deserve to win (although I think casinos have good reason to forbid the technique, as the alternative would be to get rid of Blackjack).
They absolutely are not. Once someone buys a lottery ticket it's no longer their money. It's the lottery commission's, or the state's, or whomever.
To say that the MIT students were taking advantage of "(largely poor) ticket buyers" is at best extraordinarily disingenuous, if not willfully disregarding several key facts.
Another alternative is to play less deep into the shoe before reshuffling. Reshuffle often enough and the house has an advantage over card counters. However, this slows down play and therefore the reduces the rate they bring in money from people who don't counting cards (or count cards poorly).
Saying something is legal is pretty much the lowest defense you can use to justify something.
If it isn't illegal, what's wrong with using brains to make money?