17 February 2008

Gambling and share trading

I do not own company shares. I have never owned company shares. I have no wish to own company shares.

During my teenage years I was enthusiastic for all commerce to be managed by the people for the benefit of the people. I applauded when companies were taken into state ownership, and felt betrayed when state-owned industries were thrown into the ravening maws of fat-cat capitalists: British Gas ("Tell Sid") and British Telecom ("It's good to talk") ("Phone home" was from E.T.). During my twenties I realised a) that state-owned businesses were not as wonderful for their workforce as I had imagined (television images of grateful coal miners in 1947 when the National Coal Board took over the running of coal mines in the UK; of beaming nurses and relieved patients when in 1948 the National Health Service took over the running of hospitals, clinics and surgeries in the UK); b) that some companies could be ethical in their practice, for example Anita Roddick's The Body Shop; c) that there were better, less-hierarchical models for the structure of a business, such as charities, trusts (for example, The Guardian newspaper), collectives and co-operatives (such as Scott-Bader). I liked the idea of businesses being run by the workers for the benefit of the workers. I became a member of a co-operative (Earthcare, in Durham, UK), and was instrumental in forming a collective (Dragon Wholefoods Collective). I was also heavily involved with all manner of charitable / not-for-profit activities, projects and ventures (such as Durham City Centre Youth Project, outreach, chaplaincy). My CV from that time runs to pages. However, it was often my experience that I wanted to give greater commitment to these activities than many of the other people involved. In my late twenties, therefore, with many misgivings, I set up my own small business: Alpha Word Power. After a while, I began to employ people, initially part-time, and then full-time as well. It seemed that I was betraying my teenage roots. However, I never owned any company shares. While Margaret Thatcher's cellphone-toting, greed-motivated yuppies made their millions on the London stock exchange, I believed that share-ownership was immoral, that it was wrong. What I objected to fundamentally, and I also had further objections, was the idea that owning sufficient company shares gave someone the right dictate strategic policy. I have, to a small extent mellowed from this position. For example, I recognise the all-round benefit of John Lewis staff owning shares in the company for which they work [note to myself: this is not accurate - the business is technically a co-operative that is held in trust, all employees are Partners, have a substantive voice in the running of the business, and receive an annual bonus proportionate to their salary]. I believe that Google does the same. I am still on board, although rather less comfortable, with the idea of buying and owning shares in small, ecological ventures, for example building wind turbines and the like. To my way of thinking this really amounts to giving money to a cause in which one believes, with little expectation of the money being returned. The line gets crossed where the money is invested to make a profit. I can understand why it needs to happen: why businesses need capital, and people (and other businesses) with money are willing to buy shares. When I think of the money as a loan, then I can cope. However, when I think about people buying shares in order to profit from riding on the backs of the people who do the work (shop floor workers and managers) then I know that share ownership is immoral. However, it gets worse. As I understand it, much share trading is speculative about the price of the shares. When profiting from changes to the value of shares becomes the main purpose of share trading then it seems obvious to me that the plot has been lost. To me, this kind of financial speculation is little, if at all, different from gambling, and is therefore immoral.

16 February 2008

Gaming and gambling

Gaming gambling, like buying sex, is immoral. Since childhood, I have believed gaming gambling to be immoral. In the early 1980s I formally opposed the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries (Amendment) Act 1984 that was enacted by the Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher to liberalise laws around gambling in the UK. I wrote to each member of the parliamentary Committee, chaired by Sir Ian Gilmour, expressing my unhappiness with the proposed legislation. Clement Freud, a Liberal MP who was a member of the committee, referred to me and people like me as "killjoys" (see Hansard).

During my teens I became aware that some poor, working class men would gamble away their wages, further impoverishing wife and children, sometimes condemning the entire family to a life of destitution. More recently I learned that some poor, working class women (for example in Sunderland) would feed the entire week's housekeeping money into gambling machines, getting themselves into debt and becoming prey to loan sharks. In using the word 'some', I do not know how many people, nor how widespread these behaviours are. However, I do know that gambling in the UK is so widespread that it is practically universal, and debt (resulting from consumption and gambling) in the UK currently exceeds GDP. (One of the features of writing weblog postings about issues that concern me is that I confront myself to produce evidence that supports or refutes my beliefs.) Online gambling (poker, for example) appears to be huge. In June 2005: "According to research group Forrester, 76% of the UK's 29 million adult internet users admit to regularly placing a bet either online or offline."

I have always considered succumbing to gaming gambling as evidence of personal weakness, making innocent people vulnerable to scams (the medieval 'three-cup trick'), confidence tricks ('get-rich-quick' schemes)and dishonesty (The Sting). When I was a child I felt disgusted when I learned that gambling machines and casinos pay out less than they receive. I considered their behaviour unfair, because I did not understand that they are businesses. When I was a child, I became gently enthralled both by the idea of 'breaking the bank' (restorative justice) and by the masculine courage of James Bond at the roulette wheel. (On a recent flight from Narita to Schipol I watched the Daniel Craig outing of a James Bond movie, and could not resolve the conflict for me that a character who is supposed to be the ultimate in 'cool' should behave in so pathetic a manner as to have to gamble on the gaming tables.)

In full respect of confidentiality, I can state clearly that there are many people in the UK who have a gambling addiction, and that this addiction, effectively indistinguishable from a chemical addiction, has been extremely problematic in their lives. I have met such people.

Of course gaming is business: it is part of the entertainment industry, as evidenced by the plethora of gaming shows on television. The gambling aspect of gaming has also attracted organised crime (e.g. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) and shows gaming, like drugs- and people-trafficking, to be a lucrative, but also unsavoury and seedy business. I do not know what proportion of gaming / gambling in the UK is infected with organised crime, and I may well be guilty of watching too many movies. I imagine that only a small proportion is significantly criminal; that a somewhat larger proportion, whilst legal, has criminal links / associations; and that much of what remains is legal, but may either be tainted or at risk. I believe that most people in the UK who gamble fail to, or refuse to, consider and address this issue; whereas for some the possibility of links to organised crime may add an attractive frisson.

I do not respect the motivation or activity of seeking to acquire wealth without earning it. This places gambling very close to robbery and theft, although in the case of gambling, each party is trying to rob the other. I confess to a strong Protestant work ethic. (When my father died it did not concern me that he left me nothing in his will. In contrast, I am challenged by the fact that my daughter will have little if any opportunity to earn her way through life, and will be dependent on whatever my wife and I can leave her when we die.)

Gaming positions itself within the entertainment industry, and I find it hard to respect resources being spent on activities that make no attempt to improve the world. I also find it challenging to respect money being spent on activities that make no attempt to improve the sum total of happiness in the world, and gaming creates many more losers than winners. This sets gambling in the same category as the military-industrial complex. Gaming is far from the worthy activities of education, scientific exploration, health research, health (physical, mental, emotional) support, charitable giving, economic development (whether in the the economically-developed or -developing world), environmental improvement, and artisitic and cultural expression.

I do not respect games of chance. The UK national obsession with horse racing, and the local enthusiasm for greyhound racing, are not only perversions in their exploitation of animals, but socially-accepted excuses for people to avoid working, looking after their families, and helping to improve the world. When I was a child, millions of people in the UK gambled every week on the outcomes of football (soccer) matches. The national lottery (begun under the Thatcher government) has to a significant extent replaced the 'football pools'. An effect of this has been that charitable giving by individuals in the UK has declined. (I shall check the figures.)

In 1979/80 I lived in Coxhoe, County Durham, UK. I was told by local people about how, during the 1920s and 1930s, large gatherings would be held for illegal gambling in West Cornforth woods, only a handful of miles from where I now live. Children would be posted at the edge of the wood to warn of any approach by the police ('polliss'). Only a mile from where I live are the remains of a grandstand that was built in the 1920s for a horse-racing track. The racing track was closed at the outbreak of the second world war, and the grandstand fell into disrepair. In the local pubs it used to be, and still is for all I know, a commonplace that a large platter of uncooked cuts of dead animals would be raffled. In Quarrington Hill, a village close to Coxhoe, the police raided a regular dog-fighting match. Every village around here has at least a little brick bookmaker's cabin. I have met local people (men) who are private bookmakers - taking bets on all manner of events. A short series of formal presentations, exploring some serious staff-focused activities at the university where I work, had to have a raffle that was drawn at the close of the event. At my daughter's school open day they have a tombola. How many times have I heard "I like to have a little flutter" - on the Derby, on the Grand National, on the pools, on the lottery, on the Thunderball - as though provided they do only a little bit of gambling it is respectable. Like some sap-poison in a tree, gambling seems to infect every vein of British society. However, the poison spreads far beyond the UK. News programmes often report match-fixing allegations in relation to one sport or another around the world. In Tokyo and Kyoto, I saw huge, barn-like shops, 'pachinko parlours', with seried ranks of glaze-faced men and women feeding ball bearings into machines, as though characters from Fritz Lang's Metropolis. When I eventually get to holiday in Arizona, in order to see the Grand Canyon, I shall fly in to Phoenix even though it would be cheaper and easier to fly in to Las Vegas, where, as CSI shows, there are gaming tables and gambling machines as far as the eye can see: a vision of hell that so many delude themselves into believing is a vision of heaven.

Why do people gamble? As evidenced by what I have written above, the answer I see most obviously is that a person hopes to gain from a gambling transaction. However, there are also many other answers. For some, the gambling in which they indulge is about the social activity, whether being seen in their flamboyant hats at Ascot horse-racing track, or dibbing numbers with their sisters and aunties at the local bingo hall. For others, it is about self-indulgence, and they will put five pounds, or fifty euros, or five hundred dollars, in their pocket for an evening's entertainment at the casino, amusement arcade or pachinko parlour - they hope that the money does not run out too quickly. For yet others it is about distraction, either from a demanding job or from problems that are difficult to resolve. For some it is about seeking self-esteem by trouncing other people - the so-called 'competitive spirit'. For others it is about thrill seeking - they enjoy the risk: it is almost that they enjoy losing a game because it heightens the tension for the next game. Perhaps these latter are the people who are also at risk of developing a gambling addiction. For many, their engagement in gambling is probably a response to some combination of each of the above. For each, however, gambling has meaning in their life. Remove gambling from the lives of most people, and their lives become impoverished to the extent of the meaning of gambling to them. This is why it can be so hard for a person with a gambling addiction, for whom gambling has come to mean more than almost anything else in their life, to relinquish the activity.