The rules of the game-about gambling in Japan
The economist wrote in the 7/29/2006 (Vol. 380, p60-61) issue that Japanese pastimes of pachinko and pachislot. The gambling machines eat approximately $260 billion of Japanese income a year. They mention a couple of cases where children have died in the car as a result of the parents playing. And many parlours are run by Japanese Koreans, some of whom are said to evade taxes and divert funds to North Korea.
I tried out my luck on one of those games, and to tell you the truth, after only 2 minutes, I was 2000 yen poorer (around 14 Euro). This is not a common case, most of the people win in the beginning but loose everything later. Pretty much all the people next to me who were playing had plenty of slots.
The economist wrote that the government might give up on attempts to regulate the industry if it finds itself missing the tax revenue generated by pachinko players.
Every individual should be able to take responsibilities for their own lives. The social democrats defend the Swedish monopoly by the argument that the monopoly protects people from being playoholics (what other word can be used?). In what way is that possible? Why is gambling where the government has the monopoly safer than the one in a free market?
I stopped after 2 minutes, when I had lost 2000 yen. People who don't stop have a disease. Just like other diseases, they should be treated. I just don't think I want to pay for it. I can pay for the treatment of cancer patient, but not playoholics. It's wrong to pay the treatments of the "playoholics". Many critics mean that a disease is a disease so why not help those patients as well. The critics would probably add "the found the playoholic gene".
There is no playoholic gene and people have to take responsibilities for their own lives. That's how the world works. Only naive people crawl to gamblers.
I tried out my luck on one of those games, and to tell you the truth, after only 2 minutes, I was 2000 yen poorer (around 14 Euro). This is not a common case, most of the people win in the beginning but loose everything later. Pretty much all the people next to me who were playing had plenty of slots.
The economist wrote that the government might give up on attempts to regulate the industry if it finds itself missing the tax revenue generated by pachinko players.
Every individual should be able to take responsibilities for their own lives. The social democrats defend the Swedish monopoly by the argument that the monopoly protects people from being playoholics (what other word can be used?). In what way is that possible? Why is gambling where the government has the monopoly safer than the one in a free market?
I stopped after 2 minutes, when I had lost 2000 yen. People who don't stop have a disease. Just like other diseases, they should be treated. I just don't think I want to pay for it. I can pay for the treatment of cancer patient, but not playoholics. It's wrong to pay the treatments of the "playoholics". Many critics mean that a disease is a disease so why not help those patients as well. The critics would probably add "the found the playoholic gene".
There is no playoholic gene and people have to take responsibilities for their own lives. That's how the world works. Only naive people crawl to gamblers.
posted by Diana Chavlah at 8:04 p.m.
10 Comments:
Hi Diana,
I just hope that the Swedish government doesn't control blogging addiction. I look forward to reading your posts.
Tim
I think the word is "gambling addict" in English for "playaholic" but I like your word. Gambling is like other compulsions and is obviously not a rational behaviour. My understanding is it can be treated with medication used for other compulsive behaviour like SSRIs or Welbutrin. I agree that YOU should not have to pay, but in a socialised medical system, having the government subsidise some common medication should not be a big deal. Expensive psychological therapy and such is above and beyond what the taxpayer burden should be for such an illness. Then again, I am not a healthcare economist, so what do I know?
I think the socialised medical system of Europe is too extreme in that people have no financial incentive to take care of their own health. So many people smoke there despite its deliterious effect thinking it is their God given right to have free healthcare.
In the US it is the opposite extreme where immigrants for example are the hardest working people and support the entire economy, but they often do not have health insurance to cover basic healthcare, while wealthier people can spend thousands of dollars on cosmetic surgeries.
This is tangentially related, but I saw this in the news today:
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/09/reasoning_with_.html
which comments on this New Yorker article:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060918fa_fact
I agree with pace, without any incentives, it's easy just to think that you have a someone to cover if things would get really messy.
That is why we shouldn't subsidy the playoholic disease, because it is a disease that the gambler can affect. Doctors and physicians exaggerate when they say that gamblers can't effect their situation. Everybody have a weakness, It can't be right for me to pay for others mistakes.
About the states and the immigrants. they often have two options, one is to be unemployed in their home country and still not get medical insurance, and the second one is to work in the states, get a salary but no medical insurance. on the other hand, the states has organizations that helps underprivileged people. You should never underestimate their ability to help unprivileged.
On pachinko, the way you win is to find the angle at which the lever needs to sit in order to guide the ball bearings into the correct slot, then jam the lever at that angle and keep feeding the ball bearings into the machine. Obviously this is not allowed, but anyone who is actually winning consistently at pachinko is employing this method.
Regarding the idea that pachinko parlours are run by Koreans who send their money back to North Korea... this is pure fantasy. Japanese love to think that no Japanese commit any crime, ever, and that all crime in Japan can be attributed to foreigners or their influence. Even otherwise highly respectable criminologists refer to Filipinas as "sex workers" and Iranians as "drug dealers" in their academic papers, something I was very shocked at when I was doing research in Tokyo. Crime tends to be blamed first and foremost on the Chinese resident in Japan but Koreans are a traditional scapegoat for anything bad. Most pachinko parlours are run by the yakuza, the Japanese mafia, who have strong links to the Liberal Democratic Party (the ruling party) and big business and whose control of organised crime and gambling will therefore never be challenged.
I don't believe in the disease model of addiction, for reasons that are too complex to go into in a blog comment... I'm not at all convinced that gambling is some sort of pandemic that we need to worry about. A lot of people play pachinko and there is a tiny minority who are definitely addicted and who actually spend their lives in the parlours. I saw a documentary about it when I was in Japan - one parlour's "prizes" included things like toilet roll and other basic sundries/ consumables including food, for people who actually resided there for days on end. God knows how - two minutes in those places was always more than enough to drive me crazy.
On pachinko, the way you win is to find the angle at which the lever needs to sit in order to guide the ball bearings into the correct slot, then jam the lever at that angle and keep feeding the ball bearings into the machine. Obviously this is not allowed, but anyone who is actually winning consistently at pachinko is employing this method.
Regarding the idea that pachinko parlours are run by Koreans who send their money back to North Korea... this is pure fantasy. Japanese love to think that no Japanese commit any crime, ever, and that all crime in Japan can be attributed to foreigners or their influence. Even otherwise highly respectable criminologists refer to Filipinas as "sex workers" and Iranians as "drug dealers" in their academic papers, something I was very shocked at when I was doing research in Tokyo. Crime tends to be blamed first and foremost on the Chinese resident in Japan but Koreans are a traditional scapegoat for anything bad. Most pachinko parlours are run by the yakuza, the Japanese mafia, who have strong links to the Liberal Democratic Party (the ruling party) and big business and whose control of organised crime and gambling will therefore never be challenged.
I don't believe in the disease model of addiction, for reasons that are too complex to go into in a blog comment... I'm not at all convinced that gambling is some sort of pandemic that we need to worry about. A lot of people play pachinko and there is a tiny minority who are definitely addicted and who actually spend their lives in the parlours. I saw a documentary about it when I was in Japan - one parlour's "prizes" included things like toilet roll and other basic sundries/ consumables including food, for people who actually resided there for days on end. God knows how - two minutes in those places was always more than enough to drive me crazy.
Sorry about the multiple post, not sure what happened there.
I think the phrase you are looking for is "compulsive gambler"...
Conspiracy theories or not...about the maffia;
The Korean yakuza are a powerful presence in Japan, despite the fact that Koreans suffer discrimination in Japanese society. Although Japanese-born people of Korean ancestry are a significant segment of the Japanese population, they are still considered resident aliens. But Koreans, who are often shunned in legitimate trades, are embraced by the Japanese yakuza precisely because they fit the group's "outsider" image.
Like the Mafia, the yakuza in recent years have been forced to lower their standards when recruiting new members, and as a result some feel that they are neither as organized nor as powerful as they once were.And in that manner, the Korean today work as a recruiting dealer for the "real" yakuza.
So in that way, I think that the economist might be right, even though they migt exaggerat the Korean part.
I figured how the game was to be played but as you said, 2 minutes in those places is pure torture withour ear plugs.
By the way, thanks for the advices about "gambling addict" and "compulsive gambler". But I kind of like the word playoholic so I'll continue to use it.
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