The Fix Is In

Here behind the lines, one of the most popular approaches to getting people to do what those in authority want of them is to point to the supposed interconnectedness of things.  If you don’t pay that environmental levy on the glass bottle, the atmosphere of the planet will boil away, or some such.  This is remarkable only because one of the most frequent habits of those in authority is to ignore the evident interconnections of things.  On the one hand, when authority wants something from the people, these people hold the fate of the universe in their hands, and risk destroying it if they do not heed authority, all because of interconnectedness.  On the other hand, if authority sees fit to make a move, it is as if they can, by mere word, sever all interconnectedness, and suspend all consequences save those related to what they wish to accomplish.  But just as a leak in the roof never closes itself, but only gets bigger, and the consequences of the leak go beyond merely causing drips to fall into rooms in the building, events inevitably expose the fallacy of the authority.  They also expose the obsession of those in authority to obtain more of it.

The top news story I heard on the morning newscast yesterday was a supposed problem with goings on in B.C. casinos.  There seems to be a lot of cash floating around them.  Millions of dollars, it seems.  Could this be because of the allure of vice, in the form of gambling, augmented by an aggressive advertising campaign on the part of the provincial government corporation that runs the operations?  This corporation has been very aggressive indeed, being one of the first to open (eventually when it got the bugs worked out) an on-line Internet gambling facility.  No, according to the reports, it’s criminals who are to blame.  What is happening is money laundering, where income from illicit activities is being passed through the casinos to hide its origins.  And something has to be done about this problem we are assured.  What is revealing is the proposal on what is to be done about the problem.

If we step back a moment, and look at the big picture, a rather disturbing pattern emerges.  We have an activity involved, in this case, institutionalized gambling.  It produces revenue, and does so in a very big way.  There is but one sure thing in institutionalized gambling, and that is that the house always wins.  Governments, when they figured this out (and one could wonder not so much about why they figured it out, but what took them so long), willingly became the croupiers.  If one doubts at all that gambling is addictive, let him look at the growth of government involvement in it.  The journey from the first few tentative steps at running lotteries to fund specific social and sporting ventures, to the building, operation, and promotion of destination casinos, has been made in a very prompt manner.  And a part of the process was turning the governmental back on the social problems that inevitably accompany gambling.  Politicians who once stood in legislatures and spoke of how dangerous widespread gambling could be were it permitted now take a “show me the money” attitude. Here in B.C., the government’s gambling corporation is currently running ads highlighting the billion (yes, with a “b”) dollars that its ventures provide for such things as health care and community activities.  It points out that we all benefit from their enterprises.  But in fact, not all do.  The warnings of the politicians were not at all without a basis.  Even though the warnings were ignored by those who gave them, they were a long, long way from being baseless.  But they are swept away behind a façade of largesse, with the individual cases of financial ruin receiving no advertising attention at all.  Well, almost all of them are, that is.

Money laundering is different.  This is a problem that is placed front and centre.  There are at least two evident reasons why this is the case.  First, the money to be laundered is not money from which the government is getting a cut.  This ruins the cash flow, and is certainly a major concern, one that is clearly evoking much more concern than that for lives ruined by gambling addiction.  It’s of so little concern that nothing at all is thought of excluding these victims in the “we all benefit from gambling” ads.  If the government gets its cut, a certain number of casualties, it seems, are to be not so much tolerated as ignored.  But cut out the government from a share of the spoils, and we have a major problem.  Money, to governments, is virtually always reason enough to do anything.  Still, there’s a second reason, and that is because money is not all that government hunger for.

It would be erroneous, I’d suggest, to imagine that there is a moment’s angst about providing an opportunity for criminals to process their ill-gotten gains through the establishment of lucrative gambling operations.  This is because the criminals are giving government the chance to make a grab not only for money through running gambling operations, but also for more power.  The solutions proposed never, ever involve curbing gambling operations, and thereby cutting down the take into general revenue. (Let us just pause for a moment to note that general revenue is undoubtedly the largest and most effective money laundering apparatus in existence anywhere.)  But they do involve putting more power into the hands of government.  In this case, it is the power to track the spending of cash.  It is the power to increase the monitoring of people’s spending habits, because do not, for a moment, be so naïve as to think that, given more power to use in response to problems in this area, governments will restrict its use to only this area.  And now the pattern is formed.  Government creates a situation that gives rise to revenue or control (or both – gambling is a government monopoly), and that situation gives rise to problems.  To solve the problem, the situation is left alone, and more power is sought and gathered as a result of what government has set in motion in the first place.  It’s a real one, two punch.  First, siphon off money in a manner that causes social harm, and second, grab more power to respond to the problem that was created.  Government gets us coming and going.

Historically, government stumbled on this pattern somewhat by accident.  The accident was tobacco.  One suspects that Sir Francis Drake was the last person of European origin to use tobacco without being taxed, so immediate an ubiquitous was tobacco taxation.  Nothing at all new about governments being willing to do anything to get revenues, it seems.  However, over time, it came to be known that smoking tobacco was a lethal activity.  Taxing it, over time, was found to be very lucrative.  So elimination of tobacco use was not exactly job one when it came to dealing with the new facts.  Oh yes, there are ad campaigns encouraging folks to quit.  But there is also the addictive nature of nicotine, and ad campaigns and scary pictures won’t change that, or any other feature of biochemistry.  Meanwhile there’s the double opportunity to raise revenue by increasing taxes, ostensibly as a deterrent (government is just as addicted to plausible denial as a smoker is to nicotine), and pushing for more power and control because of organized crime’s apparent involvement in activities which reduce government revenues.  The money rolls in, and the basis for demanding an increase in control and power on the part of government is provided.  And of course, governments can claim that this problem is not of their making.  Smoking was well established before the findings of its deadliness where scientifically established.  It was a perfect situation.

It was such a perfect situation that it could, it seems, serve as a model.  If governments were willing to abandon all moral considerations, gambling could be made to work the same way smoking had.  Set up the establishments.  Take a cut to increase revenue, and promulgate regulations to establish yet another instance of control.  And when problems arise, do not for a moment think of curbing or banning the root cause.  Rather, respond by establishing more control, and gaining more power.  It worked with smoking, where the dangerous precedent of controlling and restricting the partaking in a perfectly legal activity has reached staggering proportions.  Wherever control of power is wanted in another activity, the foundation has been well prepared through this means.  Today, smoking. Tomorrow, we’ll see.  And with gambling, let’s not even think of curbing or closing the government sponsored establishments when they cause problems.  Rather, let us increase the power to monitor and examine private transactions involving legal tender.  Today, money laundering. Tomorrow, we’ll see.

Here behind the lines, the spin machine works overtime to both make government look good, and those who take exception to its machinations look bad.  It has its work cut out for it.  Lives are shortened by smoking, and ruined by gambling, and governments look to revenue and power.  Amazing things happen when morality is excluded from consideration.  When one considers what has happened with human rights commissions, where morality is simply not a consideration in any of the deliberations and determinations, one cannot but wonder about what will happen in this latest call for more power and ability to intrude in the area of cash transactions.  If moral considerations had any weight at all in government, would they be running gambling dens in the first place?  The dens continue to operate, because the fix is in.  The house always wins, so the money keeps rolling in.  And the problems that arise give an excuse to grab for more control and power in order to fix them.  The fix is in, and here behind the lines, we are more and more in a fix as a result.