SWB: Alan B. Rowley II - Success Coach - ECoaching - Email Coaching

Controlling the Internet? Wanna Bet?

Those evil people trying to circumvent the IRS are all kinds of sneaky.  To keep their American customers from getting caught for gambling online, they show the charges on credit cards being from companies other than a gambling company.

My first thought, going back to yesterday's post, is: The government should not know what is on my credit card statement (if I ever use a credit card, that is but you know what I mean).  It's none of their business and if we could get rid of the IRS, a lot of our problems would go away (Go Ron Paul!).  A lot of the laws that get drawn up are designed to take money away from us or to keep us from doing activities that can't be taxed.  The Patriot Act isn't there to keep us safe.  It's there so the government has more control over us and keeps us from doing things they don't like, specifically, not giving them all our money.

My second thought is and I said it yesterday: You cannot control the Internet.  Give up!  It's too big.  As big as our government is, it's impossible for them to do surveillance on 300 million people.  Sure, they have computer programs that flag our email to be read by a human but that in itself has just got to be tedious.  I used to send weird emails to people with the words "President Bush" and "bomb" in them just to give my NSA buddies something to read.  I never hooked them together in a fashion that was a threat to the President but you know they still got flagged.  I did it with blog posts too and at the end I would put, "Hi NSA, how are you today?"

They never did come visit me.  Maybe they thought it was funny too.

Anyway, back to gambling.  You can get a credit card from Canada or a phone card from Australia for gambling if you don't want to worry about the NSA finding something fishy on your credit card statement.

The US government is working on shutting that down but when they do, gambling sites will find another way to allow Americans to play.  We could probably fund Social Security with all the money we spend spying on Americans and trying to stop them from "cheating" the IRS.

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Who Said Gambling On The Internet Was Illegal?

Supposedly gambling is illegal on the internet in the US.  You are allowed to play the stock market though.  The stock market is not considered gambling.  It's investing.  You put money into a venture that you bet will make you more money.  You can do it online and many people do.  I'm one of them and I use TradeKing for my nongambling ventures.

Some very smart people figured this out and so they have created a site where you can buy stock in events.  It's not gambling.  It's investing.

Do you think that Hillary Clinton is going win the Democratic nomination?  You can buy shares in that event for $71 right now.  If the stock goes up, you can sell and take the winnings earnings.

Obama is trading at $14 right now which tells you who the betting people think will be the Democrat running for president.

Romney is trading at about $69 a share and Rudy is at $7.50.  The media has Rudy in first place but Intrade.com has him in 4th place.  Ron Paul doesn't even register in the primaries.  As far as how Intrade has them ranked on chance to become president, it's Rudy then Mitt then Ron Paul.

Gambling sites need to figure out how you can buy stock in roulette results so they can get around the gambling law too.  At Intrade.com you can buy stock in the election, the primaries, where the first attack will be when we invade Iran, and whether or not OJ Simpson will be bound over for trial in his failed robbery.

Kind of sounds like gambling to me.

Money - Able To Stop A Speeding Bullet

Maybe it doesn't stop it but it can certainly ignore it.  A guy just went postal, walked into the New York Casino in Las Vegas and started shooting people.  Initial reports said that he hit 4 people.  Now reports say that he hit 3 people.  Some off duty cops and military personnel tackled the shooter and took him into custody until the police could arrive.

The story all by itself isn't that remarkable.  More senseless violence.  More off duty cops doing their duty.  The bad and the good in their daily struggle.

There is something in the story that I want to point out for people that don't work in a casino because you may find it odd.  We don't and in fact, we were just discussing this a couple of weeks ago which makes the timing a little freaky.

Picture the scene.  Sicily.  1948.  Wait . . . (please don't ask how I'm able to quote something from the Golden Girls).

Picture the scene.  You're at work on a busy day.  The hustle and bustle is all around you.  Go, go, go.  Then some lunatic walks in off the street and starts cappin' rounds.  3 people in the lobby of your building are hit before some other people take down the shooter.

What happens next?

What Many People Don't Understand About Casinos

The odds favor the house.  Everyone knows that.  The odds only slightly favor the house.  Not everyone understands that.  There is no luck involved over the long haul.  Mathematics and years of experience have decided how the games are set up.

A great example of the lack of luck are slot machines.  They are run by computers and are programmed as to how much money players will win.  Sure, there is a random factor but that randomness is held in check by the programming.

What most people find interesting is that most slot machines are programmed to pay out about 94% of what they take in. 

"The casino only gets 6%?" people ask.

Yes, the casino only gets 6%.  Amazing huh?  Other games like roullette, craps, and 21, all give the player just under a 50% chance of winning (somewhere in the range of 45% until you consume too many of the complimentary alcoholic beverages then your chance of winning starts to drop - I've seen a guy take a hit when he already had a 21). 

So how does the casino make money?

Dad, Did You Just Pee Your Pants?

First order of business:  I have updated the Sword Point Scorecard.  Everyone who commented with their location earned 10 points.  Anyone else that wants 10 points can leave a comment in the Sword Point Saturday post.  I'll award posts until I publish tomorrow's post.

I did award Mark the beerdart champion 5 bonus points for being the first to complete the task.

I also awarded PTE Rick 5 points for submitting the article that sparked today's post.

There is a company that makes reusable adult diapers that will hold 9 cups of fluid.  Nothing wrong with that.  Age or health problems might require their use so that people can continue to live life without being confined to the proximity of a bathroom.  If the purpose behind these diapers were to increase quality of life, this blog post would not exist.

This particular brand of diapers is being marketed to gamblers.  This way, they can sit at a slot machine without needing to get up every fee hours to go pee.  They can sit there, blindly spinning the wheels, and pee themselves.

The article calls this "troubling."  Ya think?

The article does point out one of the biggest problems.  The government makes a huge profit off of the taxes levied against casinos.  Casinos make billions each year.  The diaper company is going to make money.  The people that lose is the gambler and the gambler's family.  Family might not be strong enough to intervene on the gambler's behalf.  Let's face it, when you get to the point where you will sit in your own pee for days, there's a problem.  If a person gets to that point, it's unlikely they are going to fix the problem themselves.

Gambling revisited

Living in a casino town while I travel my debt free journey probably changes how I see things a little bit.  Nothing earth shattering.  Nothing out of the ordinary really.  I just equate things with gambling more now, that's all.

I talked about the gamble that we took in buying a house.

The short version is that we had to weigh the amount that we would pay in interest versus how much we thought we could get back from the sale of the house.

After blogging for over a year on this subject, I would add that everyone that gets into a mortgage with the intent to pay it off is gambling that they will make enough money for 30 years to do so.  Many people have no intent to pay off their mortgage so this isn't a factor.

Back to our gamble.  Things took a turn for the better in the last couple of weeks.  Two different companies have taken steps to begin construction on a couple a new casinos here.

Cheating on discipline

There was one other factor in my decision to buy our home instead of renting.  My wife and I are pretty good about money and always have been.  It hasn't always been easy on us because of outside forces but we have done pretty good with what we have.  When we moved, we were concerned about how the move would affect us and our finances.  I took a paycut initially to move and it lead us into a scarcity mindset with money.  Looking at the numbers, everything looked right but there was just that thought of not having as much as before. 

It's hard to think about saving or investing when you're thinking like that.  At least it was for us.  For the first year, we always seemed to be worried about having enough money.  You would think that after a while, you would understand that the worry is unfounded.  And I guess we did.  It just depends on how you define "a while."  =)

By purchasing a house, knowing that we are not the type to refinance, we were actually getting some type of investment.  We were pretty much forcing ourselves to do something that would pay off some kind of return in the future.  It was a way to go around our fear at the moment.

If we had it all to do again, knowing what we know now, would we make the same choice?  I can honestly say that I don't know.  I do know that this forced investment wouldn't have played a role.  We might have still taken the gamble on the housing market going up.

When we sell this house and I get the benefit of hindsight from there, I'll let you know if we did right.

Gambling

I live in a casino town and I tell people that I don't gamble.  That's not entirely true.  Let me explain.

My wife and I moved out here a couple of years ago knowing that this was going to be a transition city for us.  We weren't sure where we were going to go but we knew this wasn't our final destination and that we would probably be moving within 5 years.

Remember that yesterday I said that if you are going to be moving in less than 5 years, you have to look hard at the benefits of buying a house or renting.  We did.  We looked hard at the options and in the end, the vote was split.  I voted for buying and my wife voted for renting. 

Her arguments were much like yesterday's plus the fact that a house is a financial anchor when you are trying to move.  When we moved here, we couldn't buy a new house until we sold our old house.  She doesn't want to run into that problem again.  It's a very good point.

My argument was the gamble. 

Nevada has one of the fastest growing housing markets in the country.  Housing prices in some places have practically tripled in the last few years.  It hasn't been as dramatic here but it has still be good for people who owned homes.  In addition, two companies are considering building new casinos here.  New casinos will mean a higher demand for housing. 

The housing bubble has burst and so at the moment the appreciation on our home has slowed down.  The new casinos are still in the talk stage although one of the companies has approached the city for rezoning some property so it could become a reality.  Will it happen before we leave?  I don't know.

That's the gamble.  Will our house appreciate more than an investment such as a mutual fund over the same amount of time? 

It's a guess. 

There was one more factor in our decision that I will cover tomorrow.