So every three years, there is a gambling and risk-taking conference held in Las Vegas.  Its a great conference because you have all types– social scientists in sociology, psychology, criminology, political science, and then mathematicians and economists, as well as policymakers, industry representatives, and regulators.  I’ve talked to a CEO from Australia who runs an organization helping to set policies for betting clubs, a casino regulator from Boston, a lawyer who specializes in money laundering from Switzerland, a politician and regulator from Austria, a consultant who was instrumental in setting up a lot of the Iowa casinos early on… and a whole lot more interesting people.

I’ve seen presentations on regulations on European gambling, on behavioral characteristics of problem gamblers, on problem behaviors which arise from gambling, including societal harms.  I just saw one looking into the correlation of risk taking as a common denominator between DUI incidents and problem gambling, and so many more I cannot even remember.

In 2016 I went and presented on the interesting historical connection between illegal Omaha bookmakers (bookies) and Vegas–  many of them moved from Omaha to Vegas to help set up casino procedures for book-making in the 1950s and 60s.  This time I gave a presentation talking about the writings of three thinkers on the topic of what separates entrepreneurial risk taking (capitalistic ventures/gambles) from gambling at the tables?.  Two wrote pieces arguing for the evils of gambling in 1895 and 1905, and the other, Frank Knight, who wrote about the benefits of entrepreneurs taking risks.   My paper points out that while both gamblers and entrepreneurs bear uncertainty or chance, the entrepreneur is actually doing a social service– taking on those uncertainties so others don’t have to do so.  (They also take on a lot of responsibilities like making sure their employees get paid, fixing their tenants properties when a problem arises, and not making money until their creditors get their money, etc).  In other words, gambling doesn’t seem to contribute to the common good, while entrepreneurship definitely does.

Here is my presentation: https://www.academia.edu/39294454/Uncertainty_and_Risk_in_Gambling_and_Entrepreneurship

The casino business is huge.  Casinos play a big part in our culture these days– some of them are basically cultural icons which retain and provide important aspects of culture, almost like museums or concert halls do.   There has been a significant shift in where the revenues come from, so that more and more casino money comes not from the gambling, but from the shows, food and drink, and hotel rooms and other services (spas, etc).

But there still are lots of harms which seem to arise from Gambling, and a lot of people whose profession is to  try to study those problems and find solutions to them.  Others, of course, are working at discovering new ways to get people to gamble.  So like I said, this is a very diverse and interesting conference indeed!