You don’t have imagine a slippery slope. Collectively we’ve been doing it for most of our history. A significant portion of the the laws and regulations on the books today are “letting the government decide which financial decisions are worse than others.”

Gambling has in most societies throughout history been recognized as particularly pernicious. Early data from our recent experiments with loosening regulations seems to provide evidence that gambling produces significant externalities that need to be dealt with through some non-market means.