I'd love to see what'd happen in a non profit casino where the wagers were exactly equal to the winnings less some modest operating expenses. Such an enterprise would address most of the inequity concerns in the article.
2. Gambling will always be subject to one dynamic - if you're up, you're still in. If you're cleaned out, you're out. That asymmetry gives the house advantage even in roughly 50-50 stakes, and the downside of it ruins lives.
3. Gambling addiction is real and not fully subject to rational control. Gamblers with a cushion of savings or income will always be less susceptible to ones that don't have that cushion.
> Gambling will always be subject to one dynamic - if you're up, you're still in.
I appreciate this point, but I don't think it is a blanket rule. I have been to a casino twice in my life. The first time I was playing with a foreign currency and had no idea how much I had won. Turned out to be like a 7x on what I had started with. I got lucky a few times, cashed out, bought a cigar. Second time was the same: hit a few lucky plays, cashed out.
FWIW I regularly do the same with sports betting. I think my ratio of withdraw-vs-deposit is like 9:1 at the moment. Paying the taxes isn't super fun though.
Ideally such a casino wouldn't take any risk/reward on its own balance sheet. So there'd be no upside for the house on how any particular bet played out. Kind of like hosting your friends poker game where you're not playing personally.
Even if you allowed gambling addicts to play, would there be much harm? They'd never lose money on average and you could impose affordability tests to mitigate people getting cleaned out.
A coop. They split the profits with the patrons (minus operating expenses) at the end of the year. (So they can go right back and gamble away their share.)
You could even extend this by making a rule that gamblers can only wager money they've earned through shares. So there'd be no financial harm to their external life.
The cold start problem of such an enterprise could be solved by only imposing this rule after a year, using charity, or - in the worst case - buy ins.
You'd be taking on a lot of risk to get there, wouldn't you? You've got the same large initial capital expenditure as a for-profit casino, the same risk of cheats, maintenance, etc., and I suspect the same marketing outlay to keep people coming to your casino vs another.
