Hello Fellow Capsuleers;
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âGambling is not bad ⌠Having a gambling problem is bad ⌠but this is not Gamblingâs faultâ - Tough Love '89
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âOne personâs problem should NOT become everyone elseâs problem to solve. Unless of course he holds a Thermos-Sized Nuclear Bomb.â - Einstein '42
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âA Right also comes with A Responsibilityâ - Literally Everyone I could find as a source. except for âPsychology Todayâ â They somehow equate Responsibility AS a right ⌠eggheads, go figure.
Enough of that. Yes gambling addiction is a problem, its a personal problem. And like alcoholism you donât offer an alcoholic a drink. â CCP will turn off access to anyone who asks (whether you have a problem of not) â Problem solved, Nuff said ⌠Moving on
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For those who canât move on.
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[The LOOOOOONG VERSION]
I swear to BoB â I tried to keep it under 10,000 words.
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GAMBLING can be an Addiction. ANYTHING can become an Addiction by definition that is very hard to break. To illustrate how hard - Try to hold your breathe to kick your breathing addiction ⌠Iâll wait)
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Humor aside, addiction is a problem. But it is a singular problem, an individual problem. it is NOT a societal problem. That only happens if so many people become addicted that it threatens the community. This is not the case. It is also not the communityâs responsibility to solve everyoneâs personal problems. They, their friends and family are the ones with any responsibility, if any at all.
This is NOT an immoral position. The view that it is? Is only held by people who have an oversized need to help people who they have never even met with problems they donât even understand and the propensity to try to make everyone agree with them. Unfortunately they, themselves, tend to threaten the stability of a community. Donât get me wrong. Caring for and helping others is a great thing, I live by it - but forcing others to care is not.
Now as to whether a Ticket Raffle is Gambling ⌠Short answer is yes.
Unlike a sweepstakes (which is not considered gambling), where the mechanics are exactly the same, where a group of people have tickets and one being drawn is the method to determine the winner - a Raffles require the people in the group to purchase their ticket. It is THAT which the law most everywhere uses to determine if one is gambling and one is Not.
A raffle with tickets given out free is NOT gambling. (by law its considered to be a sweepstakes).
- Giving money to a 2nd party with the intent of getting even more money back in return Is Legally called Gambling.
Wait⌠donât we do that when we invest in the stock market? put money in our 401k. Build a spaceship and sell it on the market? You are absolutely correct. We take an amount of our money and give it to a 2nd party and hope for more to come back⌠But we dont call that gambling â the fact that the stock Markets and 401kâs are chance based like gambling.
- I would point out when you get to really looking at it in detail you quickly come to find out that governments label things gambling just so they can tax it. So I think it best we donât rely so much on what they label. This should be the norm anyway in ALL things.
That said the argument for stock market could be said as ⌠'wait but I am alone, not with a group of people. And I get some back, we all do - that is not gamblingâ.⌠Yes you could say that, you could also go broke while others get back many times their investment. Timing and ability (and not having a crook investing your money, or the government taxing every single penny) is the gamble you take. However, I will grant you - that this muddies up the conversation space somewhat.
But I would hold firm that - as far as you are concerned its still considered gambling. People even use the phrase of âGambling on the Stock Marketâ. They dont say that about 401kâs - But They Should - it too relies on the stock market to get you a decent return.
So what does this all mean?
Basically it comes down to Gambling is what ever the people who have the power to compel your compliance in accepting that label say it is. OR if - with the benevolence of our masters - what ever the people in that society say. For us that is CCP and the player base as a whole, not In Part.
Which brings us to: Community.
*Wait⌠did I just hear Danial Jackson? naw, no way.
Rules in our society are usually based on âYou Canât Do Thatâ concept. You are free do do anything you want - Unless - society indicates that you should or can not do it. And those canâtâs are usually only a few. Reasons such as, Safety - your own or more largely others, Health of the group, Rules designed for Order in a community. Even Safety and health are not inclusive, you have a right to put your own body in damage (sky-diving for example), even your health (Smoking as another).
The first two are self evident, the last is the real important one that concerns us today. it comes from humanâs sense of community and longing to be part of a group. where we get together and combine our feelings, wants and desire on a topic and come up with Community Standards which in many case get immortalized into law and enforced by the collective community of the people or to those dedicated to enforcing them with our willingness to allow them. 10âs of Thousands of years ago, this would have been the biggest one of us in the group, with a club. Thousands of years ago we delegated this to shamans & temple priests⌠With clubs, Today we have Armies and Police, with clubs, as our enforcers and City Councils, School Boards and Legislators given the responsibilities to immortalize our Community Standards and Mayors, Governors and Presidents to enforce them all - All at our Pleasure. If they donât? Then we replace them with some who will. IF we can hold on to the power to do so. But Thats another conversation.
Unfortunately today we have virus in our midst where people try to use the same above process for the concept of âYou have the right to do thisâ, which sounds fine until they bypass all the rights YOU have - to enforce this concept that everyone else has the responsibility to help them do it. You guys know what I am talking about. But I canât get into examples. You also know why that is. And not being able to talk about it (even as for reference) - is an Issue for another long talk.
- This is where we are today
On the topic of Gambling in EVE, specifically what to do about people who have a gambling Issue. By the Community Standards of humanity - based on itâs thousands of years of consistent stance on the matter? As a community? Do nothing - Its a You Problem. As a community we have no responsibility to solve this issue for a single person, either morally or legally. This is a moral and legit position - FOR The Community as a whole.
But that is not the begin and end of it. Parts of the community, the individuals of that community have the free will to help OR adjust in response to one members needs or problems.
- They can voluntarily - in the space they have dominion over (house, Gaming Space, Church, etc.) - not allow gambling. OR as a compassionate act - not allow that person access or involvement with it (churches that hate gambling still allow cake raffles, go figure) - giving safe space to the individual(s) at risk.
They do not do this under compulsion or to break a law to do it. It is a personal choice driven by a desire to help. Others of the community do not interfere with such actions. In most cases they praise it.
> This is a healthy community at work. <
However if there is another person who also wishes to help - but his form of help is force everyone else to not be able to Gamble or to force them to do something else.
- He is now trying to impose his wishes on the community. Instead of the community imposing their combined wishes on them selves. He wants to help, but not to do it himself, he wants to force YOU to do it.
To do so he has to convince the community that it is the right thing to do OR FORCE them to comply with their will. Using persuasion has been the method of doing so for 1000âs of human years.
- This concept of FORCE is also not new, but we as a collective community have strongly, Very stubbornly pushed back on this method, from the smallest community to the largest. and with only a few significant exceptions we have enforced this by being strong willed and numerous over the centuries.
This leads us to today.
People, as a community have become weak and far between in their desire to hold back those who use force to promote their will, whose concept of societal control is âForcing Compliance of Actionâ instead of âPunishing Excess & Violationâ. We are to busy doing our own thing or consumed by need to work to survive day to day; No time to - pay attention and respond. Its not that the voices of forces are more numerous, tho they are, it is that we dont keep them at bay anymore, we canât be bothered.
Humans as an animal are Not moral creature hell-bent on doing good deeds and caring for each other. No, These are the things that we learned to do - to get along in a mutually beneficial society. Such things are taught to us by our parents and enforced by Societyâs Community Standards. If the society is no longer beneficial or mutual then we tend to regress to animals.This is he same weakness that brought down great empires in historical times, The Romans being a matching example to today.
Finally⌠What Does This massive monument of text have to do with EVE?
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First. I understand and accept there are people in Eve who have a Gambling Addiction or other issue. THis cause them to either lose all their space money or not play to avoid it.
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Second. I understand that even tho its all pixels, having it available to them can cause issues in real life as a result.
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Third. I also understand that we have NO WAY to verify if any of the people with this issue even play Eve. Yes numerically I would suspect there would have to be. But my point is I have never met one, talked to one or had one pointed out to me.
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Forth. What I do have, are 3rd parties complaining about gambling. These I refer to as âthe triggeredâ. people who donât have the problem but are activist for those they perceive do. I am not even sure if they know anybody who does. Even if they say they do you canât trust that because people with low moral character say things like that all the time. I say that because most of the time it is easy to Catch them in their lie. Donât get me wrong I am not saying everyone in Eve are lairs⌠I am just saying WE Donât KNOW.
So here we are complaining of a problem that to the vast majority of players never comes up, they never run into or even hear about it.
The simple solution? Act like a community⌠keep your eyes open ⌠If you run into someone with a problem? help them, inform them of the option to close off access, inform CCP if you must. so they can force a cut-off (tho that may be another issue). donât casually talk about how many cool deals you got off the hyper-net, etc, and so onâŚ
You know - act like the member of a Community - and not like wanna-be Tyrant.
I think it is pretty clear that Eve players are not looking on in-game gambling as bad. They didnât think out of game was either - but that is a different story. This outlook is pretty much world wide in scope in my experience. So lets not be âburn it all downâ wackos and live in peace - not war.
NUFF SAID.
Now lets talk about this propensity I see in Help Chat - for some in Eve - to call The hyper-net a SCAM . Shall we? No?
Shame. I have so many notes.
