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Woman earning $750 a week gambles $3.7M

abc.net.au

51–56 of 56 posts

Re: Woman earning $750 a week gambles $3.7M

#51
post #27

Ouch, that is a horrible way to postpone retirement. It’s still hard to comprehend how that much money was stolen without any suspicion of any kind and over such a long period of time.

I don't quite get how the loss could have such an effect. The article says "She hid her theft by creating dummy bills for suppliers and paying the money directly into her account." If I'm reading this correctly, fake bills were created and entered as expenses, which were then paid from the company bank account. If so, wouldn't the losses have shown up on the income statement? That would mean that the owner had the sa…

Textbook embezzling.

Re: Woman earning $750 a week gambles $3.7M

#52
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it’s also not necessarily fair to its investors Maybe not fair. But they invested their money into a business whose business model is to rip off its customers. They could have invested in a thousand other businesses that actually produce something useful to the society, yet they chose to put their money into a business which removes clocks on its premises so people would stay longer and gamble more and lose more. Cas…

Couldn't this be argued for a lot of things: boxing / UFC is legal but fighting is ethically/morally bad and should not be encouraged, celebrated, or promoted. American football is legal but has pretty horrific long-term effects on the human brain. Beauty pageants, the list goes on. You're right about the accredited investor double-standard though, hopefully that gets removed soon.

I don't think your analogy holds good here. Combat sports is between highly trained professionals, with very strict rules. You don't see a 125 pound man fighting a 250 pound man in UFC, do you? There are no such rules in a casino. Everything in a casino is rigged against its patrons. It is not a level playing field. You can gamble away all your life's earnings in one evening if you wanted to. If there are rules like one cannot gamble more than 5% of their net worth, one cannot continue gambling if they lost x amount of dollars in x amount of time... or something along those lines, then maybe we can compare casinos with combat sports.

Don't forget that gambling is also highly addictive.

We may not like American football, beauty pageants etc. But at least those are level playing fields and not addictive

Re: Woman earning $750 a week gambles $3.7M

#53

I don’t know what the solution is, but gambling (and particularly online gambling and video gambling) is a scourge on our society. I don’t think it should be outlawed, because adults should be free to make bad choices if they want to, but the level to which it is exploitive and harmful needs to be reduced. Does anyone have any good answers here?

Simple idea: make advertisement of gambling and betting venues illegal.

Re: Woman earning $750 a week gambles $3.7M

#55
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't this be argued for a lot of things: boxing / UFC is legal but fighting is ethically/morally bad and should not be encouraged, celebrated, or promoted. American football is legal but has pretty horrific long-term effects on the human brain. Beauty pageants, the list goes on. You're right about the accredited investor double-standard though, hopefully that gets removed soon.

I don't think your analogy holds good here. Combat sports is between highly trained professionals, with very strict rules. You don't see a 125 pound man fighting a 250 pound man in UFC, do you? There are no such rules in a casino. Everything in a casino is rigged against its patrons. It is not a level playing field. You can gamble away all your life's earnings in one evening if you wanted to. If there are rules like…

In some ways, combat sports might be worse. Athletes are gambling with their bodies in return for potential monetary reward, and most don't even make it into the big leagues.

With casinos, at least they only lose money and are unlikely to have to live with lifelong injuries.

Re: Woman earning $750 a week gambles $3.7M

#56
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think your analogy holds good here. Combat sports is between highly trained professionals, with very strict rules. You don't see a 125 pound man fighting a 250 pound man in UFC, do you? There are no such rules in a casino. Everything in a casino is rigged against its patrons. It is not a level playing field. You can gamble away all your life's earnings in one evening if you wanted to. If there are rules like…

In some ways, combat sports might be worse. Athletes are gambling with their bodies in return for potential monetary reward, and most don't even make it into the big leagues. With casinos, at least they only lose money and are unlikely to have to live with lifelong injuries.

You’re missing the point. Athletes are gambling with their health, yes. But they have a 50-50 chance of winning or losing. Casinos are not 50-50. They are rigged against their customers.

I wouldn’t have a problem with gambling if the odds are even.

Also, combat sports are not addictive, gambling is.

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