[bills217]

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Dear Politics Forum,
I've been doing some reflecting about the kerfluffle going on with Absolute Poker. I would like to make a case that this is actually a study of how AC works in the real world.

Online poker is, for all intents and purposes, an unregulated market with relatively low barriers to entry. It is exactly the kind of open market one might expect to find in AC wonderland.

Now, AC hinges on the operative theory of man's basic good nature and the ability of the market to self regulate against bad actors. Bad actors being the companies that do harm to the environment, their customers, or their competition through less than ethical business practices.

In the case of Absolute Poker, we have exactly that scenario. There is a bad actor who has cheated its clients out of money through deceptive practices and presented an obviously false front of integrity.

The market has reacted. The hue and cry has been raised. The concerned customers are spontaneously organizing to spread the word of the fraud. The market is working exactly as the market should.

Only, Absolute Poker is still in business. Most of its customers uninformed, and unaware. There is no mechanism to verify its assurances that it will clean up its act, no way of knowing if the activity is still taking place, and no way of knowing who is even in charge. This situation shows no sign of changing in the immediate and forseeable future.

A real life example of a fundamental theory behind AC (that is, the self regulating market) is evident in the case of the AP scandal.

I say this incident makes a very strong case for the very real world need of law, government, and regulation.

Discuss.

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I think all you are really proving here is that what people SAY their priorities are and what their ACTUAL priorities are are very different things. If I can simply SAY that I have priority X and then X is realized for me at no cost, well then thats fine and dandy. In that universe, what I SAY my preferences are is exactly what they really are. And thats basically what voting is (although I still have to win the vote, I get to enact my preferences at no cost to my self simply by voicing them).

But there are plenty of situations where there is a cost to realizing my stated preference. And when that happens, there is a growing discrepancy between my stated preference and my true preference. I want to be a MLB manager! But I really don't. I want to make lots of money and tell baseball players what to do and wear a uniform but if I wanted to be a MLB manager I'd have to put in decades worth of very difficult work (presumably). So I dont really want to be a MLB manager. That [censored] is hard. Maybe an even better example is "I want to run a restaurant." But I think you get the point.

All you've really shown with your OP is that when people say "I want to gamble in a safe, fraud-free environment" that they really dont want that at all. They just want to say they do. If they wanted to do it, it comes at some cost and its clearly a cost they are unwillingly to pay (or else you wouldnt have made this thread).

Alternately, these people might support a system whereby they could just SAY they want a fraud-free, safe gambling environment and then have it be so at no cost to themselves. Probably many of them would prefer this sort of environment. Right up until this sort of environment banned online poker entirely.

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good post