[Nick Rivers]

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You can't just say that Harrah's is going into a business that that can get away with legally. Big American companies are taking a major risk if they do that. Philip Morris isn't in the marijuana business in Holland. Elite Modeling agency doesn't provide 14 year old escorts in Thailand.

Presumably if something is immoral in the US, we should consider it immoral everywhere. If it is illegal here and not there, our lawmakers will usually say that the foreigners are just wrong. That's all hogwash of course but major corporations in this country rarely want themselves beeing seen as disagreeing with that. Earlier MGM sort of did what Harrahs is planning but that was before the federal law came down. I believe Harrah's actions at this point in time can have much greater impact and implications.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you'd have to be insane to really believe that double-standards about which industries can do what where aren't out there. Sure, Philip-Morris doesn't sell marijuana in Holland, but Nike and hundreds of other companies employ 13 year old slave laborers in Indonesia, Bangladesh, and so on. American companies routinely farm out labor to countries that don't have our same labor laws, laws which were presumably founded on a moral principle of treating workers right.

Secondly, the analogies are flawed beyond this point. Philip-Morris is a gigantic corporation. Growing and distributing marijuana in Holland at a scale relevant to their corporate earnings would be nearly impossible. Marijuana is grown by small operations working in houses, basements, garages and, in the case of very organized operations, perhaps small warehouses. We're not talking about endless fields of marijuana where the crop is being harvested by the ton. In the case of Elite Modeling Agency and escorts, as far as I know, they don't provide escorts anywhere. They're a talent agency, not an escort agency. It's not part of their business model to provide an escort service anywhere, be it Las Vegas or Thailand. You might as well say that because Nationwide Insurance doesn't provide 14 year old escorts in Thailand that it's a big deal for Harrah's to enter the online gaming market. Well, it's not, because Harrah's is a gaming corporation that is updating its gaming operation for the 21st century.

There's nothing worse than fallacious arguments coming from a self-proclaimed master of logic. All that said, it could be a good thing (for professional poker players) that Harrah's is entering the online gaming market, even if just overseas. It means they'll start using their lobbying muscle to open up their online operation to the American markets, which means maybe we'll see a form of domestic, legalized poker in America in our lifetimes. Or, at the very least, a relaxing of the internet gambling restrictions we currently have. But, isn't this exactly what everyone has been predicting for a long time? The American gaming companies are among the greediest companies in the world. Of course they're going to want to add the multi-billion dollar online poker revenue stream to their own land-based casino earnings.