Poker Perambulation

A portion of PBS revolves around the populist leanings of Moyer and crowd. This is the group that is quick to blame everybody but themselves for every wrong out there. Sadly, they are the major users of the tools that make for wrongs and the UIGEA.

There are few pundits on either side that aren’t happy to stack the deck with selective use of data. We’ve seen that as we’ve followed the UIGEA battle. On one side are the facts of a number of recent surveys that have poked holes in the crowd that includes the God fearing minister and his bank robbing offspring.

So it was a pleasant experience to see a bit of what is good about the country and economy on last evenings News Hour Show. It came from a more business oriented economist – Paul Solman. It was all about machine tools and that doesn’t get too many of our juices flowing. It should though as it details how we have started back on the road to competing in a very basic building block in our economic wellbeing.

In recent history we had the Japaneese scare. Remember that one? They were over here with big buck buying California. They were going to own us. The word was we were unable to compete with there economy. The U.S. once again had gone to hell in a hand basket and there was no hope. Throw in Jimmy Carter telling the nation to tighten their belts as the party was over and it all looked bleak. Are you feeling bleak today?

The Newshour report is here. It is a much drier read than it was show. Maybe it will show up on YouTube as PBS doesn’t evidently have the bandwidth to watch their stuff except at 6-7 P.M here.

The government regulated poker to an extent with the UIGEA. That is not different from other legislation they promote in other areas. They respond to special interests. Those may be an egregious example of American business like the old AT&T, Farmers, Global Warming problem and every facet of our economy with the bucks to lobby congress or form a PAC or contribute to an election campaign.

What the UIGEA boiled down to is an added cost for playing poker. The U.S. Market is down to s few major operators – PartyPoker and FullTilt being the 800# gorillas. Before the UIGEA there was a new site a day as people competed for our gambling business. I was playing and getting a decent rakeback on TonyG’s site which was driven from the marketplace by the UIGEA. The site had regular bounty players and I managed a bit extra from that, too. Today, I can’t get a redeposit bonus from most U.S. Facing sites. Thank you, UIGEA.

What our government is always doing is stacking the deck. They may do it for the best of reasons but they impact the marketplace. AT&T was their creation. They cater to special interest. The marketplace has no bias. It brought about the industrial revolution. It brought about the service economy we prosper from today. It will be the likely source of solving global warming because money can be made from solving the problem. For that to happen we end up with things like $3.00 gas. That provides the incentives to seek solutions. And they will be able to fund the effort if taxing is kept reasonable.

ADDENDUM:

NPR , too, is oft vilified by ‘conservatives’ who pound on their copy of the Bill of Rights all the rest of the time. We’ve just had a bill passed and signed that will make use of ethanol increase dramatically. Poor law IMO and evidently NPR concurs.

We are rushing to embrace the thought of a global catastrophe. As laymen we depend on the views of others. And those others may have a political agenda that clouds their view. If that agenda seems to be our agenda, we aren’t too critical. We also admire ’science’ and think of the good that comes from it. Well, these are the same pesticide producers we turn around and kick. Take a look at another view which leaves more questions than answers of the science.

The thing about all this is that it forces change without looking closely at the ramifications. A cynical look would say that the move of corn to fuel rewards the farm lobby. And the NPR look seems to confirm that. Believe it or not, the marketplace reacts to our views and fears much better than a pile of politicians can.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 28th, 2007 at 1:10 pm and is filed under Journal, Off Topic. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.