Policy Announcements, Thursday 09 August

The internet certainly opens up a can of worms about jurisdiction. It also opens up a can of worms about taxation. The measure appears intended partly to recapture some tax revenue by driving companies to relocate within the EEA, and partly to make the gambling industry and its hosts more responsible for those of its clients who are vulnerable (the young and the feeble-minded) and for those of its members who exploit them.

This sort of thing is a challenge to classical liberals. Not to natural-law libertarians - by their lights, I dare say, no one is being coerced in the private transactions between gambler and gambling business, or between advertiser and proprietor, so the government has no grounds to intervene. But for a rule-utilitarian classical-liberal, considering which rules are conducive to the preservation of social cooperation, whilst the default position is also to live and let live, considerations of protection of the vulnerable are not irrelevant.

Ought one to prevent a man from parting with his money in whatever way he sees fit? No. But what if he's parting with money he hasn't got (i.e. getting into debt), or parting with someone else's money (e.g. children who have got hold of their parents' credit card numbers)? It is not obvious that a free-for-all is necessarily the optimum position. But the internet makes regulation almost impossible. How is the gambling company supposed to know whether the person at the other end of the line can afford their bets, or is who they say they are?

I wouldn't be too critical of the Government on this, because it is a genuinely difficult area, but that impracticality seals it for me. The measures they require in order for a nation to be "white-listed" sound wholly ineffective at preventing the harm that they claim to be targeted at. But they will drive up the costs for gambling companies to do business in compliant nations. That should mean that those businesses who remain outside the white-listed nations should have lower costs and be able to offer their customers better deals. As you say, CynLib, there isn't much the Government can do about advertising on the internet, nor about ranking on the search engines, so it won't take long for those online gamblers looking for the best deals (which is surely most of them) and sufficiently web-savvy to know where to look (again, surely most of them) still to find sites in unapproved nations. As this is likely to do little good, the Government would be better doing nothing.

CynLib, A lot of what you say relates to the impracticability of the state trying to prevent what individuals cannot, on which I guess we agree. For example, with regard to children, if it were possible to prevent them from acting illegally, whether by parents keeping a more careful watch, systems that are harder for them to circumvent, or government enforcement, then one might prefer it to waiting until they have committed the illegal act and then punishing them, just as we employ lots of other measures that are intended to prevent illegality. But in this case, I can't see how it's practical to improve on simple parental/personal responsibility, so it's better not to introduce extra bureaucracy and complexity when it offers little benefit.

On debt, I guess I did express that badly. It wasn't my intention to suggest that one should constrain debt generally, only that gambling oneself into debt is the main reason why gambling (which is otherwise simply people doing what they want with their money) can be harmful. If there were a practical way to prevent that specific form of indebtedness, there would be much less reason to be concerned about gambling. But again, I don't see how one can do that without unjustifiable levels of intrusion, complexity and bureaucracy, in which case no measure is better than an expensive, intrusive and ineffective measure.

It's hard to argue that gambling debts contribute to upward economic and social mobility (and I realise you weren't). Whilst they might contribute to the growth of particular businesses and parts of the economy, it is not clear to me that, in those limited circumstances where gambling businesses are prospering from money that their customers cannot afford, the benefit to the economy outweighs the harm to the individuals. Which is why I reject efforts to prevent this harm with regret (because of the impracticability) rather than enthusiasm (because of the economic effect).

I am inclined to agree with you about euthanasia, though it is another difficult area. I am not keen on "slippery slope" arguments, which are often used against legalizing euthanasia even with the sort of safeguards that you describe. Everything can be a slippery slope to something worse - it is our job as humans and particularly as legislators to distinguish between an acceptable position and an unacceptable progression from that position.

But on the question of who is fit to give consent, it is very difficult to draw the line. Your suggestion of the elderly as a group whose freedom might be limited is a classic example - I wouldn't endorse constraining freedom on grounds of age. Mental stability and ability are not black and white categories either. I'm not sure it's practical or justified to employ the law to judge whether someone is fit to gamble, other than reasonable efforts to enforce a simple lower age-limit. And it beats me how you enforce any constraint online. 

Perhaps they ought to have a maths test before you are allowed onto a gambling website. It was striking, in a phone-in about the National Lottery on Radio 5Live on Tuesday, that many of those who played the lottery complained that the main prize was too high and the lesser prizes were too small. They were calling for the lesser prizes for fewer correct numbers to be several times more than they currently are. It hadn't occurred to them that, if one ticket on average gets all six numbers, around forty-five tickets on average get five numbers, 2,000 get four numbers, and 100,000 get three numbers. If you take £1m off the top prize, you're not going to be able even to double the prizes offered for fewer correct numbers, let alone increase them by the amount these people wanted. What they wanted was a lottery in which lots of people came out up. It's simple probability and simple accounting that that won't happen. The National Lottery really is a tax on the innumerate (stupid is too harsh). If we stopped those who aren't capable of understanding this from gambling, we'd probably stop gambling. But I'm not serious that we should. Lots of things that I like are probably pretty irrational too. If it gives you pleasure and doesn't harm others (at least, without their consent - rugby being one of my "pleasures"), who's to say that you shouldn't spend your money on it, young or old, happy or sad.