 Bertrand Russell Quotes 366 |
The pleasure of gambling consists almost entirely in excitement. Monsieur Hue describes Chinese traders at the Great Wall in winter, gambling until they have lost all their cash, then proceeding to lose all their merchandise, and at last gambling away their clothes and going out naked to die of cold. With civilized men, as with primitive Red Indian tribes, it is, I think, chiefly love of excitement which makes the populace applaud when war breaks out; the emotion is exactly the same as at a football match, although the results are sometimes somewhat more serious.
Source: Bertrand Russell: Human Society in Ethics and Politics, 1954, part II: The Conflict of Passions, chapter ２: Politically important desires, n.9
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The soccer analogy is probably a bit of an exaggeration, but it seems best to ignore that here.
The IR that Osaka Prefecture and Osaka City (i.e., Nihon Ishin no Kai) are trying to attract with the Osaka Expo, even though it will attract international conferences and many other things, in terms of monetary value, they seem to expect the most revenue from casinos (i.e., gambling). Even though the percentage of people who will be harmed by casinos (gambling) is small, the number of people who will be harmed by casinos (gambling) is expected to be large. They say that casinos are mainly for foreign tourists and that they will devise ways to prevent Japanese customers from losing all their money, but this is not very convincing because gamblers will think of all kinds of loopholes. It seems that both the Japanese government and Osaka Prefecture (.e., Nihon Ishin no Kai) underestimate the harmful effects of gambling.
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