mbling
creates the hazard, making the gain or loss of income depend on an
event that is not a necessary part of productive enterprise. Typical
gambling is the transfer of wealth on the outcome of events absolutely
unpredictable, so far as the two gamblers are concerned. Examples are
the shaking of unloaded dice or the honest dealing of a pack of cards,
and the betting on prices in so-called "bucket-shops" by persons
having no connection with the market of real things, and seeking to
get something for nothing as a result of mere chance.

Cheating is not a necessary mark of gambling, altho the cruder
forms of dishonesty, such as the loading of dice or the collusion of
horse-owners or of horse-jockeys to deceive the betting public, are
so common that they seem often to be an essential feature. Gamblers
recognize fair as opposed to unfair methods. Fair gambling is a kind
of minor morality within the immoral field of gambling, like the
honor found among thieves. The chance-taking in gambling has no useful
purpose or result outside itself. Betting and gambling do not produce
wealth, but merely shift the ownership of existing wealth. The
gamblers constitute themselves a little fictitious economic circle,
and they transfer gains and losses on the turn of events that have no
practical objective result within their circle except to determine the
direction of the transfer. Even when fairest, gambling must, in its
average results, be uneconomic. In any economic trade each trader
gains by getting goods that are, on the marginal principle, to him
more valuable than the other kinds of goods he gives up.[1] But in
gambling the winner gets all, the loser gets nothing. If two men of
like incomes gamble the additional desires that the winner is able
to gratify are (by the principle of decreasing gratification) less in
amount than the desires which the loser must forego. As a result the
loser is often depressed and seriously injured by the loss of his
income, the winner makes reckless and extravagant use of his winnings.
Easy come, easy go, is the rule of gamblers.

Moreover, gambling reduces the amount of wealth by relaxing the
motives of economic activity, diverting energy from productive
enterprise, tempting men into dishonesty to offset their losses, and
leading them into speculation and embezzlement.

Sec. 3. #Borderland of gambling.# Ranging between the extremes of
unavoidable risk-taking and of gambling are a number of cases of a