Hey lori, your friend doesn't happen to be a folk singer too, does he?

I have a friend whose story you just told.

I feel like a tool of the man. But just like I think it's fine to have dress codes, I think it's fine to say "Here are the rules of my game? Wanna play? Don't break them."

Understand, I'm not talking about civil rights or anything I think that important. Maybe that's the thing for me. It's "just" gambling.

Beej, no, he's an engineer. I would hate to hear him sing.

I think being a professional gambler would be harder than grinding it out at a job I hated every day. Too much stress.

ita's the mouthpiece for the Man!!!

I understand your point of view, ita. It's a very sound and rational argument. It's just something that doesn't ping my ethics meter.

And it is only gambling. People who take it (gambling) more seriously than that scare me.

Ha! My friend can count 5 decks in his head...and figure very long odds...proving an bent toward mathy things...and he's a great singer/songwriter...but I doubt he could engineer anything.

While I understand about the ethical issues between the implicit rules of the house and the breaking of same through card counting...the entire universe of gambling seems to be void of ethical high ground.

No high ground, just the pits. Nothing about it seems 'fair' to me, and yet, if people want to participate, knowing the inherent imbalance, then I don't guess I can argue.

The part that bothers me is all the associated stuff. My friend, a basically good guy, has gotten 'mixed up' (voluntarily, to be sure) in a lot of seamy things unrelated to his savant ability to keep track of a zillion cards in his head. The sort of things that got him chased out of Russia by the mob, detained by Asian police, and landed in a half-way house/jail where his cellmate got shot in the ass one night. Seriously, the actual 'playing' of the games seems inconsequential in the overall world of gambling.

Maybe ita's just trying to save us from being shot in the ass....

I do sound quite Manish, don't I? But it's the same thing as our community rules. Someone can swoop in from nowhere and state that they didn't know them, they didn't make them, and most importantly they don't care about them and won't follow them.

And then we boot them.

Which makes us The Man. Community is our motivation, and profit is the motivation for the casinos.

They're an optional part of my life, and I don't for a second dream they're looking out for me. As everything is laid out on paper, I think they have as much ethical claim as anyone else in business. It just plays out differently.

I wouldn't necessarily call acting boorish here unethical per se. But now I think we're really getting into personal ethical standards.

I asked Bob, if in applying the categorical imperative one formulates the maxim "if everyone counted cards..." or "if everyone who could count cards counted cards..." I actually think the former maxim is still endorseable, because the odds still don't change. If betting is more accurate the casino just changes the prize to account for it. I think.

I think we're really getting into personal ethical standards.

My personal ethics are in adopting the rules of the store/community/country when I cross over into it. So personal, yet impersonal.

The line I have a hard time articulating is when it's worth breaking the rule, or trying to change it. Pretty much nothing in gambling is going to make me need to stick it to the man. I have no level of ownership in either a casino or gambling as a whole. Gets much shadier when it comes to countries and communities. But it's easy to do for casinos.

I actually think the former maxim is still endorseable

And impossible.

I do sound quite Manish, don't I? But it's the same thing as our community rules. Someone can swoop in from nowhere and state that they didn't know them, they didn't make them, and most importantly they don't care about them and won't follow them.

And then we boot them.

There's still the shooting in the ass option.