Guilty Planet

What if you could gamble for a good cause? Why not build a casino where the profits go to conservation?

The idea came to me last night while watching a BBC documentary on gambling with Louis Theroux (see preview below). The segment features a woman who has lost $4 million over the last 7 years (don't worry, she says she had fun doing it) and a Canadian mattress man who lost somewhere over $250,000 in one weekend. Imagine if these people could lose their money and know that it ultimately wound up going toward a good cause rather than in the pockets of already rich casino owners?

Yes, some NGO would have to abandon a few scruples for such an undertaking (imagine a giant panda next to the Sphinx in Las Vegas). But I wonder if gamblers would have less sense of guilt or defeat if their losses went to a good cause? According to Stewart Brand in the excellent book The Clock of the Long Now:

One of the least reported, least reflected upon trends of the late twentieth century had been the rise of gambling. Growing at a rate of about 20 percent per year through the 1990s in the United States, the amount annually spent on legal gambling passed $700 billion in 1998. About 8 percent of that went to the "house"--$56 billion in profits, bigger than the domestic film and music industries combined. Instead of curtailing the game government joined it, actively teaching citizens to bet unthinkingly. States with lotteries went from one in 1964 to thirty-seven in 1997. The number of addicted gamblers increased accordingly, along with the usual crime, broken families, and suicides. The gaming industry has become a powerful political lobby, buying government acquiescence and media silence.

Let's put some of that casino money toward conservation...

**Update (October 27, 2009): While they are not casinos, apparently the Dutch postcode lottery and the UK postcode lottery are two gambling systems that support local charities.