The Financial Times, long an establishment mouthpiece for launching public policy trial balloons, published an article this week entitled “Why the party is over for online gambling”. It smells of being one of those trial balloons, persuading readers to think that public opinion is a certain way when in fact the article itself looks written to influence public opinion rather than survey it. The crux of the article is that the United Kingdom gambling industry is irresponsible and doesn’t care about the damage it causes. Far from proving that “the party is over for online gambling,” the only evidence the article cites of further restrictions on the industry was this: “Labour MP Tom Watson called for the [2005 Gambling] Act to be overhauled, imposing further restrictions on how much customers can wager and a system of checks to make it harder for people to place bets they can ill-afford.” That’s it.

The rest of the article was basically industry finger-pointing for a “series of lurid scandals.” One of these supposedly lurid scandals he cites was Ladbrokes agreeing to pay £1m to the victims of a problem gambler who had stolen the money he was wagering in return for a pledge not to inform regulators. Here you have a voluntary out-of-court settlement where victims of a crime are fully reimbursed, the justice system is not burdened, and this is a lurid scandal?

The other “lurid scandal” he cites is of William Hill failing to prevent money laundering. Well, whose fault is money laundering? Money laundering is simply a method of tax avoidance. High taxes cause money laundering. Pay a babysitter under the table and you’re a money launderer, as is the babysitter. All babysitters paid in cash are guilty. The point is, money laundering for tax avoidance cannot be a moral crime because the same exact act is considered fine when it’s small, but wrong when it’s big. It’s a legal crime, not a moral one. It can only be a moral crime when it’s used to hide murder or slavery or some other violation of human rights.

The solution to money laundering is to lower taxes to a point where money laundering is no longer profitable, or not profitable enough to compensate for the risk. The fault is the government’s. If taxes on everything were 90%, literally everyone would be evading taxes and laundering money all the time just like they did in the 1950’s in the United States. It would just be considered the accepted way of doing things.