I often call gaming the canary in the coal mine for the wider global economy. Here I’d like to go into that idea a little deeper. The import of that comparison is not necessarily laden in technical patterns, but rather within the broader concept of human liberty. The gambling industry is currently at the frontier of liberty. Meaning, it is right at the border between what governments allow and forbid. Whether you see governments as inherently good, necessary evils, or entirely unnecessary in the first place, there is no denying that government, however you may view it, is the quintessential resistance against human liberty on this planet. Whether that’s for good or for bad, that’s everybody’s individual call. But that’s what it is by nature of the fact that it is set up for the very purpose of restricting and regulating human activity.

So what does gaming as the canary in the coal mine really mean? According to economist Murray Rothbard, in his introduction to his opus on prerevolutionary America “Conceived in Liberty,” he begins with a preface, confessing his view on what he thinks is the actual stuff of human history (pages xv-xvi):

My own basic perspective on the history of man…is to place central importance on the great conflict which is eternally waged between Liberty and Power… I see the liberty of the individual not only as a great moral good in itself… but also as the necessary condition for the flowering of all the other goods that mankind cherishes: moral virtue, civilization, the arts and sciences, economic prosperity… But liberty has always been threatened by the encroachments of power, power which seeks to suppress, control, cripple, tax, and exploit the fruits of liberty and production. Power, then, the enemy of liberty, is consequently the enemy of all the other goods and fruits of civilization that mankind holds dear.

History then, according to Rothbard, is the unending battle between Power and Liberty. And which industry is on the very frontlines of the battle more so than gambling? As the canary, it is the first to experience tax hikes and extreme regulatory burdens. Bureaucrats test out their attempts at power grabs by first trying them out on gaming, to see if they work without damaging their hold on power and money. First, they tend to herd up the entire industry into a specialized zone so the state can keep close track of everything, charge anything they want for arbitrary licenses, and limit the industry’s spread. See Nevada, New Jersey, Macau, the Russian Primorye gambling region, the absolutely transparent idiocy of the Cambodian regime’s restrictions against gambling only for Cambodian citizens, but not for foreigners.