A gunman walks into a resort and kills 36 people. Unfortunately it’s not a joke. ISIS claims responsibility, though the man, Jessie Javier Carlos, was a government tax man gambling addict $81,000 in debt. He was fired from his job for, get this, not paying taxes. Nevermind that this brings into question every ISIS claim of responsibility for anything. The group is really a bogey man that media can point to in order to get the scared masses glued to news broadcasts so they can charge more for ads. The morality of this sort of journalism, reporting on claims of responsibility for murder without verifying the claim, is rarely questioned, if the group it is pinned on is public enemy #1.
Let’s address a few controversial issues. First, how to prevent these incidents from happening. Second, the morality of buying the dip in Travellers International Hotel Group (RWM) and seemingly profiting off of mass murder.
No doubt anti-gambling moralists are going to blame gambling for this crime and push for more laws against it, much like UK Prime Minister Theresa May is using the recent London attack to push for global government control over the internet. But driving gambling into the underground economy is likely to cost more lives than it saves. A much more reasonable way to prevent mass shootings like this from happening in the future is to put resorts in charge of their own security and liable for damages in the event of a breach. A second option is to relax gun laws and allow responsible gun owners to carry their firearms, which Philippines Republic Act 10591 passed in 2014 makes it very difficult to do for the average nonviolent Filipino, but very easy for violent crazed people to ignore, as happened here. If you’re planning to go out in a blaze, Republic Act 10591 isn’t going to stop you. It’s just going to make it easier for criminals to kill unarmed people.
As for the second question, is it moral to buy the dip in RWM stock? Let’s do a value-free thought experiment to try to answer that question. Let’s assume it is totally immoral to buy RWM shares within, say, two weeks of the mass shooting, and let’s say everyone in the Philippines is moral and follows this moral code voluntarily. What happens to RWM shares then? They fall to near zero as no buyer is willing to match sell orders and the company and its customers and investors all suffer even more. The better question is, Is it moral to sell RWM shares on the news of an attack? Well, if that’s immoral and everyone is moral then shares skyrocket as nobody sells and buy orders come in as a show of support or what have you. That could be even worse as companies may start benefiting off mass shootings because it would cause their equity to spike higher, in the event that it is perceived that selling shares on tragedy is immoral.