Trial finds cashless gaming makes little difference to gambling behaviour on pokies
Trial finds cashless gaming makes little difference to gambling behaviour on pokies
Cashless gaming is intended to limit the losses of people with gambling problems, but reform advocates say the first trial did not include crucial harm reduction measures.
- In short: One of the first cashless gaming trials in NSW found the technology made little difference to the behaviour of gamblers.
- The Wests New Lambton trial has received criticism from gambling reform advocates, who say it did not include a card with binding and default limits.
- What's next?: The Independent Panel on Gaming Reform will provide findings from an expanded statewide cashless gaming trial.
Gambling shouldn't be privatised. Idk why we allow people to profit from addiction. Their incentive is just to make it worse.
If it were just public then it'd be the government exploiting people's addiction. Honestly I see no way out of this besides regulating it out of profitability.
Maybe casinos have to have a net odds at like 50:50.1 and then charge for entry. Big wins would probably not happen so it might not work. But I've never met anyone who gambled regularly and it wasn't a problem.
So it's a bit cooked but basically humans do stuff that's harmful, governments supplying it at least removes profit incentives.
You can't ban gambling out of existence but a government body can be set up in such a way that odds are fairer, only less addicting games are offered (e.g. no pokies because flashing lights and sounds are satanic), the rooms have natural light and clocks etc. Any money made goes into gambling assistance programs or community improvement or whatever.
Would people still get hurt? yes. Would there be corruption? yes. But there's no way it can be worse than private operations which still have all the same problems with less transparency and being harder to regulate, plus the profit incentive.
Think of it like injecting rooms, trust me it's way safer and less glamorous to shoot up /get supplies at one of those than a house party.
The idea is that if the government gets all the profit from gambling then that money can go into social services to support the people who bankrupt themselves from gambling.
Personally I'd say we should take the approach we did to smoking. Ban its advertising, severely restrict where it can be done (in this case, ban pokies outside of casinos), and tax the shit out of it.
Yeah nah, the sin tax on smoking already heavily penalises less privileged people and is very ends-justify-means. Plus gambling is much older than nicotine in terms of habits humans continue to do.
Smoking stuff is a pissweak compromise position trying to undo harm by massive corporations with powerful vested interests. Without mass market cigarettes and advertising no way so many people do it for the mild stimulant hit. Restricting gambling is more like trying to stop stimulant drug use in general vs smoking specifically.
Besides, while I don't gamble I can acknowledge that a few bets or a game of cards can be pretty fun. If we can manage the framework it happens in, such that the goal is a good balance between fun and harm vs the capitalist framework of maximum wealth extraction then I don't see the harm. It's not like a game of poker is a worse decision than a bottle of wine or sitting in watching tv vs going for a run or something.
The government also gets their cut from taxes, and poltical parties from donations, so they are likewise incentivised
Why would you expect changing the method of payment to effect spending habits...?
You wouldn't, which is exactly why the industry is pushing for a scheme like this.
I would expect an increase in gambling from cashless because you might not realise how much money you're feeding in
I know that the whole cashless gaming is supposedly targeting tax cheats blah blah,.
But the whole cashless thing is making me twitch.
You are further distancing money from a physical/logical good to an abstract thing that doesn't really mean anything.
The move away from cash to cashless is having the same effect.
Paying $15 when you only have a $20 in your wallet to last you to payday is a lot different to just tapping your card for those new shoes, or another $500 of 'points' to flush through a pokie.
idk, maybe I'm an old guy barking at the moon, but something feels really off. I think I'm going to pull out $500 in cash, and use that to pay for everything and see if it changes my perspective.
idk, maybe I’m an old guy barking at the moon, but something feels really off. I think I’m going to pull out $500 in cash, and use that to pay for everything and see if it changes my perspective.
I don't think you're old fashioned at all. Young people concerned about their finances are still using the "envelope" trick even today because it works. I think the problem in this pokies example is the existence of a serious addictive behaviour so rational thought is not being utilised in the same way it would be it you or I were to budget with cash normally.
Nah, get rid of cash for the pokies. It alone won't help with harm reduction but the pokies are one of the most common ways to launder money in this country. People use the resources taxes buy and should be paying their fair share.
We also need cashless gaming cards with default and settable hard limits with restrictions on when you can change it to help combat the addictions.
Because you can strictly enforce spending limits per person. The current system allows people who hit the limit to go down the street to an ATM and get more cash out. A digital card system is designed to close that loophole.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Gambling reform advocates have criticised the findings from the first cashless gaming trial in New South Wales.
The trial ran at food and entertainment venue Wests New Lambton, a suburb of Newcastle in the state's Hunter region, from October 2022 until June last year.
The final report was based on post-trial interviews, and prepared by Professor Paul Delfabbro from the University of Adelaide on behalf of Liquor and Gaming NSW (L&GNSW).
"We need to see the introduction of the recommendation from the NSW Crime Commission for a mandatory cashless card that includes binding and default limits," she said.
In a statement, L&GNSW said the Wests trial in Newcastle was designed to assess how cashless gaming solutions operated in real-world conditions and how people used harm minimisation tools.
The expanded trial started two weeks ago at Tweed Heads, in the state's far north-east.
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