RALEIGH – This is nuts.
There are many deep, philosophical reasons to fear overbearing government. But if they fail to persuade, just consider the very practical reason that government is often not capable of using common sense. I don’t mean that government officials lack common sense. Most are responsible adults who make sensible decisions in their personal and family life. But when they start drafting and enforcing government rules, their common sense yields to superciliousness – and, well, super-silliness.
Last week, reports the Fayetteville Observer, the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office confiscated 30 video-game machines owned by a local company and leased out to restaurants and bars. The sheriff’s office claims that these machines are illegal, that they violate the state’s new ban on video poker. The owners, via New VEMCO Musical Company, point out that while some of the video-game machines are equipped with card games such as poker and blackjack, there are no prizes. It is impossible to gamble on a machine that takes your money and awards no prizes. Even the odds of winning the state lottery aren’t zero (though they are pretty paltry).
Doesn’t matter, the gaming gendarmes say. The only thing that matters is whether a given video game is a “game of chance” or a “game of skill.” The relevant bill text reads: “A video game based on or involving the random or chance matching of different pictures, words, numbers, or symbols not dependent on the skill or dexterity of the player (are banned).” Cumberland officials contend that the confiscated games meet that definition.
The situation is wacky on so many levels. I must say first of all that I never supported the state’s ban on video poker (and I didn’t even have to be bribed to hold that position!) It was the height of hypocrisy for the North Carolina General Assembly to enact a state-run gambling operation, the lottery, and then ban privately run gambling competitors. The act had more than just a whiff of Bugsy Malone to it.
But even if one agrees that, perhaps for reasons of combating fraud or protecting children from parents who gamble away their life savings, the state should ban video poker, surely the issue must be monetary. If there is no prospect of gain or significant loss, then playing a video game based on poker is no different than plugging quarters into all sorts of other video games. With dangerous criminal predators and real social ills plaguing North Carolina, the very idea that any law enforcement agency would spend scarce resources confiscating video games should prompt public outrage and derision.
Nor is it meaningful to distinguish between “games of chance” and “games of skill” in this context. A pure game of chance would be something like, again, a state lottery or bingo. But poker and blackjack combine chance and skill, much as many other video and computer games do. Whoever wrote that language apparently has no personal experience with playing video games – and that’s my point. The consequences of rogue game regulation may not be staggering from a societal standpoint. But for every misguided sheriff’s deputy snatching a video console, there is at least one misguided regulator with insufficient knowledge of financial services, construction, farming, medicine, and many other fields who nevertheless has the power to make or break companies or industries employing thousands of people and selling goods or services to millions of willing consumers.
You know what’s a game of chance rather than a game of skill? Getting through the day as a business owner without some blinkered government bureaucrat costing you or your customers time and money for no good reason.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.