The drug era of the 1970s and 80s had a devastating effect on our social culture, effects which are still being felt decades later. Similarly, the rise of a gambling and casino culture fueled by a few business houses will adversely and negatively affect The Bahamas for decades.
The tragedy is that we can see, from the experience of others and from what is already happening, the toll access to 24-7 gambling will have on our social fabric, already tattered by other social problems.
The proliferation of the gambling culture can be seen in the construction of new casinos, the launch of a television station by one gambling enterprise and the aborted attempt to place gambling machines in grocery stores.
Many Family Islands, with limited financial resources and economic opportunities, are being drained of money. Little of this money is ever returned to those communities.
The fun days and giveaways to these communities, and on New Providence, are a patronizing insult to Bahamians. They are marketing schemes intended to flummox and bamboozle, while hyping business.
Unlike most other businesses, gambling offers little except the thrill of gambling itself and a promised reward that rarely materializes. A well-regulated national lottery could have returned considerable rewards to Bahamians.
Many politicians are close to the owners of gambling businesses, reportedly benefitting from the largesse of the gambling barons. How much are certain politicians in the pay of others?
There are multiple games gamblers can play around the clock from home, on their mobile devices or in a gambling and casino establishment. While many buy numbers, spinning is the game of choice for most.
Spinning has a particular psychological effect and one can keep spinning, not having to wait for a number to fall. One can spin oneself into bankruptcy and financial distress, especially at the expense of family and children.

Spinning
Spinning is a highly addictive habit. More women are spinning than men. With women heading most households and being the main breadwinners, this is especially alarming.
As mass gambling penetrates daily life, the sociological effect will be far-reaching in areas such as family life and in the formation of habits like saving money, which is not known to be a vigorous habit for many Bahamians.
For a country desperately in need of financial literacy and education, Bahamians are now bombarded with messages about gambling. The launch of a television station by one gambling baron is alarming.
We are witnessing a vast redistribution of wealth, including from poor Bahamians to a few gambling bosses, who are further enriching themselves and who are giving very little back to the country.
A national lottery could have greatly benefitted a vast number of Bahamians in areas from education and social development, to the arts and culture. Instead, hundreds of millions and more are being gorged at the expense of national development.
This is profoundly inequitable, and an offense to social justice and national progress. Over decades we will see the considerable opportunity cost of allowing a few to live lavishly, while thousands of Bahamians will remain poorly educated.
Some of the considerable profits of the gambling barons could fund universal preschool in The Bahamas.
Investing in preschool education is known to be successful in helping children, especially children from disadvantaged backgrounds. This includes helping children to get a better start in life, helping them with health and nutrition, and brain development.
Preschool helps children to develop early skills in literacy, numeracy and oracy, as well as other basic life skills and human development often missing in many of our children who live in difficult family and social circumstances.
Investing millions in preschool could help in the fight against crime and in the repair of our social culture. Instead, mass gambling may help to fuel more crime and to further damage our social culture.

Sources
The hoarding of wealth from the gambling barons may retard economic growth. International commercial banks and Commonwealth Bank do not presently accept money from the gambling houses because of the questions surrounding the sources of their profits.
Since majority rule and independence there has been a flourishing of the middle class, especially of black Bahamians. In 40 years of independence the country has made great strides in terms of economic empowerment for scores of Bahamians.
Still, there remains much to be done to empower more Bahamians economically, including greater access to capital for entrepreneurs to help stimulate domestic and home-grown investment. A national lottery would be a source of significant capital to help stimulate domestic development.
Today, many in the middle class are struggling with the proverbial Bahamian Dream, especially after the Great Recession of 2008 and the resulting new normal of an economic landscape marked by slower growth and significant challenges in the tourism sector.
Unlike other economic enterprises, those who run the gambling houses and casinos produce nothing of economic value in terms of the numbers business itself.
Instead of allowing these barons to hoard our money for themselves, a public lottery with the bulk of the proceeds being returned to the Bahamian people would be better for the country.
Instead, money pours out of poorer neighborhoods and many Family Island communities into the bank accounts of a few, leaving many of these communities even more impoverished.
These communities do not need Christmas parties and giveaways. They need concentrated economic and social investments partly derived from a national lottery in which money is reinvested in these communities.
Instead of a few tokens to the masses, the Bahamian people should be the majority shareholders and owners of a legalized lottery system, a sort of modern asue that can be used to advance national development, more of which I will touch on next week.
The talk of an IPO by one gambling establishment may be a non-starter. Still, such talk is less about sharing wealth by Bahamians, than it is about getting shareholders whose money can then be transferred into commercial banks, while settling the concerns of bankers and regulators. This may be the real game afoot.
In days of old, slave masters, colonialists and the Old Guard hoarded wealth and rigged the economy to benefit their private interests at the expense of the public good.
How shameful that a New Guard, which came into being to fight such entrenched greed at the expense of the mass of Bahamians, turned its back on the majority of Bahamians in thrall to a wealthy minority interest, making a mockery of much of the struggle for majority rule.
As argued before in this space, Bahamians do not need scraps from the numbers banquet table. The table and the full meal belong to the people, not to a select few.

o frontporchguardian@gmail.com, www.bahamapundit.com.

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