Tag Archives: casino

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Conflicting reports. I watched back-to-back news report earlier this week that focused on aspects of the current economy. The first story railed about inflation, average pay being too low, and mulling the idea of eternal bailouts for everyone/universal basic income. The very next story went on to report that Maryland’s casinos had their most profitable month ever. I’m not saying those stories are mutually exclusive, but I’m going to need a bit more in depth analysis before I accept that the economy is collapsing while the citizens of our fair state have allocated so much of their disposable income to packing the local casinos to the rafters.

2. Door-to-door sales. Does anyone really hire a pest service on their front stoop at 7 PM on Wednesday evening? I just can’t believe it’s the kind of thing that’s an effective business model in 2022. And yet they keep on coming, so I guess someone must be buying. I honestly can’t remember anything I’ve ever bought based on random people showing up at my front door, with the possible exception of Girl Scouts pushing cookies. I truly believe the world would be a better place if we all agreed that it’s time to end the era of door-to-door peddlers. The only thing they’ve ever done for me is drive the resident animals into a high state of agitation and that’s not a good look for someone who wants me to give them money.

3. Florida. This week a Florida court decided that a 16-year-old girl was not “sufficiently mature to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy.” The logical extension of that argument, therefore, is that the court believes the teen is sufficiently mature to have and raise a baby, which strikes me as a complete inversion of basic common sense. I’ve, fortunately, never needed to raise a baby into a functional human, but it seems to me that it’s the kind of activity that would benefit from an over-abundance of maturity and responsibility to be done properly. I might go so far as to posit that the state has a vested interest in encouraging the most responsible and mature of their citizens to have children rather than the other way around. Here’s the State of Florida, though, cleaving to the lesser, ass-backward standard. I won’t even pretend to be surprised.

It’s sort of like going to the casino…

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I know enough about the stock market to realize I need miles and miles of education before I’d consider managing my own account beyond throwing a few dollars here and there at penny stocks and hoping one of them turns out to be a runaway winner. What I’ve learned from occasionally gambling for small dollars is that letting me pick for myself is no better or worse than taking those same dollars to the casino. If I walk away eventually breaking even, it’s a good day. Usually, those penny stocks leave me with far fewer pennies than I started with, though. Overall, I’m happy letting a professional load any money I might actually want to have in the future into market-following funds and taking a very small commission for his trouble… comfortable knowing that in any 30-year period you’d like to name, the market has always been higher at the end of that period than it was at the beginning. 

Three or four years ago, when Bitcoin was making a big name for itself, I threw $100 in the pot. Like penny stocks, it was pure casino gambling. I still don’t know a damned thing about Bitcoin or how the crypto-currency market really works. As far as I can tell, you input things into the computer, witchcraft happens, and bitcoins fall out. That original $100 bet is now banging around between $350-$400. If I had any sense, I’d take my winnings off the table and walk away happy. That’s exactly what I tell myself I should do after I’ve had a good run on a slot machine, too. 

What I’m probably going to do is take those winnings and spread them around the crypto world in $25 or $50 increments in hopes one of those becomes the next big thing – another chance to double my money. If buying Bitcoin was a slot machine, this feels more like covering as many bets as possible at the roulette table and hoping the ball drops on just the right place.

It’s no better or worse than whatever “strategy” guides me during a day at the local horse track… and the only money that’s really at risk is my original $100 bet that I considered lost years ago when I plugged it in to a crypto exchange. If it goes bust, no great loss… but if it happens to go to the moon, I’d hate for it to be the lottery ticket that I didn’t buy.

I guess all of this is a long way of saying I’m starting to miss my periodic trips to the local casino and I’ll be replicating the experience, less the bells, flashing lights, and geriatrics as far as the eye can see, as much as possible from right here in my own living room. I can’t help but wonder if it wouldn’t be a better use of my bitcoin winnings to buy my own slot machine and cut out the middle man (and the accompanying downside risk).