#they're straight-up unambiguously unalloyed evil

[some-eldritch-bats]

So. I have heard the above stated unironically. For folks who agree with the above comment (which was made sarcastically, to be clear, they absolutely don't agree with the thing they said)... Here's my little diatribe. Sit down, shut up, and listen.

Gambling, especially slots like this, is strongly associated with poverty and having limited wealth. This is for many reasons but obviously one reason is fucking obvious: if you put all your money into a machine, you don't have any. These machines are specifically designed to prey upon poor people and people who were not taught financial literacy, which combined is a lot of people.

Problem gambling is DIRECTLY CAUSED BY treatment for Parkinson's disease. People who have never gambled before in their lives can suddenly develop severe gambling addictions. This is because some of the primary medications for Parkinson's disease directly elevate levels of dopamine in your brain. Drugs like carbidopa are literally designed to hyper-activate your reward pathways, because Parkinson's is a disease of low dopamine production, especially within the basal ganglia (which lets you start, continue, and stop voluntary movements and is also what's defective in people with tic disorders). People taking carbidopa have had their reward pathways ripped out of their head and replaced with a giant flashing fucking light saying "WOOOOO GAMBLING AND DRUGS BAYBEEEE!!!" It's not their fault they can't stop gambling and it's functionally IMPOSSIBLE for them to stop. Other issues with carbidopa include sudden food or alcohol addictions, other sudden substance addictions, and engaging in risky behaviours (especially risky sexual behaviours, which are kind of rampant in retirement homes). Frankly, if someone you love and have some part in the care in who has Parkinson's disease suddenly develops an addiction of some kind? You need to do something to try and stop them. Put limiters on their cards, get them blacklisted from all local casinos and put child safety locks on their phone apps, check on them more frequently, if possible become a co-signatory on their accounts and monitor their spending.

Do yous think that casinos are distributing that "hoarded wealth" that they steal from patrons? NO!!! THEY'RE FUCKING VAMPIRES!!! They fucking hoard it RIGHT BACK, and far far worse too. Old people have to pay to eat. They have to pay for utilities. They pass their money on when they die to younger family members who go out and buy houses. Casinos fucking don't. They put it in a big Scrooge McDuck pile and then they invest it into their friends' businesses and the wealth consolidation gets even worse.

These machines are fucking rigged and I cannot stress enough: were none of these other things true, that alone would make them evil. These things need to be shut the shit down because this is basically just legalised theft and I have no idea why.

I come from New South Wales in Australia, which is the unambiguous poker machine capital of the world. We have legalised poker machines OUTSIDE of casinos, which has led to virtually every pub having a stupidly high number of poker machines to the point that there is ONE POKER MACHINE FOR EVERY 88 FUCKING PEOPLE. Imagine walking into a normal-ass pub on a high street, and the first thing you see is a line of poker machines and a bunch of people sat in front of them, slowly and methodically dropping their food money into the slot. That's a normal sight in my home state, in this country that claims to give people a fair fucking go.

These machines are legalised theft, and they target the poor and the vulnerable and the elderly and the disabled. They target people that nobody cares about and systematically rob them, and this is considered "good business" instead of a "heinous crime against humanity" for no reason at all.