Mexico 1 – 0 USA
I’ve written about this sort of stuff before on the blog, but given my location at the moment it’s worth visiting it again. I’ve added a video at the bottom to bring home the point a bit more this time.
I would like to trade this week, but I’m going to move location to do it. I’ve shifted out of LA and down the coast to cross the border. It’s only a couple of hours from LA and from San Diego it’s minutes. I’d have happily stayed in the US, but legislation here doesn’t allow me to use Betfair, which is silly really. Attempting to log in natively simply rejects my request. As an independent traveller, I’m happy to use the opportunity as an excuse to do a bit more travelling. It’s just feels odd that just a few hundred yards can produce such differing results. But it’s easy to know why this situation occurs.
Back when man decided to discard the stone for a replacement, he didn’t hold a committee on it or ponder the impact on the stone making industry, he simply realised that discarding stone and moving to a new tool was better, so he did it.
When you look at the Gambling industry, exchanges seem as unpopular as ever in certain jurisdictions around the world and getting more unpopular, it’s folly. Where betting exchanges have changed the landscape, it’s for the better. Punters get better prices, lose less money and actually have a chance of winning for once. That sort of pisses on the argument that gambling is bad and that’s why gambling on exchanges should be banned. Legislation against them is to the detriment of local punters. I’m sure if exchanges had originated in other countries then the argument may be somewhat different.
You also have the broader issue of control. Because you outlaw something, thanks to the Internet, it often just shifts borders. Better to have it under your control and benefit from it than outlaw it and lose control. New technology also drives new revenue streams. Before Betfair I wasn’t interested in the slightest interested in Racing, but now I’m interested and making a decent contribution to it’s funding in a complimentary manner. That wouldn’t exist without the opportunity that exchanges have created. If overseas markets become more liquid, and open, then that would happen there as well.
I bet you a lot of legislators arrive at their offices using cars, which obviously begs the question of why they still don’t use horses. Horses are perfectly adequate means of transport, aren’t they? I guess they will stick with those new fangled cars. At least they don’t need to hop over the border to use one.
