Gambling by Theft

"Making" profits by committing theft

When a person enriches itself at the expense of another, the process is called theft. The general perception is that gambling is excluded from this definition, because the potential loss is agreed upon to be a condition of the game. Gambling is assumed to be an innocent zero sum game that creates as many winners as losers, so that the overall wealth of society is not affected. Is this assumption correct?

The answer must be a resounding, NO, and the reason for it must be understood.

In modern times, since the mid 1960s, many societies around the world have become obsessed with financial gambling on an increasingly larger scale, especially in the stock markets, currency markets, and derivatives markets. The original idea of the stock market system was to provide the opportunity to pool capital resources for the creation of productive enterprises for a share of the profits in the form of dividends. This kind of process enriches a society in that it enhances its productive capacity. The inherent risks in this type of productive gambling are generally quite small, if the process is honestly pursued. This type of investment once became the backbone of a prosperous capitalist society which served the general welfare of society as a whole. This type of investment gambling is still pursued, although to an extremely minute degree.

In today's stock markets huge profits are taken by none-productive processes, such as trading financial instruments at ever higher prices. But where do the profits come from, that are taken, when nothing of value is being produced? Trading certificates from one hand or another doesn't produce anything of intrinsic physical value from which the profits might be derived. In other words, the profits are stolen under the pretext of creating wealth. In a very real sense the financial investors steal from each other, but mostly they steal from society as a whole.

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