Gambling

 Although I enjoy gambling video games (with fake money), I have a moral objection to gambling in real life.

Imagine if you and your fellow human being both approach the same game with the expectation of winning money, but the money comes from your pockets. If both of you put down $200, the results are either one of you walking away with $400 , and the other with nothing, or someone ending up with less money than they started. Both of you are not going to win. If this were not the case, you would simply share the money so that each possess the same amount of money.

Someone had plans to take the wife out to dinner, or pay a bill with that money, and then you win, and poof, there goes their plan.

You are exploiting another person's hope. A slot machine, for example, contains money from several people who hoped to win big, but failed to do so. Some are desperate to win, thinking it will solve their problems. For some, like the addicts, it's their only hope. When you hit the jackpot, are you not taking what belongs to them? A person must think less of the game's previous victims, to take that money without guilt.

To win, someone else always must be left in the cold. All those games revolving around crushed hope. I don't know how I could accept that without guilt. And the greatest guilt of all belongs to The House.