Surprised that prisons ban dice but not cards which can be used to substitute for dice.
Interestingly some of the early board games used spinners as dice where seen as sinful, normally by the more hard core protestants.
Interestingly some of the early board games used spinners as dice where seen as sinful, normally by the more hard core protestants.
This brought to mind the fact that in Japan, cards were considered to be the more pernicious influence on gambling, which eventually led to a card deck that was pessimized for gambling[0]. Of course, people can gamble on anything they can play, so it didn't exactly work.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleromancy#In_Judeo-Christian_...
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/dice-evolution-fate-fa...
In summary, even if the old dice were not fair, it was not an issue because they were a manifestation of the divine.
Wouldn't it make more sense to allow inmates access to dice and real spinners? They're human beings with brains. Wouldn't correction officers prefer that they spent their time playing games instead of thinking of ways to escape or "cause trouble"?
Then again not every one has quite the same take on peaky Blinders as I do ;-)
"The house always wins" turns a prison into an organized structure of debtors and owners fairly rapidly, I'd imagine. And you can't fault the far fewer security guards from wanting to avoid a face-off with a unified enemy.
Well, also because in most states gambling is itself (entirely or, at least, without a whole lot of bureaucratic compliance stuff) illegal, and it would be very odd to reverse that prohibition in prisons.
Nonsense. First, while this is phrased to position government as an alternative to violence, forcing repayment of loans with government involves both violence and a monopoly—a monopoly on "legitimate" violence being the main factor which all governments have in common. Second, government cannot be relied upon to force repayment of loans (e.g. they allow debts to be discharged in bankruptcy). Third, social pressure can effectively force people to repay their loans without resorting to violence. As things stand today, the main factor that keeps people from skipping out on loans is not the threat that the government might get involved, or a more general fear of violence, but rather the impact it would have on their credit score—in other words, the risk of acquiring a reputation as someone who does not repay their debts, and consequently losing access to future credit.
The way the world works is someone does something stupid or incomprehensible where the most minor detail includes topic X. The report of the foolishness goes up the infinite hierarchy of micromanagers to someone who wants to make a statement to his superior of his great leadership skills by permanently "solving" the problem by banning whatever topic X is. Then months or years later the individual event of stupidity is long forgotten but the weird written order against topic X will remain for all eternity...
I can't find the relevant video clip, but it's from a school house rock parody
Something must be done
I am doing something
Therefore something is being done