Back in January I wrote about the economics of gambling in Australia and the proposed pokies reforms. As most of you would have no doubt heard by now, independent MP Andrew Wilkie’s bill which would have implemented a number of measures to address problem gambling, most notably mandatory commitment and $1 maximum bets on pokie machines, has fallen through. In its place, the Gillard government has offered a half-hearted one-year trial of the changes in the ACT to see if it would work. Oh, and the participating clubs will receive $36 million in compensation for their lost earnings.

…Really? There’s a lot of things that I could say here, most of it garbled and incoherent noise at the incredulousness of the whole thing. Ultimately, this is a story of politics, with the farcical trial a political move whose results will probably end up being of little value. We live in a world where economics and politics are so heavily entangled that for most people, the two are synonymous. For my naïve young heart, weaned on the romance of objective and academic economics, this is an unacceptable result because the hate by association that it lumps on economists is undeserved. Roderick mentioned in a previous post the absurdity of this idea that economists are cold, number crunching monsters who only care about the bottom line and could never hope to understand the nuances of human emotion (which is crazy, because that’s accountants). Unfortunately, as long as people confuse economics with politics, this idea will continue to persist.

Maybe I’m just mad that yet another example of really good economics got brushed aside by the petty power plays in Canberra. The trial will run for a year, probably produce middling results, and mandatory commitment will fall off the agenda for whichever party is running the country, quashed under threat from rent-seeking pokies venues. There’s no denying that this type of thing isn’t a problem specific to economics, or that not all economic research is going to be good, but it’s sad that it is the politics and bickering and not the economics that’s getting all the news.

Tim Costello had a great piece where he compared the fight against pokies to that against slavery. Of course, he is quick to note that there is no moral equivalence between the two, but the ideas rings true all the same. This shouldn’t be a topic about the politics; it should be about what’s best for our society, the moral responsibilities we hold and yes, economics.