I\u2019m glad my articles are now posted on the GamblingWithAnEdge.com website. That provides a forum and often people take the time to respond to what I\u2019ve said — or to comment on other responses.<\/p>\n
A while ago somebody posted there, \u201cIs it wrong to see someone drop money and you don’t tell them?\u201d I want to tackle that one today.<\/p>\n
My answer today is probably different than it was twenty-four years ago. Twenty-four years ago, I was brand new to Las Vegas and had moved to town with $6,000 in cash. My car was in decent repair. I wasn\u2019t broke — but I was one or two unfortunate incidents away from being broke. I was playing blackjack with a girlfriend-partner, and that $6,000 had to cover bankroll AND living expenses.<\/p>\n
At that time, I would probably have kept my mouth shut, waited until the person who dropped the money had stepped away, picked up the money, and left the area. This exact scenario didn\u2019t happen to me, but similar-enough situations occurred that I\u2019m pretty sure that\u2019s what I would have done. I REALLY was in survival mode. Not literally, but psychologically. Since I hadn\u2019t caused the person to drop the money, I wouldn\u2019t have felt I was stealing the money. I could have slept at night.<\/p>\n
Today I\u2019m in a different situation in life. When I see people drop something, I normally speak up — basically by reflex. It\u2019s usually not money which is dropped, of course, but sometimes it is. Today, the pleasure I get from an \u201cextra\u201d $100 is usually less than the grief felt by the person who lost it.<\/p>\n
Even when I was barely getting by, there would be situations where I would speak up. Such as:\u00a0 If a mother was struggling with three young children and one of the kids caused her to drop some money — even if I was in a survival mode, I would have spoken up. Whatever her financial status, a mother with three young kids is having a difficult time and I wouldn\u2019t want to make it any more difficult. Keeping the money would forever have me worrying about, \u201cWhat if she was getting medicine for one of the kids and that was the only money she had?\u201d Best to play it straight and not have those worries.<\/p>\n
Picking up money that has been inadvertently left behind has lots of analogs in a casino. You see credits left on machines. You see multipliers left on Ultimate X machines. You see players leave \u201cmust hit by $500\u201d machines when the meter is at $498. Sometimes you know who left these things and sometimes you don\u2019t. Collecting credits left on the machine may be against the law in some jurisdictions (usually you won\u2019t be caught), but often there\u2019s no law telling you what you must do. Often, you\u2019re free to make your own judgments and decisions.<\/p>\n
Is there a moral difference to what my actions should be based on whether I was poor or I was rich? Probably not, but the world sure looks different depending on whether things are going your way or not.<\/p>\n
I like living in a world where random acts of kindness are not all that unusual. And to have that world exist requires that I do my share. So, I do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m glad my articles are now posted on the GamblingWithAnEdge.com website. That provides a forum and often people take the time to respond to what I\u2019ve said — or to comment on other responses. A while ago somebody posted there, \u201cIs it wrong to see someone drop money and you don’t tell them?\u201d I want […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15763,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[643],"tags":[704,559,746,894,895,896],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5156"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15763"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}