George Orwell on "films, football, beer and gambling"

So long as they (the Proles) continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance.  Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern...  Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer, and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds.  To keep them in control was not difficult...  All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations.  And when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontentment led nowhere, because being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances.

~ George Orwell, 1984

Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show
February 13, 2022

Burl East on the economics of the gambling business

At a casino, the only math you need to know is this: Every dollar that enters a casino leaves as 78 cents.

~ Burl East, portfolio manager, Altegris/AACA Opportunistic Real Estate Fund, "On the Lookout for Powerful Properties," Barron's, January 1, 2018

Charlie Munger on early 2021 speculative frenzy

The frenzy is fed by people getting commissions and other revenues out of this new bunch of gamblers, and, of course, when things get extreme, you have things like that short squeeze … and it’s really stupid to have a culture which encourages [so] much gambling in stocks by people who have the mindset of racetrack bettors and, of course, it will create trouble, as it did.

~ Charlie Munger, "Charlie Munger says it’s ‘really stupid to have a culture which encourages [so] much gambling in stocks’," MarketWatch, February 25, 2021