Jorge Luis Borges' Lottery of Babylon (IMHO one of his top half dozen stories) carries this social gambling concept to an interesting conclusion.
Gambling for the tab has been popular among seafarers for at least a few centuries. Rediker thinks binge drinking among mariners on return to shore is related to paying social debts accrued aboard. Gambling might be a neat way of canceling such debts without incurring new ones: leftover social credit is exchanged with the principle of chance, the result is social cohesion with reduced complexity/interpersonal history, a condition that could be termed camaraderie.
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Date: 2010-04-05 05:08 pm (UTC)Gambling for the tab has been popular among seafarers for at least a few centuries. Rediker thinks binge drinking among mariners on return to shore is related to paying social debts accrued aboard. Gambling might be a neat way of canceling such debts without incurring new ones: leftover social credit is exchanged with the principle of chance, the result is social cohesion with reduced complexity/interpersonal history, a condition that could be termed camaraderie.