Re: Detectives on the trail of fossil looters (retry)

[Nick Pharris <npharris@umich.edu>]

Quoting philidor11@snet.net:


> In that sense, it's like gambling:  people are going to gamble, 
> the assumption is, no matter what.  The successful counter argument 
> has been that if people are going to gamble anyway, then the 
> State might as well regulate it to assure the game is honest 
> and get money to fund State functions that do people some good.

My problem with this is that there are an awful lot of legalistically-minded 
folks out there.  If gambling is illegal, they won't disobey the law by 
gambling; but if gambling is legal, they will gamble.  Because of this, 
government approval and legalization of gambling (or of collecting and selling 
fossils) will surely lead to a higher number of people gambling or collecting 
fossils for profit.

Nick Pharris
Department of Linguistics
University of Michigan