Why do they think the cure for bad legislation is more legislation?

Listening to a conversation in the Gym this morning between two guys who were discussing the changes to planning to enable councils to limit the amount of Bookmakers in an effort to control the spread of Fixed Odds Betting Machines and it got me thinking about the government and particularly why the government always tries to legislate its way out of trouble, even when the trouble is caused by Bad Legislation.

This is a classic example. basically the government were worried about FOB terminals and so they legislated that shops couldn't have more than 4 terminals, the problem with this kind of "blanket" legislation is that it doesn't consider any specific circumstances, so a shop where the demand can only support 1 terminal is viewed no differently than a shop where demand can support 20. Now as Supply will always follow demand the obvious (To all but the government) result is that the area that wants 20 terminals will get 5 shops.

Now that the inevitable has happened the complaint is that there are too many betting shops and so councils should have power to refuse them, basically trying to legislate out of a problem that the original legislation caused. It does actually appear to me that all of this legislation is caused by one simple issue, They don't trust you enough to make decisions about your own life, but they are not willing to say that out loud.

So here is a crazy idea, why not allow demand to regulate supply, remove all the legislation and that way each area will only have the FOBTs that the people using them want, and there will only be as many bookmakers as the economy can support. (Although you should think about if you really want to reduce the amount of bookmakers on the high street, these are after all people's jobs and tax paying businesses.)

Gambling in the High Street is already controlled

I read an article on the Guardian this morning by journalist Greg Wood, in it he is urging the BHA (British Horse Racing Authority) to fight against the "Toxic" influence of Fixed Odds Betting Terminals (Basically machines with casino style games) It was funny as the link I followed on twitter said "Greg Woods has a reasoned look at FOBTs" I did find it very funny therefore when the sub headline read

"British Horseracing Authority must end shameful policy towards toxic presence of betting terminals on high streets"

Obviously my formatting but hardly what I would call  reasoned. more prejudiced and biased would be how I would describe it. essentially the gist of the article is that governments need to do more to protect people from these insidious machines, what they have not taken into account is that like all businesses these machines are already controlled, like all commercial ventures they are controlled by Supply and Demand, if there was no Demand for the machines then no one would use them and they would close down. It really is that simple, they exist because people want them. I can never understand why this fact escapes certain people, I can only assume it is because certain areas of the country believe that they know what is best for people and can do a much better job of controlling them than if they had free choice.

Another one of the elements that is discussed is that as they can only have 4 of these machines you are starting to get multiple betting shops on each high street, well the answer to this is obvious, cancel the limit of 4 per shop, this is a problem that is caused by government regulation, not because of a lack of it!

I do have one solution that would have an effect on the number of betting shops on the high street but I highly doubt it will prove popular, Stop paying benefits in Cash! If you remove cash benefits and replace them with vouchers that can not be used to gamble you will essentially be stopping a state subsidy to betting shops and market forces will be able to balance up the supply and demand so we only have the number of betting shops that are wanted.