Damien Grant
SkyCity is a morally questionable operation. It’s worst sin is the incomprehensible numbering system deployed in its carpark. I’ve spent too much time wandering about trying to decipher how to get to lot 4387 and thinking I’ve become trapped in a CS Lewis novel.
How hard is it to design an orderly sequential system so simple-minded elderly folk like me can find their way back to their car without having to take a can of orange paint to mark the route?
This isn’t their only transgression. It’s business model is based on psychologically addictive poker machines. My week is rarely complete without wandering past banks of these insidious contraptions and their emotionally dependent humans.
I’m all for the free market and I am not going to condemn the casino for preying on the financially and emotionally weak in order to bolster their quarterly returns. Good on them.
If people wish to freely spend their allotted hours on this earth fixated on a flashing LED screen in return for a brief dopamine hit as a diversion from whatever pathetic life awaits them elsewhere, that’s on them.
After all, I use Twitter. Who am I to judge?
This does not mean I believe making cash by plugging souls into your electronic matrix is virtuous. It’s as morally abhorrent as eking a living off the failed dreams of company directors and the scraps of carrion left in their insolvent companies.
I mean, someone has to do it, but let’s not pretend we’re the good guys. Take it from me, no amount of free fireworks are going to convince anyone otherwise.
And let us not forget that this is the business that was caught comping the Auckland mayor free hotel rooms, which a reasonable person could assume it didn’t do out of a commitment to cultural diversity.
Offering freebies to politicians isn’t what good corporate citizens do and SkyCity isn’t a good corporate citizen. It has a monopoly, created by statute, giving it the exclusive right to own and operate casinos in New Zealand until, wait for it, 2048.
This monopoly was due to expire next year but in return for promising to build a convention centre, which, I mean, OK, they had it extended and the Crown threw in 230 extra poker machines to sweeten the deal.
We have another 28 years before another casino operator can set up in New Zealand, which is about as long as it will take for this convention centre to be completed.
The profitability of this enterprise is dependent on
Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals where he claims that humans have a moral duty to consider the welfare of animals as we consider the rights of humans. He advocates veganism.
I’m not in favour of deplatforming but I’d consider an exception for someone trying to prevent me from eating bacon, but again, this wasn’t a problem either.
He’s Jewish but he doesn’t practice the religion and seems to have been given a free pass on this particular identity crime by the guardians of the new morality.
I was personally offended at his 1972 essay Famine, Affluence and Morality where he preaches that people who live in rich countries have a moral obligation to give cash to help those in poorer nations.
None of this seems to be an issue. Nor his support of abortion. In fact, he thinks that not only should a woman be allowed to abort their child before they are born, he makes the logical extension that if the child isn’t viable there isn’t any moral prohibition to killing it post birth.
This is the thought crime that had someone on Facebook upset, caused a journalist to call the PR department of the Auckland equivalent of the Death Star and, before a SkyCity executive could digest the contents of Peter Singer’s Wikipedia page, the philosopher had his speaking gig cancelled.
Now, I’m not sure if I’m on board with killing babies. I have a few questions. But I’m willing to listen to his perspective and see if he can overturn my instinctive position that killing newborn children is as morally abhorrent as killing unborn ones.
What I’m not willing to do is accept at face value PR spin from a parasitic monopoly that preaches diversity and inclusivity while peddling addictive gaming technology and indulging our political class with free room and board in return for sweetheart deals.
SkyCity doesn’t have any idea what a moral compass is much less which way it is
meant to be facing.
Now, I’m not sure if I’m on board with killing babies. I have a few questions. But I’m willing to listen to his perspective...