Ideally, I’d like an industry that was completely legal, free from government intervention, and not taxed. Unfortunately, that will never happen in the real world.
For years now, we’ve been touting “licensing, taxation, and regulation” as a favorable point in our quest to get online gaming legalized. Now that this goal is somewhat near, we can’t renege on the promise to allow regulation and taxation now.
To borrow an old expression, “[We] can’t have our cake and eat it, too”. Yeah, I hate when people say that also…but realistically, the USA facing market and to some extent the rest of the world need to be open to a moderate amount of government control in order to stay “legit”.
A possible silver lining: if online gaming and promoting online gaming falls into a favorable light in the USA, it might blow out some of the scum bags that operate in this industry, since they would technically be vulnerable to lawsuits from players, the Feds, and the IRS.
JMO…