That government is always and everywhere the source of monopoly power was on display recently in the June 24, 2012 issue of the Palm Beach Post in an article entitled "21 Arrested in 3 Delray Gambling Raids." Like most other states, the state of Florida "legislated" itself a legal monopoly in gambling and advertises relentlessly to persuade mostly lower-income Floridians to spend more than $4 billion/year on lottery tickets. These billions are used to pay the salaries and perks of myriad government bureaucrats, including not only $25 million/year for lottery employees, but subsidies for government school bureaucrats, TV-watching/weight-lifting fire station loafers (our "first responders"), police, and many others.
The state of Florida, like other states, is not hesitant to use deadly force to protect its gambling monopoly. As such, it is no different from any other criminal gang that protects its monopoly profits from illicit drugs, prostitution, kidnapping, extortion, etc. According to the article in the Palm Beach Post, the state’s lottery police got wind of a private lottery game called "bolita" taking place in the back room of a hair salon. The game involved about a dozen people and a bag with 100 numbered marbles. The people in the room were putting money in on gambles as to what numbers would be pulled out of the bag, just as the state lottery does several times a week but on a massively larger scale.
