This post comes to us from an anonymous Tortugan. - Ed.
For college, the cost/benefit is not as good as it once was. Having to pay off student loans has gotten brutal - you can’t even discharge them in bankruptcy. Grade inflation and falling standards in enrollment and education give employers less reason to care about your diploma with each passing year. If you’re working a part time job that makes five figures, though, you can take a class or two at a time on top of that and get your degree without spending some god-awful amount.
For example: dealing poker. There are some skills you need to learn there, but they’re minimal, and compared to other career options, you can get them fast. Right now it’s open to anybody.
The Floor
I deal poker in Texas. I started two or three years ago, and it was very much a downside-risk-abatement thing. It pays decently well, so even if I find no other access to any other money, I’ll always be able to make a living doing this as a backstop. I’m in my 50s now, but even into my 70s, I could go get a job working at a card room or casino in any of a hundred places in America. I hope I never have to, but I can if I want to.
I work when I want to, and as much as I want to. You get paid, if you want to, every day. And there’s no longhouse. You have other political problems, but I never went to any Ibram X. Kendi trainings.
Barely Legal
I don’t know what you know about gambling in Texas, but it’s only mostly illegal. We don’t have casinos here, we have what they call “card rooms” - a gray area that allows you to spread poker. They also have these things called sweepstakes, a similar gray area that lets you have slot machines. (We don’t have legalized sports betting. People who want to go to actual casino-casinos go north to Oklahoma or east to Louisiana.)
You go to a card room and you walk up to me and start playing cards. If you want to bet on a card game, that’s your business, and maybe you’ll win. We’re not an app on anybody’s phone. People who come here know what they’re getting into, as opposed to these college men who open a phone app and bet thousands of dollars on “I guess Messi’s pretty good.” On the other hand, a card room gets your membership fee and your seat fee, but nobody involved receives “any economic benefit other than personal winnings.” So it’s all above-board.1
I like it that way. I have this weird, Baptist mentality about gambling. I’ve never had, and never want, a management position in any gambling entity; I just deal cards. If people want to play, I’m happy to deal to them, but I’m never encouraging anybody to gamble. My thought is: if they want to lose their money, they might as well lose it to me.
