An economy is rarely a zero sum game, where the benefit to one player is the loss to another. Rarely, but not never. To see evidence of an economic zero sum game, walk up any high street the symbiotic pairing of the betting shop and the pawn shop/loan shop will greet you. On a rainy afternoon in December I walked through Hammersmith, seeing the parades of shops, top heavy with Poundlands and charity shops, rental letting agents and off licences. Every face of the low wage, rent extraction economy was represented there, along with the 'twins'; gambling and payday lending.
In the window of the payday lenders that was situated next door to the Paddy Power bookies was row after row of wedding and engagement rings, each bearing the mournful subheading 'pre owned'. Each once having represented a promise, a dream, a hope, a future. Each now sat behind the glass of a pay day lender's window. Literally the last place they were ever intended to be. How many rings have found their way into the shop window display as a result of next door's gambling activities, we shall probably never know, but it is difficult to believe that one has no effect on the other.
There are numerous examples of borrowing and betting working side by side to destroy the addict who is in the grip of their illness. Last year the Birmingham Mail reported on the case of Paul Jones, who took out two payday loans in an hour to gamble, using a phone in order not to leave the betting shop. Ladbrokes were eventually investigated by the Gambling Commission as a result of this. As our high streets slowly atrophy and die, and useful, helpful and productive businesses are replaced with economic vampires which drain the spending power of the community away, the communities of our towns and cities also fragment and break up. High streets cease to be places to meet, browse, socialise and buy, and instead become sad relics of the past. The old ideas about what the high street was for, which were socially accepted by a majority of people, seem to have crumbled under the relentless pressure for returns on investment regardless of the social cost. The reason why a betting shop and a payday lender sit cheek by jowell on a Hammersmith high street is because someone, somewhere, has made a business case for it. No one has seen fit to make a social or even a moral case for it in Hammersmith or in any of the other towns and cities across Britain who see their urban evironments waste away and ever more betting shops and payday lenders appear where vibrant high streets once existed.