Protecting people from themselves?

For those who came in late, this is about a London casino trying to recover a RM7.1 million gambling debt owed by an ex Mentri Besar of Sabah through Malaysian courts.

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On Tuesday, Kota Kinabalu High Court Judge Datuk Ian Chin dismissed the
application by the two foreign casinos to register in the High Court in
Sabah and Sarawak the judgment obtained in the English High Court pursuant
to the Reciprical Enforcement of Judgment Act, 1958.

In his judgment, Chin said the dismissal of the bid to register the English
High Court's judgment was because gambling was against the country's public
policy, which is belief in God and good social behaviour embedded in the
Rukunegara.

"In other words, it is against the Rukun Negara. Anything that seeks to go
against the Rukun Negara must surely be regarded as against public policy,"
he said.

As for the argument that gambling debt incurred in Malaysia would suffer the
same fate in another country if he did not allow the registration of the
foreign judgment, Chin said: "My short answer would be that the world would
be so much better for it and makes for a better public policy."

"The world would be a much nicer place if no country would allow the
recovery of a judgment for a gambling debt which was the result, invariably,
of the debtor being enticed to gamble on credit and beyond his means," he
said.

In fact in his judgment, Chin suggested that a law be enacted to allow a
gambler to sue a casino for having enticed him to gamble beyond his means
"if that is not already a common law".

 

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My first opinion after I read that:  Wow!!  People having to be protected against themselves!  What are we?  Kids without knowledge of right or wrong?  For believers, Adam and Eve ate the fruit of knowledge of good and evil for nothing!  They blew away their chance of being bliissfully ignorant of all this crap.  They wanted to know what's good and what's bad.  They sure put us all in a bad position.  Now we have to decide.

 

Now, if we have laws that prevent people from 'enticing' others into doing things that are detrimental to themselves, like spending beyond their means, over-indulgence in alcohol, slimming themselves to a stick, etc, that should put a lot of commercials in a questionable position.  Right?

 

Come to think of it, in a way the learned judge may be right.  Lots of people are still blur.  They need to be protected from themselves.  Look at what they do to themselves: Smoking is bad.  They know that.  All the "Tak Nak" campaigns seem to be a waste of effort.  They're still puffing away their health and money, and other people's health as well when they do that in front of others.  And look at those popping pills to get high.  They're supposed to know they could screw up their brains, but they don't care.

 

Gambling without first having your money; that must another of our wonderful motivation campaigns of "going beyond your limits"!  But it is practiced by lots of people who buy shares.  To me that's the same as borrowing to gamble.  I know, there are folks out there ready to defend that practice.  And I know it sounds like it works well for the economy, but looking at the number of people going bankrupt raises lots of doubts. 

 

And then there's HIV and AIDS.  Everybody (at least, those with some education) knows it's a one-way-ticket, but there are still those who screw around wantonly, and on top of that, refuse to use condoms.  They know very well it also puts their family in danger, but they don't care. 

 

So, now we need laws to control people to control themselves.  Whatever happened to self-control?  Whatever happened to self-discipline?  We seem to have lost that knowledge.  Maybe we should go back to BEFORE Adam & Eve.  How about - Please press "RESTART"?