Do you believe that gambling is a vice, like I do? If yes, why? Is it because there's a high likelihood of losing hard-earned money? Well, you are correct, of course. But, is that the whole story? What if you were a winner in some particular gamble? I would argue that that would injure and debase your soul even more than losing -- for, in winning, you now benefit from a zero-sum event that produces nothing new but impoverishes the "loser". In fact, if you consider casino gambling or sports gambling, it is even worse, since it is a negative-sum game, where the house always wins. (Btw, as an aside for any astute praxeologists reading this, all claims of psychic pleasure and the subjective utility that one might enjoy from it are usually falsified by the statements and actions of those who face ruin or even smaller losses).
But, did you know that there's something far worse than gambling with one's money? And, I can wager (wink!) that you are likely a person that engages in this worse form of gambling on a dangerously regular basis. This form of gamble is not even zero-sum. Like casino gambling, this form of gambling has a "house" and the house always wins. And, the items wagered are your very own lives and liberties.
This form of dangerously destructive gambling is the act of voting in democratic elections, and it would not surprise me if many of you imagine this to be a good deed or a duty. Democratic voting stipulates that some men must always form an elite ruling class (the "house") and all others must gamble for the role of who gets to be the house slaves and who gets relegated to field slavery. It is presented to the slave classes as a zero-sum game, where they are sold on the ruse that some of them can rule. Even if it was that, engaging in such a zero-sum act is vile and sinful. But, it gets worse. The reality is that it is a negative-sum gamble, where the slave classes are gambling against the house and they all always lose to the house, with the outcome of the gamble sometimes reducing the degree of the loss, but not the fact of the loss, for some who enjoy a "promotion" to house slavery for a season. This slight change in the degree of the loss keeps the vast majority of the slave classes still interested in massa's games.
There is only one solution to the civilization-wide decay and destruction wrought by this vast addiction to gambling with one's life and liberty. This solution is to peacefully walk away. Every person must choose to do that for himself or herself. That is the beginning of the healing of the world.
For more about the ethics of voting, see this.