I hold the strong belief that gambling companies are evil and make the world worse and I wouldn't find the burning of them down by the loved ones of people's lives they ruined to be unethical.
However people should know what regulating ethics to this degree looks like: the modern PRC. In the PRC you get a government mandated timer on your MMOs to ensure you don't spend too much time playing videogames. In the internet cafes there's 24/7 a CPC bureaucrat prowling around keeping an eye on your chats - plus automated mandated filters which depending on the implementation can auto kick you from a multiplayer match, hence the entirely viable strategy when playing against PRC players to spam "FREE HONG KONG REVOLUTION OF OUR TIMES CCP COMMITS GENOCIDE AGAINST UIGHUR MUSLIMS XINJIANG" into chat to get them kicked from the match.
There's industry level morality controls as well such as not being allowed to make a tv show featuring "feminine men" and the implicit ban on showing LGBT couples.
Personally I don't trust a State to choose the correct morals, be it aesthetically communist or aesthetically capitalist. We can look at America's history of moral laws to see another example, such as prohibition.
There’s a readily available example proving your slippery slope isn’t guaranteed to happen: gambling was illegal in most of the US very recently and it wasn’t anything like China.
So instead, you trust for-profit companies to direct the morals of society?
Surely the reason prohibition failed so badly was that it wasn't democratic. You can't mandate against vice unless you have the support of the majority.
> So instead, you trust for-profit companies to direct the morals of society?
Absolutely not. I don't really have a solution, but in general it seems distributing power to more local level forms of governance works well for many things, so perhaps something along those lines?
Local control has limits too. In the US one can now export pollution to ones neighboring states. Las Vegas exports it's externalities by marketing to out of state populations. (Or at least they did when gambling was more heavily regulated elsewhere)
Is your argument that Xinjiang is somehow autonomous from the CPC government? That's a very strange claim to make considering it's undeniably ruled completely by the whims of the CPC.
I think this is a false dichotomy between the state and private industry.
The morals of society is directed by culture. The state does not and never have a monopoly on culture, because culture is embedded.
If a culture is against gambling, you need no regulation/laws at all. The daoist would argue that the need to have strict laws on behaviour is due to a deviant culture. As an aside the legalist argues that humans are evil, fickle and morally corrupt by default and need strict laws.
I'm just making shit up, but perhaps an Abrahamic culture needs salvation, thus it needs outlets of sin so that it generates demand for people to be saved.
Re your last paragraph, the New Testament addresses an argument about Christian grace, some said they should sin more because that left more room for God's grace. Not surprisingly the Bible's answer is, nu-uh (an emphatic no).
I think society can generally be against something, yet it succeed. Most people consider greed to be bad, but it's the foundation of capitalism. I'm not sure if most people would say gambling is wrong. (This survey, https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/blog/post/gambling-sur..., found only 41 of self-selected UK gamblers rated it positively.)
A democratic state should reflect the desired culture, if it doesn't it's not being democratic. Businesses can also do that, as can other organisations. Most businesses goals are aligned away from benefiting society in general; whilst a democratic state should be at least loosely aligned with that end (by definition).
Ehh is it? The CPC regulates videogames the way it does because it views it as a moral harm to society the same way people argue about gambling destroying lives. And gay sex harms the fertile output of the People and so also shouldn't be promoted. Capitalist imperialism is always at the gates trying to tempt people to turn on their fellow citizens and oftentimes it masquerades as a Christian Missionary so the State is obligated to keep a sharp check on religious organizations, not to mention to protect people from destroying their lives through cults (and ALL religions are cults). These needs require the regulation of speech and business.
The USA doesn't take it quite so far but it did strongly regulate the socio-economic imperialism of Communism, leveraging State resources to attempt to convince socialist leaders to kill themselves (MLK) or just by assassinating and imprisoning them (Black Panthers). The State protects people from ruining their lives with marijuana, or from ruining the justice system by telling people walking into a courthouse about Jury Nullification. These needs require the regulation of speech (can't tell people Communism is super awesome and you should unionize and strike) and business (can't open a casino in downtown LA).
For the record gay sex isn't harmful to the fertility of the state and shouldn't be regulated, nor should speech about Jury Nullification, I was just making a point about both nations.
However people should know what regulating ethics to this degree looks like: the modern PRC. In the PRC you get a government mandated timer on your MMOs to ensure you don't spend too much time playing videogames. In the internet cafes there's 24/7 a CPC bureaucrat prowling around keeping an eye on your chats - plus automated mandated filters which depending on the implementation can auto kick you from a multiplayer match, hence the entirely viable strategy when playing against PRC players to spam "FREE HONG KONG REVOLUTION OF OUR TIMES CCP COMMITS GENOCIDE AGAINST UIGHUR MUSLIMS XINJIANG" into chat to get them kicked from the match.
There's industry level morality controls as well such as not being allowed to make a tv show featuring "feminine men" and the implicit ban on showing LGBT couples.
Personally I don't trust a State to choose the correct morals, be it aesthetically communist or aesthetically capitalist. We can look at America's history of moral laws to see another example, such as prohibition.