Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Review of Rudolf Sieghart’s Die öffentlichen Glücksspiele (1900)

Böhm-Bawerk’s review presents Sieghart’s study of public gambling as a contribution to fiscal history and to the psychology of economic conduct. Its central judgment is that gambling deserves more scrutiny than its modest importance to contemporary state revenues might suggest. Against public finance’s customary dismissal of gambling as an illegitimate source of income, Böhm-Bawerk emphasizes its cultural and historical interest—and the unfinished theoretical question of how to respond to the desire to gamble.

The review first assesses the book’s historical scope and evidentiary foundation. Sieghart’s position as an Austrian ministerial official gave him access to archives, which Böhm-Bawerk praises him for using extensively without neglecting developments elsewhere in Europe. Beginning with definitions and a European overview, the book examines Austrian gambling under mercantilism, then follows its various institutional forms: company lotteries, lotteries involving movable goods and estates, number lotteries, lottery loans, and related ticket businesses. Historical detail and statistical evidence sustain this account. Especially significant is the finding that Austria initially employed public gambling to advance commercial-policy projects, rather than simply to replenish the treasury.

Böhm-Bawerk reserves his closest attention for the concluding theoretical chapter. He approvingly reports Sieghart’s interpretation of gambling as an expression of a need for hope:

Der Mensch braucht eine Hoffnung, seine Lage verbessern zu können. Die Verwirklichung kann er auf zwei grundverschiedenen Wegen versuchen: sparen und spielen.

English translation: Man needs a hope of being able to improve his position. He can attempt its realization by two fundamentally different paths: saving and gambling.

The distinction preserves a normative hierarchy: saving is economically healthy, gambling unhealthy. Yet Sieghart’s argument, as reconstructed by the reviewer, complicates any categorical separation between gambling and ordinary economic life. Unequal harvests, natural disasters, market fluctuations, and entrepreneurial gains already expose economic outcomes to chance. Gambling imitates this pervasive uncertainty, helping explain why the impulse continually renews itself.

Als imitatio naturae, als ein natürlicher Trieb ist der Spieltrieb nun und nimmer auszurotten.

English translation: As imitatio naturae, as a natural drive, the gambling instinct can never and at no time be eradicated.

The conceptual move from condemnation to redirection is decisive. If the impulse cannot be eliminated, policy should turn it toward saving. Böhm-Bawerk endorses Sieghart’s proposal to connect the hope of a prize with an arrangement in which the stake becomes a savings deposit, gradually educating the gambler into a saver. This institutional response addresses the underlying motive rather than merely suppressing its existing outlets.

Es genügt nicht, die staatlichen Lotterien und Glücksspiele einfach aufzuheben. Denn der nicht auszurottende Spieltrieb würde sich dann eine andere, vielleicht nicht minder schädliche Befriedigung suchen. Sondern man muß sie reformatorisch umbilden.

English translation: It does not suffice simply to abolish the state lotteries and games of chance. For the ineradicable gambling instinct would then seek for itself another, perhaps no less harmful, satisfaction. Rather, one must reshape them by way of reform.

Böhm-Bawerk does not detail Sieghart’s concrete reform proposals, but closes with a strong recommendation of the book. The review’s relevance lies in its sympathetic presentation of a reform-oriented approach to economic behavior: acknowledging a persistent psychological need while seeking institutions that convert its harmful expression into productive habits.