Complex Numbers

Losers

https://theoutline.com/post/7737/abolish-state-lotteries

It’s time to get rid of the lottery
States should not rely on a scam to fund much-needed services.

Despite the one-in-292-million odds of winning the multi-state Powerball jackpot (you have a greater chance of dying from a falling coconut, which is one in 250 million), Americans spent $71.8 billion on lottery tickets in 2017. The bulk of this revenue was generated by the largest consumers of lottery tickets, who also happen to be the poorest Americans.

I've heard it called a tax on people who can't do math. Part of me doesn't have a problem with that.

Also, somehow I doubt that 1 in 250 million chance of dying from a falling coconut. The chance of a coconut hitting me on the noggin on any given day is effectively zero, as the nearest coconut palm is about 500 miles from me. On the rare occasions when I go to tropical paradises, I specifically avoid hanging out under coconut-bearing trees, because duh. According to some interpretations of quantum physics, there's a nonzero chance that a fully-formed coconut could appear in the air above my head, at sufficient height to kill me upon falling, but that chance is way less than 1 in 250 million.

The Cornell study also found that people who made less than $30,000 a year were more likely to play the lottery for money (as opposed to those who play purely for entertainment), meaning that poor lottery players play as a legitimate strategy for financial stability.

As someone who gambles for entertainment on occasion, I believe that there are way more entertaining things than dealing with bored, minimum-wage convenience store clerks and waiting hours to days for confirmation that you lost. Blackjack dealers, for example, are fun to talk to; like bartenders, they have to be nice so they'll get tips. But hey, whatever twipples your nipples.

A 2006 survey ​found that one in five Americans believe that winning the lottery “represents the most practical way for them to accumulate several hundred thousand dollars.” This number jumps to one in three Americans for those with incomes below $25,000.

I imagine that, for some people, it really is the most practical way for them to accumulate several hundred thousand dollars, in that any other means of doing that is slightly more impractical. Which is not to say that it's actually "practical," only that while the chance of winning, say, $500K is astronomical, the chance of a minimum-wage worker saving that much money is indistinguishable from zero.

“This is California. And if a dream is going to come true anywhere... it’s going to come true here.”

Sure, if that dream involves banning grocery bags, plastic straws and e-cigs, or declaring that every consumer product in the world causes cancer.

As Jonathan Cohen, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Virginia studying Amerian lotteries, told Bloomberg last year: “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that state lotteries started emerging in the 1970s and 1980s when rates of social mobility in the traditional economy stagnated and then declined.”

Shout out to the old alma mater... but it might be helpful to know what Mr. Cohen is actually a Ph.D. candidate for. Economics? Statistics? Anthropology? Art history?

The lottery is a narrative of false potential, pacifying the ever more precarious masses by dangling in front of us a better, shinier life. Instead of asking how the system is rigged against you, you ask how you can win.

This just in: marketing is about highlighting the positives about something, and minimizing the negatives. Why do you think the side-effects of prescription drugs are in Ferengi print at the bottom, or, in spoken ads, presented by someone who went to Auctioneer School? "Fukitol can make you irresistible to members of your preferred gender, help to cure your ingrown toenail, and increase your IQ! Possible side effects include intestinal bleeding, growth of a third arm, brain damage, brittle bones, fatal constipation, and loss of sexual function." But I've never seen a state lottery that doesn't have the chances of winning noted prominently. The information is available.

The outcome of the state lottery becomes a deflection of responsibility: it directs players’ frustration away from the state for its failures — to provide sufficient welfare, to fund its public school system without relying on those in poverty, to provide a livable minimum wage — and transfigures the state into a potential fairy godmother.

This is amusing to me because the mascot for the Virginia lottery used to be an incarnation of Lady Luck, and she looked a lot like a Fairy Godmother. But still, okay, you're a state government and you need to raise funds. What's going to play better with the constituency: institute a lottery, giving everyone who plays a chance, however tiny, of hitting it big? Or selling them on a tax increase?

In case I'm not clear, I'm not buying this author's argument. There might be other arguments more compelling; I don't know. Other authors have tried to kick lotteries by highlighting the people whose lives were ruined after winning. News flash: some of the people who play the lottery tend to lack the financial discipline necessary to handle any windfall sensibly.

Would people be better off socking away the money they'd otherwise spend on lottery tickets? Yeah, probably. But many of them wouldn't save it; they'd just spend it on something just as frivolous, and without even the minuscule chance of a return. I've known people who, if the lottery suddenly stopped, would instead just spend the money on cheap-ass "beer," thus still pissing it away.

So there are two facets to this that I can think of.

1) Do we really want to live in a world where everyone is protected from themselves? I know I don't. Sometimes, making non-optimal decisions can lead to enlightenment. But

2) Should our governments be involved in facilitating - as opposed to merely ignoring - those non-optimal decisions? See also: state-owned liquor stores like we have here in Virginia.

I used to think that the way to deal with this sort of thing was through education. A proper grounding in basic finance, and maybe even some decent teaching about probabilities, I thought, would go a long way to addressing the "poor people play the lottery" issue. But some people are immune to facts. I mean, just look around.