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Then all you do is convince everyone else playing to choose those numbers, too.
No one wins, the jackpot rolls over, and game eventually[1] everybody wins at the same time.
Together we can do it!
1: Warning: timeline to win may exceed humanity's existence.
It's true of gambling in general. A case study is the state of New South Wales in Australia: the state with the most poker (slot) machines per capita [1], in the country with he most poker machines per capita [2] (excluding gambling specific destinations such as Macau and Monaco). One poker machine in NSW for every 82 people, with an average loss of AU$1000 per adult per year. The losses (called profit for the hotels…
The "You Can't Ask That" episode on gambling in Australia was a massive eye-opener for me. They interview a bunch of people who are lifetime gambling addicts. Its shocking how badly its ruined their lives. I have no idea how many people who gamble regularly have a problem with it; but I'd support banning gambling entirely. https://iview.abc.net.au/show/you-can-t-ask-that/series/2/vi... (Does iView work outside Austra…
If this was possible, that would be great. But you cannot eliminate a service where there is sufficient demand. You can only drive them underground, which frequently cause worse externalities for society than the original things being banned (drugs, prohibition-era alcohol ban, prostitution).
For example, I love having a good glass of wine or two a couple times a week at dinner. But the alcohol industry would essentially collapse without alcoholics - a study in the UK found that 77% of alcohol was sold to problem drinkers - 30% to "harmful" drinkers (women who drink more that 36 and men more than 51 drinks a week) and 48% to "hazardous" drinkers (women 15-35 drinks a week and men 15-50 drinks a week). Similarly, I like blowing 5 bucks on the lottery whenever there is a huge jackpot (I can afford it and am basically just paying to fantasize about what I'd do with a couple hundred million), but apparently folks like me make up a relatively small proportion of lottery sales.
So, I'm basically just wondering there is anything that can, or should, be done here. I'm assuming these distributions are what you'd always see in something that shows a power law distribution - the huge percentage of total sales is always from those with addictions because they indulge so much in the first place (related very interesting article: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/drug-users-use-a-lot-o...).
There's a simple answer: Offer a lottery with a high payout rate and flatten jackpots to the extent they don't cause a shift into other worse sorts of gambling. The total amount of money transferred to support government programs makes up less than 0.5% of total government revenue; it's trivially replaceable.
>"Offer a lottery with a high payout rate and flatten jackpots to the extent they don't cause a shift into other worse sorts of gambling" What is meant here by "flattening" jackpots? And how does it help?
Instead of 1 in 300,000,000 chance of astronomical money make it 1 in 50,000 of getting a new car or similar.
I'm not sure why it helps. I guess there are more (but smaller) winners, which the poster thought was better.
There's an interesting theory that the solution to this is to subsidize the lottery and improve the odds significantly. Take to the extreme and you could essentially implement UBI this way. I also don't think poor people are wrong to think a chance of getting a life-changing amount of money is a worthwhile luxury spend compared to the other available options. They may be wrong about the probability, but instead of fi…
How is the lottery like UBI? This is similar to crypto maxis gambling on shitcoins and saying “generational wealth opportunity”. Both of these are the siphoning of money from large volumes of people to a few people, who are the “success stories” used to dupe the next set of people.
If the evil of the lottery is that the expected value is lower than the ticket cost that's just a simple stats problem to fix.
There's an interesting theory that the solution to this is to subsidize the lottery and improve the odds significantly. Take to the extreme and you could essentially implement UBI this way. I also don't think poor people are wrong to think a chance of getting a life-changing amount of money is a worthwhile luxury spend compared to the other available options. They may be wrong about the probability, but instead of fi…
It is next to impossible to discontinue without any impact to your state budget.
In short, it’s that giant sucking vortex of economic and a form of state-sanctioned, self-imposed addiction.
The argument for the state having a monopoly on lotteries is that if there wasn’t a legal lottery illegal lotteries would proliferate. Thus to protect people, the state should run it as it would then be guaranteed to be fair and free of the criminal element (mobsters, etc.). Ideally, the lotto would just take in enough to pay the winners and administrative expenses. However, most states have abused this monopoly and…
[0] https://www.tampabay.com/life-culture/history/2021/09/28/bol...
You can actually increase your odds by choosing your own numbers: 1 2 3 4 5 6. Then all you do is convince everyone else playing to choose those numbers, too. No one wins, the jackpot rolls over, and game eventually[1] everybody wins at the same time. Together we can do it! 1: Warning: timeline to win may exceed humanity's existence.
The argument for the state having a monopoly on lotteries is that if there wasn’t a legal lottery illegal lotteries would proliferate. Thus to protect people, the state should run it as it would then be guaranteed to be fair and free of the criminal element (mobsters, etc.). Ideally, the lotto would just take in enough to pay the winners and administrative expenses. However, most states have abused this monopoly and…
The first step here should start with the belief that the lotteries should just be outlawed, and then actually demonstrate why that won't work.