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Thats bs...it says right in the article that the payout for a trailer truck accident can be a million usd. Pretty sure that is a major attraction to the 25% of NO that lives in poverty.
The traits in a person that lead them to a life of perpetual poverty are the same traits that make this type of "lottery" winning seem desirable.
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The traits in a person that lead them to a life of perpetual poverty are the same traits that make this type of "lottery" winning seem desirable.
Traits like ethics? Yes, that was my point.
Ethics make people live in poverty? That would be news to a lot of people.
I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a book about the American shift from “a hard day’s work for fair pay” to what I’m calling the lottery economy. Fewer and fewer people can make a decent living with traditional work. Hence, my theory goes, the rise of actual lotteries along with influencers, injury lawyers, and schemes like New Orleans. Something is seriously wrong when family members hope an elderly relative…
"You know what the trouble is, Brucey? We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guy's pocket."
It's basically all about people in systems, and as I recall one of the points made is the broken social contract, which was once "you don't have to be the smartest, but if you show up and work hard, there's a place for you to earn a living" -- now it feels like trying to outswim a rising tide of required education and expertise and hollowed-out career paths
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The traits in a person that lead them to a life of perpetual poverty are the same traits that make this type of "lottery" winning seem desirable.
Traits like ethics? Yes, that was my point.
- Terry Pratchett
The poor have ethics just like the rest of us. They just can’t afford to keep it.
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Traits like ethics? Yes, that was my point.
I'm talking about traits like high time preference and poor impulse control. Ethics make people live in poverty? That would be news to a lot of people.
The "three people in car" is a very useful tell for criminal activity. I've seen in home burglar rings (one driver, one lookout, and one person to enter the home), catalytic converter thieves (driver, lookout, and "saw man"), etc. Not sure why they need the same patter of three here, but I guess one person will be the one who goes to the hospital, etc. It's like they all read the same "criminal" forums to learn techn…
I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a book about the American shift from “a hard day’s work for fair pay” to what I’m calling the lottery economy. Fewer and fewer people can make a decent living with traditional work. Hence, my theory goes, the rise of actual lotteries along with influencers, injury lawyers, and schemes like New Orleans. Something is seriously wrong when family members hope an elderly relative…
I do not buy this. There is plenty of money in “traditional” work, and immigrants from all over the world find it and do it. If uneducated people, who may speak English as a second language at best, can move around the US and find their footing, then surely almost all who grew up here with access to the language and public schools can. And the people in this article are born in the 1960s and 1970s, in the decades tha…
And the heroes are the people who buck the system and made a fortune quickly. Not the people who toil away consistently at a job and incrementally build a modest living over decades. So of course everyone wants to be a hero.
Add in Crypto, and Day Trading, and more recently the prediction markets. All of whom specifically target "normal" folks with promises of huge riches won from a few hours work and a bit of luck. Of course, very, very, very few people actually make any money at all from any of this, but survivor bias occludes that and all they see is the easy money.
The lottery works exactly the same way. The odds of me, specifically, winning the lottery is effectively nil. But every week there's some lucky person who wins. If you have any kind of education then this becomes an obvious no-win proposition, and buying a ticket is just throwing away money. But even with such an education, and understanding of probability, I've been desperate enough to buy a ticket in the past.
In Australia we've seen the rise (and rise) of gambling as an industry. For exactly the same reasons. Making a quick fortune is the goal. Working a normal job is for suckers and losers. And there's a certain truth to this in a society that prizes home ownership, but keeps housing at a price level that means the average wage will never manage to save enough to afford the deposit. Might as well gamble those savings in the hope of getting a win big enough to actually afford the deposit.
The system is broken. We need to fix it or tear it down.
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> Just finding a GPS that understands vehicle heights and bridge underpass limits is still a significant challenge Apparently for human drivers as well. Just this weekend, an overpass near my house had a rig stuck because the driver failed to realize his load was taller than the overpass.
Might be an incorrect sign. It does happen. A road gets paved and now is a couple inches higher and nobody bothers to change the sign. Any new bump, even one not directly under the bridge, can cause a collision. We cannot expect drivers to get out and measure every underpass ... thats what the signs are for!
Interesting read. This may be unfair to Louisiana based on this case, but I've heard the USA described as a federation of a bunch of states and some 3rd world countries.
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I'm talking about traits like high time preference and poor impulse control. Ethics make people live in poverty? That would be news to a lot of people.
It’s a really good article if you read it. The people who got rich were not the poor people.
> the American shift from “a hard day’s work for fair pay” to what I’m calling the lottery economy
My point is that people with high time preference and low impulse control, who naturally will tend to be poorer than people without those traits, will also naturally be more drawn to the "lottery economy", whether or not bad actors exist who will take advantage of that. Just look at who buys literal lottery tickets!