Introduction
As longtime readers might be aware, I tend to think a lot, to ask questions about people and societies they build. Some people might even accuse me of overthinking. Well, I’m certainly not about to prove those people wrong, because I was thinking about the lottery system in the United States. When this piece was published, the lottery industry was massive in the US. Checking any mainstream news feed one was likely to find a story about how big the largest jackpot had grown to after no winning numbers. There were national, state, and local lotteries, with different odds and different payouts. Lottery scratch tickets could be bought in almost any town or city large enough to have a filling station or a grocery store. If you asked anyone buying lottery tickets what they planned to do with their winnings once they finally won chances are they already had their entire life planned out. All they needed to start their new life of happiness and prosperity was to be lucky just one time.
I object to the entire lottery industry, and the mindset it creates in people who buy into the promises of the lottery. I’ll explain my objections in two broad points in the paragraphs below. Before that, however, I want to make something clear. I’ll be talking below about systemic inequality and people being trapped in inescapable poverty. Global inequality is a massive crisis, and that inequality is due in large part to the machinations and lobbying of those in power to keep it that way. However, I do not believe in some massive conspiracy that world events are being controlled by some reclusive committee of elite. Belief in conspiracy theories appears to me to be an alternative religion for those who do not ascribe to traditional organized religion. Believing in evil masterminds who control world events might sound like a strange thing to put one’s faith in. On the other hand, it’s comforting to think that somebody is in control, no matter how dark their agenda may be. It’s a lot more difficult to accept how meaningless and chaotic reality often is. Systemic inequality doesn’t even require a global conspiracy, basic human greed and self-interest is more than adequate to accomplish the task.
First Objection
My first major objection to the concept of the lottery, and a lot of gambling in general, is that it thrives and depends on exploiting the desperation and hopes of impoverished people. There would always be people who would gamble and bet their earnings on long odds to add some excitement to their otherwise mundane lives. Gambling is one of those vices humanity seems unable to rid itself of, but the promise of winning instant riches at astronomical odds only appeals to people desperate enough to not hope for much more. Is rent eating half your income or more? Do you have car payments to make, or student loans, or credit card debt, or medical debt? Maybe all of the above? Do you have any savings at all, or has the cost of living reduced your margin to destitution to a razor’s edge? Has living and struggling in late stage surveillance capitalist America left you feeling spent and jaded down to your slowly wilting spirit?
Well worry not, there is a way out! Maybe. All it takes is just a little bit of whatever money you have left over every month or week. If you buy some tickets and pay into a collective pot that lots of other desperate people are buying into, you have a chance of winning that huge pot, minus a massive tax deduction of course. It might not happen this week, or this month, or year, or the decade after that. It might not happen at all, but just imagine the possibilities if it did. You could get that surgery the doctor says you desperately need that you can’t afford, because according to your insurance company, you have a preexisting condition called “being alive.” Maybe you can finally afford to own a home of your own, one that you could afford to maintain and renovate as needed. Maybe you could retire early and take the time to travel to all the places you dreamed of seeing. Isn’t a few dollars here and there worth it for even a remote chance to realize all those hopes?
Behind all the pomp and hype around winning instant wealth is a predatory instinct to further exploit people who are already being exploited. When someone pins all their hopes on a random accident of chance to liberate them from the injustice of modern American society, they are giving up on finding another solution. To be clear, I don’t fault people for wanting to escape poverty, and for those struggling to live, money is the answer to many of their problems. But there is a diminishing return on the happiness that money can provide, and we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be locked into a mode of thinking that believes that money=endless happiness and fulfillment. The promise of winning the lottery is a carrot dangling on a stick in front of our faces, and just enough people get that carrot for us to believe it could happen to us someday. Maybe we should stop chasing after that carrot and instead demand it.
Second Objection
The lottery system in the US not only takes advantage of people, it also shines a light on American culture’s selfish individualism. Hoping you win the lottery isn’t a protest against the unjust system that creates inequality to begin with, your only objection is to you being in poverty. If you became rich you would cease to be a victim of the unequal system and instead perpetuate it. The hope of quick riches so many Americans cling to not only allows us to be led around by the nose chasing after chimeras, it leaves us thinking only of ourselves. We shouldn’t limit ourselves to imagining the end to our own poverty, we should imagine the end of poverty, period. Dreaming of winning the lottery shifts people’s thinking and energy away from changing society for the better and instead keeps them locked into it. It reminds me of the lyrics of Pink Floyd’s song Welcome to the Machine; “What did you dream? It’s alright we told you what to dream.” We are limiting ourselves when we can only imagine a better future for ourselves and for humanity within the confines of the existing status quo.
Some might be thinking at this point: “Really? Are you that much of a killjoy that you have a problem with something that’s fun and relatively innocuous like betting on the lottery? Besides, do you think getting rid of the lottery would make any difference? What do you expect people to do? Is there really any chance of changing systemic inequality when the forces marshaled against that goal are so numerous and powerful?”
Do I think getting rid of predatory practices like the lottery would lead to any great sea change in American society? No. When problems like inequality are rooted as deeply and spread as far in a society as they are in the US, any small change is window dressing, a sop to public opinion. A deeply rooted system can’t be changed without first uprooting the system. I’m mixing metaphors but I hope you get the point. Is it likely to expect systemic inequality to change? If the history of most sedentary societies is instructive, then no. Humanity has a knack for creating hierarchies and institutions of coercive force to legitimize and enforce those hierarchies. On the other hand, how much more unlikely is it to expect deep systemic change if we give up and never try? Or worse yet, what if we literally and figuratively buy into the unequal system in the hope that someday we will be the ones on top benefiting from the inequality we were seeking to escape in the first place?
Conclusion
Perhaps I am overthinking this issue, and the lottery is something that’s not that controversial, and I should just let people have their fun. Even if that’s true, there is a broader point to be made. We shouldn’t take any part of our society for granted. Human cultures are constantly changing and evolving, nothing remains the way it has always been forever. Just because some cultural practice has been around a long time doesn’t by definition make it good. We shouldn’t take anything for granted. We should always be looking at ourselves and the societies we build, and wondering if what we have built is just, fair, or even makes sense.