[eastbay]

Yo Entropyfails,

... my mortgage holder requires fire insurance. Lotto tickets aren't required by anyone... they're just a tax on people who are generally poor at math, as has been correctly mentioned here and on other threads.

I understand what you're trying to say, but a better analogy would be life insurance, maybe... on someone else, of course... lol, someone younger.

[Free]

We had this discussion already in another thread, where I quoted this guy who was laughed at for playing lotto, because the chance is so small.
He answered that it won't matter in case he won. And that a lotto ticket is just one more opportunity, and to have success you must stay open to as many opportunities in life as possible.

I think there is some truth in there.

On the other hand I am always reminded of the book "1984", where the poor proles have nothing else in their misery than to hope for winning the lottery. In essence this hope is an instrument of control.

If you can hope to be one day among the winners, you are less likely to attack the winners now. And everybody in their little vanity thinks secretly that he is "chosen", that he deserves better, and that god will favor him. It's just how we humans work.

This is the brilliant slave system of capitalistic systems, because every slave can hope to be a slave master once, he won't attack the system because he surely is the one who will succeed, even if all statistics speak against it!

Somebody here has the brilliant sentence in his sig (I think from John Steinbeck), that there don't exist poor people in the US, only millionaires who are in temporary inconviniences...

[entropyfails]

Hey Eastbay!

One, please don't wave around a red herring about "fire insurance not being required." I was making a point about UTILITY and if you took the time to read my post, you would have understood that. *grin* No hard feelings. You wouldn't like it if I started to rail against your use of "tax" as an analogy because it isn't required, would you? We are not discussing the point of "requirements!"

You honestly wouldn't spend $30 bucks a month to protect your $200,000 investment? Seems silly to me. To me, the $30 bucks would be chump change and worth the loss as I couldn't come up with the $200,000 that bank would want if my house burned down. It is a $30 buck protection against wipeout. That sounds like good investing to me.

And that is the rub of this issue. You have proven nothing by using expected value as your sole measure of "utility". It IS NOT the sole measure of utility. That's what SpecOp and others are saying.

So nothing has been PROVED here, other than these sorts of evaluations are much harder than people originally suppose.

Most people don't win. But if they are down 20 bucks at the end of the year, they haven't lost much. On the other hand, at the end of the year there is 20 very lucky people who would rather vigorously disagree with your assertation about "stupidity tax".

Risk and loss vs Reward and gain.

Not simple, stop pretending. *grin*

[eastbay]

http://www.cincypost.com/news/1999/ohgamb032099.html

According to a study by Charles Clotfelter and Philip Cook of Duke University, two of the nation's most respected lottery researchers, the top 5 percent of players buy 51 percent of all lottery tickets. The top 10 percent - who spend an average of $2,250 annually - account for two-thirds of total ticket sales, and the top 20 percent of frequent players produce 81 percent of sales, spending about $1,400 per year.

The Duke study also shows that blacks, the less educated and the poor are among the lotteries' most devoted players and often spend a disproportionately large share of their income on tickets.


I did a little search. Several studies reveal those least able to afford lottery tickets are the ones buying the most, and it isn't the $20.00/year ticket buyer getting poisoned by this state-sponsored disease.

Lotteries are a mean-spirited tax on unhappiness and hope hitting the poor and uneducated (those bad at math?) hardest. There are few taxes more twisted and disgusting than this one.

[entropyfails]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('eastbay', '
')
According to a study by Charles Clotfelter and Philip Cook of Duke University, two of the nation's most respected lottery researchers, the top 5 percent of players buy 51 percent of all lottery tickets. The top 10 percent - who spend an average of $2,250 annually - account for two-thirds of total ticket sales, and the top 20 percent of frequent players produce 81 percent of sales, spending about $1,400 per year.

[Doly]

In fact, considering that lotto only hurts your pocket and not your health (as drugs do), and there is a (albeit minimal) chance of winning, maybe we should get drug addicts and alcoholics into gambling instead.

[Grifter]

You'll never meet a poor booky.

Booky's are rich and most gamblers are poor.

Simple. No maths required.

[12amps]

Recently the Texas Lottery hired Troy Aikman and Emmit Smith to do a large scale commerical
to advocate the TXLottery system. I don't know how much each were paid, but I'm sure it
wasn't peanut money.

Lotteries need special machines, they are printed on special paper, they need people to run them

locally, and they need monitoring and management.

In Texas for example 'official' the money (profit) made by the lotteries goes to the
State of Texas Education System (at least they put it to good use...)


Imagine a hypothetical scenario. Imagine an isolated (physical) system. If we know that the State of

Texas is drawing Energy (in this case money) OUT of the system, and if we also know that the system

itself needs a constant input supply of energy (money) from the outside to keep running (the magnitude

is irrevelant, the point is that the lottery is not self sustaining and not a perpetual machine)

Then the system from the publics point of view is a net energy (money) loser. It's EROEI is negative.
It is simple common sense, and you cannot argue your way out of it without breaking the basic

fundamentals of logic and second law of thermodynamics. (not to mention the law of conservation of

energy)

Put in laymans terms, if the state GETS something for nothing, and the few lucky people who win also get something for nothing, and the football players that advertise for it get something for (basically) nothing, so please tell me what is supporting this system?? Money just comes into thin air from vacuum? Energy falls from the moon? Am I missing something here?

At best it is an unequal money exchange system, becuase no matter what , there is no real 'production' or 'work' being done here, nothing meaningful is really accomplished.

[12amps]

you know i was thinking, if lotteries create so much wealth and are so beneficially like
everyone here seems to think. why not we run the world on a giant lottery?
The global lottery system will solve all of our economic hardships and be an ultimate solution to
poverity, the lottery will create so much wealth and make so much money that everyone who joins in will be benefited from it. We can all quit going to school, work, whatever, and just play the lottery and live the american dream.. sounds too good to be true?? I thought so

[eastbay]

Yeah, I stepped back and reviewed my postings and you're right Entropyfails, I do appear to have an agenda. I appear to have an agenda because I do, in fact, have an agenda!

It's disgusting for state governments to impose a tax hitting the poor and uneducated the hardest. It's bad enough when we have an overall tax structure hitting the working poor the hardest (ok, ok, that's another discussion, I apologize... my leftist roots oozing out again) but now we have a lottery often posing as a heroic savior for the schools when it's actually a state-sponsored economic cancer mostly harming the weakest in our society.

And that's part of the reason why I detest lotteries. There is no rational defense for this vicios tax and I believe it's another small dead canary signalling a looming societal collapse.

edited for grammar boo-boo

[PenultimateManStanding]

I stopped buying lottery tickets because I got tired of thinking all day how I was going to deal with all the money I would win. In fact I came pretty close once. I had 4 out 6 right and the other two were extremely close, off by one digit on one, two digits on the other. That's like dropping a rock at random on California and having it land a few houses away. Real close. That was it, I quit playing, years ago.

[Chaparral]

I have NEVER bought a lottery ticket in my entire life.

Buying lottery tickets is simply farm animal stupid.

[Specop_007]

Anyone who calls the lottery a tax obviously doesnt understand what a tax is.
Sad.

[eastbay]

Spec,

Thank you for the correction. I love it and it makes me very happy when someone points out an error in my grammar. It means I will never again make that error.

Because buying lotto tickets is voluntary, I will henceforth use italics when refering to lotteries as a form of 'tax'.

[entropyfails]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('12amps', '
')Then the system from the publics point of view is a net energy (money) loser. It's EROEI is negative.
It is simple common sense, and you cannot argue your way out of it without breaking the basic

fundamentals of logic and second law of thermodynamics. (not to mention the law of conservation of energy)

[entropyfails]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('12amps', 'y')ou know i was thinking, if lotteries create so much wealth and are so beneficially like
everyone here seems to think. why not we run the world on a giant lottery?
sounds too good to be true?? I thought so

[entropyfails]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('eastbay', 'Y')eah, I stepped back and reviewed my postings and you're right Entropyfails, I do appear to have an agenda. I appear to have an agenda because I do, in fact, have an agenda!

It's disgusting for state governments to impose a tax hitting the poor and uneducated the hardest. It's bad enough when we have an overall tax structure hitting the working poor the hardest (ok, ok, that's another discussion, I apologize... my leftist roots oozing out again) but now we have a lottery often posing as a heroic savior for the schools when it's actually a state-sponsored economic cancer mostly harming the weakest in our society.

And that's part of the reason why I detest lotteries. There is no rational defense for this vicios tax and I believe it's another small dead canary signalling a looming societal collapse.

[Schweinshaxe]

Seriously, if you want to bet and actually win money, harness racing is the way to go. Forget the pacers. Go for the trotters. Betting and winning money on trotters is 80% knowledge and 20% luck.

Pacers can't break so pacing is often rigged. Trotters sometimes break so there's no interest by the mafia to rig the trotting races.

Enjoy this picture of the mare Peace Corps, winner of $4.1 million.

[0mar]

The break-even point is wrong.

You give 60% back to the government when you win.

Plus, the chances one individual will win is infinitesimally small. The breakeven point only works if you already have hundreds of thousands of dollars to invest (or even more for the bigger lottories). Otherwise, there is no difference between a 1 million jackpot or a 100 million jackpot. The Pick3/Pick4 lottos, in Illinois, are tailored such that you can not come out ahead by picking every number. The bigger lottos operate on the premise that no one will buy a million fucking lotto tickets and they work because of that. Anyways, you would need physical cash because the lotto doesn't accept credit nor checks. Plus, you would have to operate several stores because tickets can only be printed in 5 dollar increments.

If you are waiting for the lotto to hit a certain amount before you buy a dollar ticket, you are merely assuring yourself that you aren't being scammed. Cognitive dissonance FTW.

[entropyfails]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('0mar', 'T')he break-even point is wrong.
If you are waiting for the lotto to hit a certain amount before you buy a dollar ticket, you are merely assuring yourself that you aren't being scammed. Cognitive dissonance FTW.