Underestimating long-term consequences of cryptoanarchy

Bill Stewart bill.stewart at pobox.com
Sun May 11 00:22:58 PDT 2003


At 09:10 PM 05/10/2003 -0700, Tim May wrote:
>On Saturday, May 10, 2003, at 08:44  PM, Harmon Seaver wrote:
>>    I agree with all the rest of this, however, I think you're wrong 
>> about the
>>gambling. I think that's the only way gov't ought to be allowed to fund 
>>itself,
>>by selling lottery tickets.
>
>A superficially good idea ("sounds good!"), but ultimately silly.
>Government bans gambling, or heavily regulates it, or declares illegal the 
>exact odds it grants itself.

When I was a kid, gambling was illegal because it was immoral,
and wasteful, and took bread out of poor children's mouths,
and oppressed the less educated, except of course for bingo at
the volunteer fire company or Catholic church, in which case it was
charitable giving mixed with harmless entertainment for the elderly.
(Or for some reason, if it involved horse racing.)

Now it's illegal back home because it competes with the state lottery.
Sorry, that won't wash.   If it's moral for the state to raise money that way,
it's hypocritical for them to continue banning private gambling.

>Lotteries, for example, are the ultimate sucker bet.

Not always, because the "state lotto jackpot" can reach positive expectation,
if there's no big winner for enough weeks in a row so lots of suckers have
already lost.  It's still pretty much a sucker bet, but because the betting
isn't all simultaneous, some bettors really can be much luckier than average.

All this was different in New Jersey, of course.  The state was finally
permitted to offer a daily-number lottery as long as the payouts were
lower than the main Mafia-run daily-number lotteries,
and the lottery point-of-sale posters say where the money goes,
so you can tell that in spite of the politicians saying it was for
schools and old people, about half the profits went to running prisons.
No thanks.

Last time I played a government lottery, I didn't win the green suit and guns
or the two-year vacation in exciting tropical Southeast Asia.
Didn't even win the third-prize government-health-care physical.
Ain't planning to play again.





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