Chaumian blinding & public voting?

[Tim May]

On Tuesday, November 4, 2003, at 04:06  AM, Peter Gutmann wrote:

> Tim May <timcmay at got.net> writes:
>
>> (I bought _one_ lottery ticket, for $1, just to see how the numbers 
>> were
>> done. Lotteries are of course a tax on the gullible and stupid.)
>
> A friend of mine likes to say that lotteries are a tax on stupidity: 
> The
> dumber you are, the more tax you have to pay.
>

When California was considering a lottery to 'help the schools," I 
voted against it. On the grounds that if something is illegal 
(gambling, prostitution, copyright violation, etc.), governments 
shouldn't be running casinos or brothels or Napster services.

If governments act as bookies or slot machines, why not you and me?

(And if any private gambling operation used the deceptive bookkeeping 
the lotteries typically use, they'd be shut down for fraud. A slot 
machine which paid "$10,000....(paid over 20 years, or you can have 
$3481.98 _immediately_!)" would be shut down by the Gambling Commission 
in most states.)

And, practically, it led to the inner city welfare mutants and mountain 
hillbillies buying large numbers of lottery tickets every week. Which 
is of course a good thing. Except it causes them to clamor for more 
handouts taken at gunpoint from those of us smart enough to save our 
money and not buy lottery tickets.

But my main objection is that it is never an assigned responsibility of 
government to run gambling operations.

Oh, and the "our children benefit, too!" never materialized. The 
politicos took in the rakeoff from the deceptive odds, plus the more 
normal rakeoff, and spent it on their usual stuff. Which is why 
California is now nattering about the need for more spending for 
schools.

--Tim May