Imagine if everyone just decided they were tired of this lottery bullshit and collectively refused to play...
this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2023
144 points (89.6% liked)
News
23310 readers
3899 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Personally I'd be far more interested in the lottery if we lived in a post scarcity society, where people's needs are guaranteed to be met instead of the poorest people desperately trying to get out of poverty
I used to think of the lottery as a tax on idiots but I’ve since come to realize it’s a tax on the desperate.
I play, and I'm not desperate (and hopefully not an idiot either). Here is my reasoning, but I'm open to ideas from people who may think differently. First, obviously, playing is losing money, just like scratch-offs. However, a winning scratch-off is not life changing money, it's likely just making back some of the money you spent or will spend. A Powerball jackpot will allow you to actually have influence in the world. If you are someone who wins and decides to mooch off society just buying yachts and hookers and blow for the rest of your life, then it's just wasted. But the amount of change in the world by building something that betters humanity would actually be accomplishable.
General Strikes are impossible.
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I find the lottery fun in moderation, but I only spend like $50 on lottery tickets a year so I’m not exactly the target audience anyway.
The lottery is by and far an excessive tax on the poor. That's my only problem with it.
Generally the big culprit there is the scratch-off stuff you see at gas stations.
Powerball, due to the delays in reward processing, is not as "addictive" as scratch-off/peel-off gambling.
True, but I just don't think we should incentivize funding amazing programs with money sources primarily funded by the underprivileged day dreaming of a better life. It just seems sad.
Hardcore "I'm 14 and this is deep"
Unfortunately for your world views, no. I'm 28 and able to engage in empathy for the plight of my fellow man. Sad you've gotten that used to callous realities.
Didn't they add another number to the Powerball which massively decreased the probability of winning?
Yup, all so that they could regularly have these massive jackpots, because a huge jackpot drives more sales of losing tickets.
That makes so much sense. I swear I remember a massive jackpot being a once every 1-2 year event. Now it's every 1-2 months.
And it works. I played during the last huge jackpot craze. I even thought to myself that I swore there weren't this many numbers.
Just split it among all of us already. I could use a half cup of coffee.
Wow. A crazy jackpot.
Not really, they added an extra number to the lottery so that people would be even less likely to win, which leads to larger jackpot numbers. It's a marketing ploy meant to trick more people into paying the stupid tax.
Doesn't a lot of the money go to scholarship funds?
Depends on the state. My state puts 40% of the funds into protecting the environment and the rest goes into the state's general fund.
Jackpots are just another poor people tax.