365 True Things: 290/Optimism

While I was driving home from lunch out with a friend,  the radio was going on about the Powerball hysteria that, hopefully, will end tonight when some lucky (or maybe not-so-lucky) individual wins $1.5 billion.

First, let me say: $1.5 billion (or, okay, a mere $930 million cash value—$561.72 million after federal taxes) is a ridiculous jackpot for anyone to win at one go—and I was happy that one of the commentators agreed with me on that count. Rather, as he pointed out, the Powerball should provide many much smaller payouts, consistently. And by "much smaller," we could still mean over a million dollars, which for pretty much anyone who would buy a lottery ticket is still a ridiculous jackpot.

Of course, I know nothing about how the Powerball system works, but I gather it's possible that many people can choose the same number, so it's possible that no single individual will win the jackpot/grand prize tonight (or, possibly, no one will, and the jackpot amount will rise still more). Okay. But still.

The expert today—the one I agreed with—was a psychologist, and he listed some of the reasons people might participate in a game with odds of 1 to almost 300 million.  

Fun was his first reason. Okay, sure: what's a dollar or five or ten for the "chance" to win big, not to mention the fact that you're taking part in a game that involves if not the entire country, at least a huge number of Americans. That right there is pretty fun.

But then he said that optimism must come into play, "because pessimists certainly wouldn't take part."

I beg to differ. I am an optimist, I like to think. I am certainly no pessimist. But I am probably more surely than anything a realist. And one reason I will never participate in a lottery like this is that 1:300,000,000 odds is plain crazy! Why waste that dollar or five or ten? Unless you're the kind of gal (or guy) who just wants to have a little fun. That, fine. But optimism? C'mon.

Indeed, as the commentator pointed out, lotteries like this especially lure people who have very little, and that dollar or five or ten might go to something the family actually needs, rather than get wasted. This sort of legalized gambling, and the hysteria that arises around it, makes me feel a little queasy.

Does that mean I'm a pessimist? I think not.

But I would probably be more optimistic if scams like lotteries didn't exist. Although people innocently applaud the "fact" that the profits go to fund education in these United States, that's far from the entire truth. Yes, that happens in some localities; but yes too, part of the profits goes to a private Italian-based conglomerate that operates lotteries and slot machines in fifty countries around the world. For example.

And really: why should we be relying on legalized gambling to fund our education systems? I ask you.

But anyway, that comment about optimism: it riled me up. Maybe one of these posts I'll delve a little more deeply into my particular brand of (realistic) optimism.

As for the lottery, I have no interest in delving any further into that particular minefield. But I think it stinks. (And that still doesn't make me a pessimist.)

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In case you're interested in reading a little more about this craziness, the Atlantic published "a very weird thought experiment" today called "What If You Bought All 292 Million Possible Powerball Combinations" that explains some of the mechanics. And NPR discussed just what the Powerball payout could—and could not—actually buy (it would not bring the winner even close to the Koch Brothers' power, for example). And here's a discussion of Powerball as a "swindle"—granted, by a progressive website, so take with a grain of salt, but the idea of lottery-fueled education funding is pretty much a myth, generally speaking. And there's much more to that swindle besides. . . .