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"....namely, that they discourage (to some degree) people from working hard to earn wealth..."
I am not aware of any evidence that this is either true, nor relevant! And IMO it defies common sense, although to use "common sense" here is probably hopeless.
What I find interesting in this discussion is that although the wish to distribute the goodies more widely on the face of it sounds good, I sense that many lotteries are now going for the real "biggies", and people are buying in to this model. Not being any good at gambling, I can not understand this.....
Nobody has yet mentioned the social impact of lotteries: namely, that they discourage (to some degree) people from working hard to earn wealth.
I think that, before making such a claim, it would be well to provide some convincing evidence that this is so. I know of none, but I haven't studied that matter intensively. I never worked to "make money" except for a short boring time as a Civil Servant.
"....namely, that they discourage (to some degree) people from working hard to earn wealth..."
I am not aware of any evidence that this is either true, nor relevant! And IMO it defies common sense, although to use "common sense" here is probably hopeless.
What I find interesting in this discussion is that although the wish to distribute the goodies more widely on the face of it sounds good, I sense that many lotteries are now going for the real "biggies", and people are buying in to this model. Not being any good at gambling, I can not understand this.....
I think that, before making such a claim, it would be well to provide some convincing evidence that this is so. I know of none, but I haven't studied that matter intensively. I never worked to "make money" except for a short boring time as a Civil Servant.
Ed & Fred, I thought both of you might be old enough to remember all the arguments that were made back when lotteries were relatively non-existent and were first being considered as sources of government revenue. And one of those arguments was that lotteries would gradually erode the work ethic and the saving ethic. Don't you remember those times?
You both seem to be saying that this argument is non-sensical.
Well, consider this: a lottery such as Lotto 6/49 makes it entirely possible that a homeless person who has been an alcoholic all of his or her life can buy a $1 ticket and can overnight become a multi-millionaire. What message does this send to someone who has a typical middle-class job, has been saving money all of his or her life towards retirement, worked his or her way through college so that he or she could graduate debt-free, and at age 45 or so has barely enough to even handle a down payment on some lousy condo in Toronto? Sure, we've all heard of workaholic success stories, but for each one of those, there are thousands of people still trapped in the middle class and, in fact, LOSING GROUND to inflation or runaway real estate prices or what have you.
We all recognize that gambling can become an addiction. Perhaps that addiction begins (for some people) with the frustration of being the lifelong workaholic who isn't making any progress and sees someone far less responsible than themselves winning a Lotto 6/49. I'm surprised Tom O'Donnell hasn't chimed in here.
Lotteries even makes it possible that a person sympathetic to ISIS or some other terrorist group could win a jackpot and use the proceeds to organize an attack against the very society that allowed him or her to win that money. It is only a matter of time before this happens and is brought to light.
It is amazing to me.... that people who advocate for chess because of its pure skill attributes.... rewarding only the most studious and hard-working practitioners.... and who refuse to consider any chess variant that brings luck into results.... could turn around and be in FAVOR of lotteries!
On the other hand, maybe it does make some kind of sense.... ok, so you like chess for its pure skill aspect, even though you yourself could never rise above Expert level or somewhere even below that.... but lotteries, hey, they give you a chance to be a winner! And even as you buy your tickets, you can still proclaim that chess is great for NOT giving a single chance to the lowly woodpushers.... not even a 1 in 200 million chance..... and that if ever some woodpusher does manage a miracle win, s/he must have been cheating and should have winnings confiscated.....
If you are in favor of lotteries, you should NOT be against bringing luck into chess.
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
I'm not sure I'm dealing with a full deck here, but here goes....
Yes I'm old enough to remember everything, but don't recall that argument. It must have been pretty lame, bacause I don't remember it, and it never went anywhere? I suppose if you are of the "sky is falling" persuasion, your examples might worry me. I'm not, and neither are most rational people. I have never entered into your little debate about chess alternatives, so I don't relate to the last part of you post.
How am I doing? Perhaps we both need to get out more?
Ed & Fred, I thought both of you might be old enough to remember all the arguments that were made back when lotteries were relatively non-existent and were first being considered as sources of government revenue. And one of those arguments was that lotteries would gradually erode the work ethic and the saving ethic. Don't you remember those times?
You both seem to be saying that this argument is non-sensical.
Well, consider this: a lottery such as Lotto 6/49 makes it entirely possible that a homeless person who has been an alcoholic all of his or her life can buy a $1 ticket and can overnight become a multi-millionaire. What message does this send to someone who has a typical middle-class job, has been saving money all of his or her life towards retirement, worked his or her way through college so that he or she could graduate debt-free, and at age 45 or so has barely enough to even handle a down payment on some lousy condo in Toronto? Sure, we've all heard of workaholic success stories, but for each one of those, there are thousands of people still trapped in the middle class and, in fact, LOSING GROUND to inflation or runaway real estate prices or what have you.
We all recognize that gambling can become an addiction. Perhaps that addiction begins (for some people) with the frustration of being the lifelong workaholic who isn't making any progress and sees someone far less responsible than themselves winning a Lotto 6/49. I'm surprised Tom O'Donnell hasn't chimed in here.
Lotteries even makes it possible that a person sympathetic to ISIS or some other terrorist group could win a jackpot and use the proceeds to organize an attack against the very society that allowed him or her to win that money. It is only a matter of time before this happens and is brought to light.
It is amazing to me.... that people who advocate for chess because of its pure skill attributes.... rewarding only the most studious and hard-working practitioners.... and who refuse to consider any chess variant that brings luck into results.... could turn around and be in FAVOR of lotteries!
On the other hand, maybe it does make some kind of sense.... ok, so you like chess for its pure skill aspect, even though you yourself could never rise above Expert level or somewhere even below that.... but lotteries, hey, they give you a chance to be a winner! And even as you buy your tickets, you can still proclaim that chess is great for NOT giving a single chance to the lowly woodpushers.... not even a 1 in 200 million chance..... and that if ever some woodpusher does manage a miracle win, s/he must have been cheating and should have winnings confiscated.....
If you are in favor of lotteries, you should NOT be against bringing luck into chess.
I didn't say your argument was nonsensical, so you are just creating a straw man here. And I asked for evidence, of which I see precisely none in your words above. What some people think or thought was true is not evidence that anything is or is not actually true.
I am not "in favour" of lotteries so you are misrepresenting my argument. I merely observe that in the real world people love, irrationally, to gamble, and think that a government run lottery is the lesser of evils. If everyone were rational there would be no gambling and neoclassical economics would be true. But people (including me) are not perfectly rational and people do gamble and gamble badly, and neoclassical economics is observably false.
Last edited by Ed Seedhouse; Sunday, 2nd October, 2016, 01:21 PM.
What bugs me about lotteries is that not only do lottery addicts, who never took a statistics class in high school, spend $100+ each week on tickets, but they hold up the line to the cashier in a convenience store.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Murphy's law, by Edward A. Murphy Jr., USAF, Aerospace Engineer
What bugs me about lotteries is that not only do lottery addicts, who never took a statistics class in high school, spend $100+ each week on tickets, but they hold up the line to the cashier in a convenience store.
Them and the people that hold up the grocery line by doing their banking while buying groceries instead of at the bank were it belongs.
While we're on the lotteries topic, there is a way to get plus mathematical equity for your ticket. What you do is (when the top prize is promised to be in the tens of millions) choose numbers which are unlikely to be picked by anyone else - numbers such as 1,2,3,4,5 or 2,4,6,8,10 Such numbers are just as likely to be hit as any others. The difference is, should you hit the jackpot, you will not share it with anyone. On the other hand, if you go out on a stormy night to purchase your tickets you're more likely to be hit by lightening than getting a winner. The odds against you are astronomical.
Last edited by Vlad Dobrich; Sunday, 2nd October, 2016, 05:59 PM.
I didn't say your argument was nonsensical, so you are just creating a straw man here. And I asked for evidence, of which I see precisely none in your words above. What some people think or thought was true is not evidence that anything is or is not actually true.
I am not "in favour" of lotteries so you are misrepresenting my argument. I merely observe that in the real world people love, irrationally, to gamble, and think that a government run lottery is the lesser of evils. If everyone were rational there would be no gambling and neoclassical economics would be true. But people (including me) are not perfectly rational and people do gamble and gamble badly, and neoclassical economics is observably false.
Ed, not all of my comments were directed at you, some were meant for Fred Harvey who appears to be more narrow-minded, more forgetful and more housebound than you (well... definitely more housebound than me!)
So Ed, I know you are asking for evidence, but to get that evidence, we'd have to have a parallel universe we could travel to where the U.S. and Canada over the past 40 years did NOT allow government-run lotteries and everything else that wasn't affected by such lotteries would be the same. Only then could we compare and make evidence.
Since we obviously can't do this, we have to rely on logic and common sense, and here's how that goes:
The basis of capitalist societies is that the free market will decide everything. People will seek work that satisfies them, will spend money on what they personally like and prefer, and over time patterns will emerge that guide forward progress.
Lotteries disrupt this theory. When you collect small sums of money from everyone, and randomly distribute the resulting large sum of money to anyone in society, you disrupt the working of the capitalist system. It is absolutely similar to running a chess tournament where some moves in every game are decided by random means, such as rolling dice. Chess tournaments, like capitalist systems, are designed to bring the cream to the top. Any randomness disrupts that.
[Aside: the similarity between chess and capitalism ends there. Unlike chess, capitalism is ideally supposed to be self-perpetuating: the cream that rises to the top will redistribute their earnings in the form of both spending and investment, allowing money to "trickle down" to the base of the pyramid and keep everything moving smoothly. But in chess, the earnings of the elite don't get recycled and so the base must continually "donate" further sums to find its way to the elite.]
Introducing randomness into an ordered system (capitalism) is what was (mildly) protested against back in the 1970's when government run lotteries were first proposed in Canada. Fred Harvey doesn't remember this, and can't make sense of it, but it did happen and it makes perfect sense, as I'm sure Fred will realize once he ponders that as you increase number of chess moves decided by random dice rolls, you decrease optimization of chess results.
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
"....Fred Harvey who appears to be more narrow-minded, more forgetful and more housebound than you (well... definitely more housebound than me!)....."
And there I thought I was being kind by not leaving you out on your own with your silly ideas! I think readers got the sarcasm.....
I notice you have now reduced the "protest" against lotteries based on their likelihood to turn the population against gainful employment to "mild". Probably why I don't remember it...it never made it to my news desk. IMO, to suggest that lotteries affect the work ethic or otherwise of the population at large beggars common sense. It hasn't happened, and never will..... There will never be enough lottery money around to give to the unwashed, unemployed, masses so they can keep feeding the lotteries.
I will now ponder my cup of coffee, and not worry too much about your random chess or whatever (hint....more sarcasm, sorry!)
P.S. Actually this is turning into fun....should get out more.
The basis of capitalist societies is that the free market will decide everything.
Well, that is just wrong. Capitalism requires capital! And Capital accumulates in the hands of the already wealthy as was pointed out long ago by Adam Smith, who (though this is never told to economics students) was strongly in favour of the regulation of markets. No society where a "free market" decides everything has ever existed, nor will it ever exist since it is self contradictory.
Markets are a great invention of humankind, but no freedom of any kind exists except within constraints. At the very least the so called "laws of physics" constrain everything, including markets. The question is, who is to be master? Do markets exist to server humankind or does humankind exist to server markets? I think the answer is obvious.
A chess player should understand this. If you move your rooks like bishops you may have invented a new game, but you aren't playing chess. Your freedom to play your choice of chess moves exists only within the constraints provided by the agreed upon rules. Unless both players agree about what is checkmate and what isn't the game can't proceed. Without these rules there is no chess, and thus no freedom to make chess moves. Every explicit competition exists only within a larger context of cooperation. The idea that society should be ruled by unrestrained competition is nonsense because unless there is prior and continuing cooperation there can be no competition.
Most of what is taught as "economics" today is not only nonsense, but obvious nonsense. I can only suggest you subscribe to Steve Keen's "youtube" channel and educate yourself as to why. Or you might read his book "Debunking Economics". That would be a pretty good start.
And I am not anti capitalism nor anti market. Quite to the contrary we need to save Capitalism from itself (like we did in the 1930's) or it will destroy us. But put it back in it's proper place and it can be part of the solution.
Last edited by Ed Seedhouse; Monday, 3rd October, 2016, 01:27 PM.
Since the topic here is "the value of money" I am going to ask what people think does give money value. The Canadian dollar is not convertible into any commodity. The Canadian government can print any amount of it it wishes. The bills and coins the government mints are, these days, created without significant costs and most of the actual "money" in circulation exists only as numbers in the memory banks of computers. Like virtually every other developed country Canada runs a pure fiat currency, not exchangeable for any precious metal, un-backed by any commodity.
So, why do we value dollars? Why will we exchange virtually worthless pieces of paper for real commodities like food and drink, not to mention planes, trains, and automobiles? What gives the Canadian dollar it's value?
How do lotteries disrupt capitalism? To mean it seems that lotteries and gambling in general are inherently capitalistic. One person is selling an opportunity to another person. They set a price to get that opportunity, and the prices are a balance between the seller trying to maximize profit, and the buyer trying to minimize it. There is a market of buyers and sellers.
The only non-capitalist aspect of it is that the government is the seller. In that way it is no different than the LCBO, or government-run services that could be privatized.
Well, that is just wrong. Capitalism requires capital!
My comment may have been over-generalizing, but only because I didn't want to get into the weeds. But the notion that the "free market will decide everything" is what the original and pure theory put forth. The fact that in the real world we cannot enact the pure theory doesn't eradicate what the pure theory proposes.
Your response that "Capitalism requires capital" is trite.... much as if I had just explained to you how a computer works in theory without mentioning electricity, and you responded "That is just wrong -- computers require electricity!" Quite hilarious, really.
And Capital accumulates in the hands of the already wealthy as was pointed out long ago by Adam Smith, who (though this is never told to economics students) was strongly in favour of the regulation of markets. No society where a "free market" decides everything has ever existed, nor will it ever exist since it is self contradictory.
Well, your Adam Smith comment is not backed up, and you even state that university professors are not bringing this point up. Really? We keep hearing from the far right media that universities are bastions of liberalism. Why then wouldn't they PREACH that Adam Smith was in favor of regulation of markets?
And yes, no actual "free market" has ever existed. Pure free markets cannot exist because of constant disruption by unpredictable elements.... such as natural disasters, criminal activity (both blue- and white-collar), government interference (taxation and redistribution of wealth, environmental and financial regulations).
I doubt that the originators of capitalist economic theory envisioned a truly static equilibrium ever being reached, but we can still fault them for being overly optimistic in their models.
A chess player should understand this. If you move your rooks like bishops you may have invented a new game, but you aren't playing chess. Your freedom to play your choice of chess moves exists only within the constraints provided by the agreed upon rules. Unless both players agree about what is checkmate and what isn't the game can't proceed. Without these rules there is no chess, and thus no freedom to make chess moves. Every explicit competition exists only within a larger context of cooperation. The idea that society should be ruled by unrestrained competition is nonsense because unless there is prior and continuing cooperation there can be no competition.
I'm really having trouble deciphering your chess comments. You just seem to be saying that games have to have agreed-upon rules or they can't be played. And then you extrapolate this to society in general.
I think we can all agree that in the natural world of Darwinian evolution, there is no "cooperation". There is pure and unadulterated competition. The capitalist laissez-faire market system was modeled on this: survival of the fittest. I've mentioned it before: read "Lord of the Flies" to get a picture of what such a society could look like.
If we were to completely remove morals from society, it could indeed be ruled by that very Darwinian principle. What makes us different from the natural world is that we do have a sense of morals and of justice, and we do have empathy for those among us less fortunate. In order to enforce justice and the notion that "all men are created equal", we have to have government and police.
This has all been covered in many tales of the Wild West..... perhaps a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western or two is in order?
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
Originally Posted by Paul Bonham
I think we can all agree that in the natural world of Darwinian evolution, there is no "cooperation". There is pure and unadulterated competition.
This is a parody of evolutionary theory and shows that you don't seem to understand it at all. I suggest a visit to P.Z. Meyer's blog (an actual scientist) for a corrective view, a month or so of daily reading there should help re-educate you. Evolution has nothing to do with competition, it has everything to do with "fitness". Cooperation is an excellent survival strategy for many species, including humans. Species evolve along with ecosystems and each adapts to the other.
The capitalist laissez-faire market system was modeled on this: survival of the fittest.
No, it developed long before Darwin came along. The parody of Darwin that you apparently believe in was just tacked on as an excuse for the system. "Social Darwinism" is just pseudoscience. And Darwin is by no means the last word in evolution theory - science moves on and learns new things.
If we were to completely remove morals from society
And if we removed legs and feet nobody could walk. Humans evolved with moral capacities just as much as they evolved with feet and legs.
This has all been covered in many tales of the Wild West..... perhaps a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western or two is in order?
Yeah, because Westerns are the last word in science. When I want to know about how evolution actually works I read what scientists actually working in that field say about it.
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