The Lottery As a Public Service
The lottery is a popular form of public funding for a variety of purposes. Historically, it has been promoted as a painless source of revenue — citizens voluntarily spending their money (as opposed to being taxed) for the good of society. This dynamic has resulted in state governments relying on lotteries to finance their growing array of services without burdening middle-class and working-class taxpayers.
Yet critics point to various problems with lotteries, including their promotion of compulsive gambling and regressive impact on lower-income populations. More fundamentally, however, they challenge the premise that a lottery can function as a legitimate public service. Whether run as a business or public entity, the lottery is designed to attract customers and maximize revenues. These goals put it at cross-purposes with the broad public interest, as well as with the needs of poor people and other vulnerable groups.
As a business, the lottery must promote itself to a large and diverse group of customers: convenience store owners (who typically serve as lottery vendors); ticket suppliers; state legislators (who quickly become accustomed to the new revenue stream); teachers (in states where lottery proceeds are earmarked for education), and more. As a result, its advertising must necessarily emphasize the fun of buying tickets and the thrill of potentially becoming wealthy. These are values that are contradicted by the underlying mathematics of lottery games, which make them unprofitable according to decision models based on expected utility maximization.
Further, many people buy tickets to fulfill their personal fantasies of wealth and status. This is in direct contradiction to one of the Bible’s commandments: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, his wife, his male or female servant, his ox, or his ass, his sheep or his goat.”
