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I honestly don't see the issue. The only reason the lotto works is because people know you can win and it's not rigged, and the only way you can know that is by
by tabeth 9y ago
I honestly don't see the issue. The only reason the lotto works is because people know you can win and it's not rigged, and the only way you can know that is by making the winners public. Finally, the only reason said lottery was $XXXM is because of the people who tried and failed, funding it. I doubt lotteries would pay such large amounts long term if anonymous lotteries were standard as fraud is inevitable.
Being able to take half a billion dollars of free money anonymously and safely is hardly a right. I mean, you could simply not take it.
Seems fair to me. Am I missing something?
- bachmeier 9y agoIf the only way to prove the lottery is legit is to make the names of winners public, why not just make up a name?
- eesmith 9y agoBecause, and I'll quote from article, "she signed her name on the back of the ticket shortly after winning, and altering the signature would nullify the ticket." That is, she could have formed an anonymous trust, but now it's too late.
- thaumasiotes 9y agoThis is completely unrelated to the question you're supposedly responding to. Some people are advancing the argument that it serves an important societal interest to publish this woman's name. Specifically, it builds trust in the lottery by publicizing that somebody won. bachmeier is pointing out that you could accomplish this equally well by making up a name and publishing it as the lottery winner. The fact that somebody signed a ticket has no bearing on that.
- eesmith 9y agoI totally did not get that. I thought the suggestion was for the lottery winner to make up a name - an option which was no longer available. Even looking at it now, while I can see that interpretation, it doesn't come easily to mind. Thanks for pointing that out!
- kneel 9y ago>Seems fair to me. Am I missing something? Rules rarely apply to rich people.
- gaius 9y agoThe only reason the lotto works is because people know you can win and it's not rigged, and the only way you can know that is by making the winners public You have seen The Running Man, right?
- rhizome 9y agoBeing able to take half a billion dollars of free money anonymously and safely is hardly a right. This is such a loaded statement, in multiple ways, that I don't know where to start.
- Erik816 9y agoThe lottery works because people are driven by hope and are bad at (or don't care about) math. No one goes around verifying that the people who won the lottery actually get their money. Why would fraud be inevitable if you were allowed to form an anonymous trust before claiming your winnings? You still have to produce the winning ticket. What new vector for fraud does this open up? If the people running the lottery are corrupt, it wouldn't seem they need to use anonymous trusts to siphon off money.
- tabeth 9y agoI don't understand -- you already are allowed to form an anonymous trust. That's not the issue.
- skywhopper 9y agoSure. It's also fair for her to challenge this clause given that the revelation of her win would probably completely destroy her existing relationships. It's fun to dream about winning hundreds of millions of dollars, but I'm glad this woman is taking the likely consequences of the win seriously and doing what she can to protect herself. Ultimately, state sponsored lotteries like this are a bad thing for everyone: the winners, the losers, the taxpayers, the government, and society at large. So if she can win this case and that in turn makes lotteries less popular or uneconomical, then that's a good thing for the culture.
- oorza 9y agoWhy are they a bad thing for everyone? Obviously the players are almost universally worse off for playing, but don't they generate tax revenue and funnel money into places like schools?
- thaumasiotes 9y agoLotteries are often dedicated to funding schools. But the schools were going to be funded anyway. What ends up happening is the lottery pays for its own staff, the school budget stays the same, and money that would have gone to schools goes elsewhere in the government budget. In this stylized example, is that extra money in the non-school budget funded by surplus from the lottery? What would it mean for the lottery to funnel money specifically into schools?
- jstarfish 9y agoThe state lottery funded the scholarships that put me through school twice. Don't worry, the schools are getting their money.
- HeyLaughingBoy 9y agoYup. You're missing that she wants to have her cake and eat it too.