4 ms·

The item of value being offered by the lottery is taxpayer funded, whereas most lotteries fund prizes via the proceeds of the lottery tickets. In this way, it

The item of value being offered by the lottery is taxpayer funded, whereas most lotteries fund prizes via the proceeds of the lottery tickets. In this way, it can be considered exploitative since the proceeds don’t go back into “the pot” to any degree.

HDThoreaun 3y ago
The value being provided here is the website, which received no taxpayer funding other than the lottery proceeds.
- natpalmer1776 3y ago
  Ah, I stand corrected, looking at Booz’s website I see that the agreement from the start was no upfront cost to taxpayers.
  - singleshot_ 3y ago
    Therein lies the rub: the people we selected to represent us turned us into a cash flow which they then sold to a government contractor. Instead of buying us a website, they sold us.
  - StillBored 3y ago
    But an endless cost on the backend... Sounds like a great deal. At least for one political party who's entire theory of government is starving the beast. Labeling a fee based rental agreement as not being a tax is more important than what the actual final use cost actually is. Even if the users actually paying the fee end up spending orders of magnitude more in the long run. Its a fantastic way to hide immense sums of corruption, it just needs to be done one dollar at a time.
  - asdff 3y ago
    The state and federal governments trains hundreds of thousands of computer science engineers a year. Engineering students are also in dire need of internships to appear employable. Seems like another way to run a website at little cost to taxpayers would be an internship program using a portion of the massive engineering workforce government is already paying to train, although that would mean a consultants hands are removed from the honeyjar. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if booze allens own college summer interns are doing the bulk of the work on this website.
- StillBored 3y ago
  The _POINT_ of computers and websites is to lower the individual transactional costs of things like applying for a lottery. Rather than having to pick up the phone and speak to a person, or drive to the local office and fill out paperwork. Yet somehow, the person in the toll booth option has regularly been the cheaper option than paying these immense fee's to obviously corrupt government contractors. How many web site designers and colocated machines does it take to run a freaking reservation system that probably gets a couple million reservations a day. Plus, if done correctly a large initial investment and then a trivial amount of work to keep it running, where the vast majority of the work is the local parks/etc changing the state of campground availability/etc. Put another way, everyone wants to be the credit card companies that have successfully gotten massively rich on a system where they are taking a percentage of the total transactional value rather than a trivial flat per transaction fee. And this model doesn't belong anywhere near public systems because those public lands exist for the "public", the majority of which can barely afford the gas to get to the park, much less funneling more of their meager resources to a fat cat government contractor. $6 is close to an hours work for someone making minimum wage.
  - Karrot_Kream 3y ago
    > How many web site designers and colocated machines does it take to run a freaking reservation system that probably gets a couple million reservations a day. The cool thing about the US is that it's a democracy. If you feel so strongly about this, make this case to the government. There's precedent and it's bad, it's called healthcare.gov. I don't mean this in a pithy way btw, I'm a transit activist and I go to protests, phone up lawmakers, and attend public meetings. There are a wide array of small reasons that all sum up to the government being really bad at certain things. But again, this can change with you and me. Don't be emotional on HN, be emotional to your state reps! > The _POINT_ of computers and websites is to lower the individual transactional costs of things like applying for a lottery. Rather than having to pick up the phone and speak to a person, or drive to the local office and fill out paperwork. You're forgetting the huge growth our National Parks have seen. The days of the toll booth worked when the US had a fraction of its people, a fraction of the motor vehicle traffic, before the virality of social media, and with a more ingrained belief that a national park was a rugged place and not a place to take the family in an air conditioned, controlled experience. The old system of phone calls would have just made the parks out of reach for all of these new folks interested in them.

HDThoreaun 3y ago

The value being provided here is the website, which received no taxpayer funding other than the lottery proceeds.

natpalmer1776 3y ago
Ah, I stand corrected, looking at Booz’s website I see that the agreement from the start was no upfront cost to taxpayers.
- singleshot_ 3y ago
  Therein lies the rub: the people we selected to represent us turned us into a cash flow which they then sold to a government contractor. Instead of buying us a website, they sold us.
- StillBored 3y ago
  But an endless cost on the backend... Sounds like a great deal. At least for one political party who's entire theory of government is starving the beast. Labeling a fee based rental agreement as not being a tax is more important than what the actual final use cost actually is. Even if the users actually paying the fee end up spending orders of magnitude more in the long run. Its a fantastic way to hide immense sums of corruption, it just needs to be done one dollar at a time.
- asdff 3y ago
  The state and federal governments trains hundreds of thousands of computer science engineers a year. Engineering students are also in dire need of internships to appear employable. Seems like another way to run a website at little cost to taxpayers would be an internship program using a portion of the massive engineering workforce government is already paying to train, although that would mean a consultants hands are removed from the honeyjar. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if booze allens own college summer interns are doing the bulk of the work on this website.
StillBored 3y ago
The _POINT_ of computers and websites is to lower the individual transactional costs of things like applying for a lottery. Rather than having to pick up the phone and speak to a person, or drive to the local office and fill out paperwork. Yet somehow, the person in the toll booth option has regularly been the cheaper option than paying these immense fee's to obviously corrupt government contractors. How many web site designers and colocated machines does it take to run a freaking reservation system that probably gets a couple million reservations a day. Plus, if done correctly a large initial investment and then a trivial amount of work to keep it running, where the vast majority of the work is the local parks/etc changing the state of campground availability/etc. Put another way, everyone wants to be the credit card companies that have successfully gotten massively rich on a system where they are taking a percentage of the total transactional value rather than a trivial flat per transaction fee. And this model doesn't belong anywhere near public systems because those public lands exist for the "public", the majority of which can barely afford the gas to get to the park, much less funneling more of their meager resources to a fat cat government contractor. $6 is close to an hours work for someone making minimum wage.
- Karrot_Kream 3y ago
  > How many web site designers and colocated machines does it take to run a freaking reservation system that probably gets a couple million reservations a day. The cool thing about the US is that it's a democracy. If you feel so strongly about this, make this case to the government. There's precedent and it's bad, it's called healthcare.gov. I don't mean this in a pithy way btw, I'm a transit activist and I go to protests, phone up lawmakers, and attend public meetings. There are a wide array of small reasons that all sum up to the government being really bad at certain things. But again, this can change with you and me. Don't be emotional on HN, be emotional to your state reps! > The _POINT_ of computers and websites is to lower the individual transactional costs of things like applying for a lottery. Rather than having to pick up the phone and speak to a person, or drive to the local office and fill out paperwork. You're forgetting the huge growth our National Parks have seen. The days of the toll booth worked when the US had a fraction of its people, a fraction of the motor vehicle traffic, before the virality of social media, and with a more ingrained belief that a national park was a rugged place and not a place to take the family in an air conditioned, controlled experience. The old system of phone calls would have just made the parks out of reach for all of these new folks interested in them.