Lottery Excellence

?Everything should be as well run as the lottery.

I’ve just learned (probably after all of you) that the state lottery is a very well oiled machine – a money spinner for my state. Your state, too – if your state has a lottery. There is one big lottery business – Gtech. I don’t know how they are compensated. But if it is a percentage of the take, they are rich!

There are drawings for the lotto-type games every day. Every ticket sold is printed from the central server – whether quick pick or specific pick. The pick is encoded in a bar code. The odds of any set of numbers to win is fixed – and VERY low. But the payout for any winner changes with every new ticket purchased. And this is updated immediately for everyone to see. As the potential payout grows, and especially as rollovers generate ever bigger potential payouts, the sales accelerate. What an addictive business plan! The odds are against you, big time; but the payout is so increasingly enticing.

The scratch off tickets in vending machines are also fascinating. Every ticket is bar coded, of course. And every sale of every ticket is tracked. So if anybody steals unsold tickets – they are invalid. The odds of winning don’t increase, but the unclaimed top prizes are tracked and promoted.

Imagine the computing power it takes to generate all this. Imagine all the computing power it takes to track all the sales. Imagine the computing power to immediately report all this.

Then there is the app that I can load on to my phone that lets me check whether any ticket is a winner or not. Immediately. And there are second chance drawings for non-winning scratch off tickets. Just scan them into the app.

Imagine the computer power required to do all that.

Then imagine the computer power spent on some more important things. Like getting a business license. Or a driver license. Or social security benefits. Or food stamps. Or unemployment benefits. Or paying your city utility bill.

What is easier? Gambling? Or accessing essential government services?

Right! Gambling is.

Why is that? Maybe one is more profitable for the government than the other. ??

Shouldn’t essential government services be more important than gambling?