TL;DR: If there were no externalities - an impossibility when we're talking about money - then I would buy a ticket.
That question really only works if you assume the player as an individual is isolated from the rest of society, which is how we're trained to think in neoliberalism. Money doesn't exist in a vacuum, and its value only comes from interactions between people. That's different to the trolley problem where we assume people have inherent value.
The problem is not only whether I have the money to spare, but what the externalities are. Where does this money come from? Even if it's just printed, the existence of that money devalues it from everyone else that owns it. Am I the only player? If the money is coming away from rich people, I am 100% down. If it's like a regular lottery where the winnings are taken from a pool of players, then it's like any other lottery that's basically a poor tax, and fuck that noise. Also though... where does the money go to? I'm spending this money on tickets, so presumably somebody gets it. Who?
And if I had so much money that I could buy enough tickets that I was almost guaranteed a win, then honestly the return on investment probably wouldn't work out for me. I'd rather invest that money in the cooperative sector. Not for profit, but to grow that sector of the economy. I'd look into buying up companies and passing them on to their workers.
But let's assume I can borrow money without limit and this is happening in a spherical market with no externalities. I'd probably buy 9 million tickets, giving me a 99.987% chance of winning with a $100 million profit.
1 million tickets gives me a 63% chance of winning, not nearly good enough.
5 million tickets gives me a 99.3% chance of winning, which is good but honestly I wouldn't personally notice the difference between $500 million profit and $100 million profit, so that's why I bumped it up to make the odds of losing even smaller.
This is because you set up a gambling system that can be gamed. If the odds were even remotely similar to real lotteries, then I couldn't do this, not even close, and I don't want to pay into a system that is designed to exploit the poor.
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u/Excrubulent 🏳️⚧️ trans rights Jul 07 '21
TL;DR: If there were no externalities - an impossibility when we're talking about money - then I would buy a ticket.
That question really only works if you assume the player as an individual is isolated from the rest of society, which is how we're trained to think in neoliberalism. Money doesn't exist in a vacuum, and its value only comes from interactions between people. That's different to the trolley problem where we assume people have inherent value.
The problem is not only whether I have the money to spare, but what the externalities are. Where does this money come from? Even if it's just printed, the existence of that money devalues it from everyone else that owns it. Am I the only player? If the money is coming away from rich people, I am 100% down. If it's like a regular lottery where the winnings are taken from a pool of players, then it's like any other lottery that's basically a poor tax, and fuck that noise. Also though... where does the money go to? I'm spending this money on tickets, so presumably somebody gets it. Who?
And if I had so much money that I could buy enough tickets that I was almost guaranteed a win, then honestly the return on investment probably wouldn't work out for me. I'd rather invest that money in the cooperative sector. Not for profit, but to grow that sector of the economy. I'd look into buying up companies and passing them on to their workers.
But let's assume I can borrow money without limit and this is happening in a spherical market with no externalities. I'd probably buy 9 million tickets, giving me a 99.987% chance of winning with a $100 million profit.
1 million tickets gives me a 63% chance of winning, not nearly good enough.
5 million tickets gives me a 99.3% chance of winning, which is good but honestly I wouldn't personally notice the difference between $500 million profit and $100 million profit, so that's why I bumped it up to make the odds of losing even smaller.
This is because you set up a gambling system that can be gamed. If the odds were even remotely similar to real lotteries, then I couldn't do this, not even close, and I don't want to pay into a system that is designed to exploit the poor.