In one “blighted neighborhood” of Chicago, the Illinois Lottery put up a billboard with the slogan, “This could be your ticket out.” This is so disgusting and antithetical to what the role of government is supposed to be... How does anyone seriously think that putting up a sign like that is anything but predatory and manipulative? "Let's help the poor and disadvantaged feel better about themselves by manipulating them into (not so) willingly throwing away the money they need on a fool's errand." Sickening.
Ultimately people should be free to do this sort of thing, and companies shouldn't be stopped from providing services like the lotto to the poor, so long as the poor willingly buy the tickets. However, this should not be in any way associated with the government, and the government should be teaching people to not buy lotto tickets, spend their lives away on hopeless dreams.
I'm not bioemerl, and I'm sure my opinion about the lottery as a whole might change in later years, but personally I think the billboard is disgusting. That said, I'd rather have individual state governments run the lottery and profit off of it than go back to the older systems like The Numbers Game and Bolita. Without government oversight, people could easily be taken advantage of. Given also that a lot of people are prone to gambling problems and make unfavorable deals with loan sharks, state run lotteries probably help mitigate some of that risk as well. That said, the billboard is indeed tasteless.
So with the billboard I think that yes if it where a company it should be allowed but that it shouldn't be socially acceptable. I mean it's still disgusting and unethical even if it's just a company. Your comment got me thinking because in most situations if it where a company doing things they didn't agree with people could just boycott. Like let's say some make up company started advertising to little girls in a really regressive way, I think many who disagreed wouldn't buy the brand. Yet with lottery, I wonder how many people would condemn the ad but be unable to stop. Not even the type of person we think of as addicted, but just your "regular" person who when leaving the grocery store starts to think well what if this time I would have won. It's creepy and really the lottery has to much control over people to ever be trusted as it's own company. It also makes me think about how many functional addicts there are in the world.
I agree that it shouldn't be socially acceptable, and any population that sees an ad like that should be very willing to never buy from that company again. Then the action they took wasn't a big enough deal. Eventually people will stop when the lotto goes too far. As well, lotto companies should be well regulated, and I think that F2P games should fall under similar regulation. However, those regulations should be explicitly things like requiring multiple confirmations, informing users about the harms of gambling addictions, how to avoid them, and so on. Not regulations on how much people can play, or if gambling is legal in X situation. Yet with lottery, I wonder how many people would condemn the ad but be unable to stop. Not even the type of person we think of as addicted, but just your "regular" person who when leaving the grocery store starts to think well what if this time I would have won.
I don't have a source to back this up directly at the moment, so I'll get back to you, but there's a similar issue in the mobile and F2P gaming department where almost the entire industry is propped up by an incredibly small group of mostly disadvantaged, and (if I'm recalling the article correctly) addiction-prone personalities. Nobody talks about the very real issue of preying on these people through literal psychological gaming, because fixing the problem would cause the entire market to implode under the weight of its own instability. I'm not saying it's useful as a direct analogy to the lottery system, but I find it curious how many systems we put in place societally that we know are intrinsically abusive but don't give enough of a shit about to fix on a fundamental level.
I wonder what "too far" would be though. I think as long as they did it in slow easily digestible pieces, they could go very far. There just has to be a scapegoat so people can tell themselves it's not messed up. I mean we are all in agreement that the billboard was bad but I'm sure plenty of people would just laugh at it. Then there's the fact that if others started boycotting people are more inclined to say well my odds of winning are higher now. They shouldn't...but they will. Then the action they took wasn't a big enough deal. Eventually people will stop when the lotto goes too far.
One thing the article doesn't point out is that even the lottery sponsored scholarships, if run without the problems mentioned, unfairly redistribute wealth. Most students who benefit from the scholarships come from more affluent families while the lottery funds come from the poor. In college I gave a speech for poli sci 101 about lottery reform. I argued that the scholarship requirements should be tightened to free up funds for low income school districts. I thought it went over like a lead balloon at the time but in retrospect I don't think anyone wanted to hear anyone else's speech.