{"id":9812,"date":"2012-03-30T13:47:46","date_gmt":"2012-03-30T13:47:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/03\/30\/a-sucker-is-born-every-minute\/"},"modified":"2012-03-30T13:47:46","modified_gmt":"2012-03-30T13:47:46","slug":"a-sucker-is-born-every-minute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/03\/30\/a-sucker-is-born-every-minute\/","title":{"rendered":"A Sucker is Born Every Minute"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">And so is a hustler.&#0160; Before you rush out and buy <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/id\/46907757\/Want_to_Win_the_Lottery_This_Guy_Has_a_System\" target=\"_self\">Richard Lustig&#39;s book<\/a> about winning the lottery, ask yourself a simple question: why is this guy hawking a book if he has the winning lottery method?&#0160; Writing a book is a lot more work than buying lottery tickets.&#0160; His surname smacks of an aptronym: <em>lustig<\/em> in German means &#39;merry.&#39;&#0160; One imagines him laughing all the way to the bank with his book receipts.&#0160; <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">The lottery is<a href=\"http:\/\/money.msn.com\/saving-money-tips\/post.aspx?post=c4e5ddfb-4c34-4627-b0b6-b3cc2770324c\" target=\"_self\"> a fool&#39;s &#39;investment,&#39;<\/a> a self-imposed fool&#39;s tax: you willingly fork over money to the government beyond what they coercively take so that they will have&#0160;even more &#0160;wherewithal for all their wise and wonderful projects.&#0160; And it is regressive: it affects mainly the the poor and <a href=\"http:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/maverick_philosopher\/2010\/08\/innumeracy-in-the-checkout-line.html\" target=\"_self\">innumerate<\/a>, thereby insuring that they will remain poor and innumerate.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">There are moral questions as well.&#0160; It would be nice if we could agree on the principle <em>primum non nocere<\/em>, first do no harm, and nicer still if we could agree that that applies to the state as well as to individuals.&#0160;State-run lotteries harm the populace as <a href=\"http:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/maverick_philosopher\/2009\/06\/good-societies-and-good-lives-on-staterun-lotteries.html\" target=\"_self\">I have argued <\/a>many times over the years.&#0160; <a href=\"http:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/maverick_philosopher\/2012\/02\/state-run-casinos.html\" target=\"_self\">State-run casinos<\/a> are even worse.&#0160; But I know I am but a <em>vox clamantis in deserto<\/em> in a country filled with idiots becoming stupider and cruder by the minute.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And so is a hustler.&#0160; Before you rush out and buy Richard Lustig&#39;s book about winning the lottery, ask yourself a simple question: why is this guy hawking a book if he has the winning lottery method?&#0160; Writing a book is a lot more work than buying lottery tickets.&#0160; His surname smacks of an aptronym: &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/03\/30\/a-sucker-is-born-every-minute\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;A Sucker is Born Every Minute&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,216],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-predicament","category-money-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9812\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}