The Lotto Effect and the Selling of Terrorism

One of my favorite quotes (origin unknown) is: “Someone is going to win Lotto; it just ain’t going to be you”. Of course this is a paradoxical statement, but quite true in the real world. It is a reality that in the practical application of statistics, when the odds of something happening become increasingly infinitesimal, at some point they become the equivalent of zero without actually getting there.  

There is virtually no risk a sane person wouldn’t take if the chance of a negative outcome was only 1 out of 259 million, which just happens to be the odds of winning the Megamillions jackpot. The inverse should also be true, that there is no risk a sane person would take knowing success was also 1 in 259 million, even if that risk is just one dollar.

Yet that’s not what happens. There are millions of perfectly sane people who take that irrational risk every day. The proponents of public lotteries have successfully argued that it is really just a form of entertainment, an innocent application of fantasy, or even (gulp) a social form of charity - a 21^st Century offshoot of a raffle at the church bazaar. Not really.

Actually, it’s simply a form of regressive taxation, since the proceeds in every state go to their general budgets, through the front door or the back. But that’s a topic for another time. Here I want to look at why individuals, disproportionately poor and/or undereducated, find lotteries so attractive…what I call The Lotto Effect.

Regardless of the sensation it engenders, akin to entertainment or fantasy, most all people who purchase a ticket or tickets have an expectation of winning, however small it might be. No one buys a ticket knowing they are going to lose. Even though that expectation might be tucked away in a corner of the brain separated from reality, it is most definitely there.  It is that expectation which is the real product being sold by the public lottery industry and it is accomplished by making the winning a public event.

Suppose in the process of running a lottery no player ever saw or even heard of anyone winning, including actors in commercials pretending they were winners. The only indication of winning would be the sudden drop in the jackpot. Add to that a demonstrably clear explanation of the odds. How long would the lottery be profitable?  You see, the key to selling the lottery is to make obvious the first part of the paradox - someone is going to win - and make invisible the second part - it just ain’t going to be you.

The rocket fast and entirely invasive nature of communication in today’s world makes this sales job easier than it’s ever been.

The Lotto Effect doesn’t just deal with lotteries. We can find it all over the space in which the expectations being “sold” bear little resemblance to reality.  However unlike the lottery, such sales primarily trade on people’s fears: germs, disease, crime, safety e.g.. The ratings and profits that feed news service’s coverage of a tragedy demonstrate that someone will or indeed did experience it, with endless displays of victims’ miseries.  However, there won’t be much coverage (or none) on the fact that there is almost no chance it could happen to you.

One of the more insidious applications of The Lotto Effect is the use of Terrorism as a means of promoting news ratings and political futures.

The true definition of Terrorism is an act of violence or threatened violence which creates a reaction disproportionate to its threat and for no other purpose than the reaction itself.  To the extent the reaction is not disproportionate it is simply a crime.  In other words, if people unaffected by the crime do not react in terror, it is not Terrorism.  

Terrorism certainly existed before the destruction of the World Trade Center, but it was that event that turned it into an industry in the US.  The Beltway Snipers who killed 10 people in 2002 nearly shut down the Mid-Atlantic, an area with about 25 million people. It was indeed domestic Terrorism.  For weeks people hundreds of miles from the crimes questioned whether they should buy gas or let their children go to school. But once the snipers were caught the fear ended.

Not so with the World Trade Center. The Terrorism that began then has not abated to this day. It has, in fact, gotten worse. Why? It is primarily because it is good business, for the media and politicians.

Even the World Trade Center tragedy, which was accomplished with only a little training in aeronautics and some box cutters, had practically no direct affect on the workings of American business, government, or society and yet it profoundly changed all three.  Our entire nation became color-coded, as if we were preparing for the Huns to land on Myrtle Beach.

The handful of domestic crimes in the US since 9/11 that sought to promote Terrorism have been wildly successful, not because of the damage and misfortune they caused, but rather because of the extraordinary publicity they received, and the use of those tragedies by politicians.

The media and politicians have fed the fear of terrorists for their own ends. The goal is to make every American fear that they and their loved ones are at risk.  The Lotto Effect, that this could happen to you, was front and center, never mind that out of 330 million people you maybe have a better chance of being licked to death by puppies.

Donald Trump has fashioned nearly his entire campaign around promoting such fears to gain support and, regrettably, it has worked. Even as the few terrorist attacks this Nation has experienced since 9/11 have been domestic, he has focused his campaign on foreign and non-Christian nationals as the source for an anxiety he is working to create. The media, primarily interested in profitable ratings, unwittingly helps him and other Terrorism profiteers at every turn.

The Lotto Effect manipulates too many Americans, the proof of which is the very existence Trump himself.

As a Nation we can’t seem to focus on the real risks. The American public is more concerned about a deranged individual spreading a few pressure cookers about than they are with the deranged leader of North Korea having access to nuclear weapons. Everyday gun violence gets only spotty coverage. Neither North Korea nor gun proliferation demonstrates the The Lotto Effect because people’s expectations are so low, even as the reality of being affected (by guns) or the massive affect of a threat (nuclear weapons) is strikingly real.

I recently toured the 9/11 Museum and Memorial in NYC.  It is an incredible exhibit and fitting testimony to the innocents that were killed and injured in that attack.  I couldn’t help wondering, though, in the light of all that has happened since; the lifestyle changes, government controls, massive surveillance, the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, the concentrations of wealth and power, social divisiveness, public and personal anxieties, and trillions of dollars, if this Museum was as much a testimony to how we surrender to Terrorism than how we grow from it.

Politicians are eviscerated anytime they even hint that small scale attacks meant to terrorize cannot be stopped entirely. Ask John Kerry who suggested such in 2004.  The fact is that as long as we react irrationally (Lotto Effect) and the perpetrators get almost endless news coverage the incentive for such attacks is baked in. The only way to neutralize Terrorism is not to be terrorized. The real winners of Lotto are the ones who never play.