Powerball

Sunday Ethics Leftovers, 10/21/18: Gibberish! Lottery Schemes! Comment Spam! Fake Protests!

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Good night!

1. Comment moderation ethics. In many online news sites, including those of major newspapers, the comments contain  this spam:

I have received $18429 last month by working online from home. I am a full time college student and just doing this easy home based job in my spare time not more than 3 to 4 hrs a day. This online job is very easy to do and its earnings are awsome than any other office type full time job. Join this home job right now and start making more cash online by just follow instructions on this blog…..

I’m looking at a Boston Herald online article about the World Series, and out of 14 comments, 8 are some version of the text above. First of all, of course, the people who post it are unethical creeps, polluting a discussion forum to pick up some cash. The site operators are just as bad. If you can’t moderate a comments section and keep it readable and on-topic, then don’t have one. Lazy, irresponsible and with no respect for readers—and they wonder why the public doesn’t trust the news media.

2. Here’s a rule of thumb: If a group or individual publicly announces a formal ethics complaint being made against a lawyer or a judge, it an abuse of process and the complaint system. Such ethics complaints should be made privately, since they are investigated and only become public if reason is found to levy sanctions. The announcement of a complaint in a press release or other public forum means that the complainant is trying to impugn an individual without proof, fair gearing or due process.

Judicial Watch has filed a complaint against Christine Blasey Ford’s lawyers,  and released the letter to the bar to the public. There may be some grounds for discipline, though it’s borderline. More unethical, in my view, is Judicial Watch using the ethics complaint process as a political weapon.

3. Signature significance, but of what? Comedian Amy Schumer announced that she won’t appear in any Super Bowl commercials to show her support of Pioneer Pointless NFL Kneeler Colin Kaepernick. What is that? Can you boycott something you haven’t been asked to do? Why is she boycotting the Super Bowl to support a protest against (sort of) racial injustice and police brutality? If people were desperate to have Amy in an ad, what would they have to do? Pass laws letting people resisting arrest to threaten police officers without consequences? Authorize reparations to be paid to anyone with an Elizabeth Warren-like percentage of slave blood? Now, Amy protesting the fact that NFL is making billions by giving young athletes brain disease, that would make some sense.

I think making a pointless and silly announcement like this is signature significance for someone who  will do anything to get publicity and signal their virtue to the social justice warrior faithful. Anyone else would realize how idiotic it is. Continue reading →

Toward An Ethical Lottery

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Powerball

Powerball, like all government-sponsored lotteries, is unethical in every way except that it is not fixed, at least as far as we know. The excitement over lotteries is also depressing. The whole scenario is like something out of a movie about a dystopian culture in which only a lucky draw can rescue citizens from despair and failure—this, in a society of unique personal freedom and opportunities for success. The worst aspect of lotteries—arguably, since there are so many bad things about them—is that they are cruel cheats. As often as not, indeed more often than not, winning a jackpot just provides conclusive proof of why the individual needed a lottery to achieve even temporary affluence. The poor decision-making skills, inadequate education and self-destructive tendencies of many of these winners lead to disaster and  financial distress incredibly quickly; many have lost all of their winnings within five years or less,.

It doesn’t have to be this way. There are people, many of them, who have the skills, ideas, talents and character to achieve great things for themselves and society if they had a little help, like some spare time and extra cash. Some of these people achieve a great deal without the time or cash, but might do more good for society with some help.

I would like to see a merit, ambition and potential-based “lottery,” which individuals enter with an explanation of their aspirations and some valid support for their ability to achieve them. Have the entrance fee reasonable, say, twenty bucks, and allow nominations to be submitted by others for a lesser amount, say, ten. Wait until the pool reaches an appropriate size, like 20 million dollars, and have a selection committee choose finalists to interview. In the end, a group of  worthy candidates are awarded a million dollars (or more, or less—I’m not designing details here) to see what they do with it. There will be no further strings attached.

Naturally there will be frauds and failures; it will be the job of the selection process to try to sniff out and avoid them, but some duds will slip through. Never mind. This would still be a “lottery” that has a fighting chance of benefiting society rather than a lucky few who spent money on an upscale, state-promoted version of the numbers game they should have been investing in a college fund for their kids or in a degree for themselves.

It would have a chance of making life a little better, rather than worse, which is what the current “games” do.

Ethics Quote of the Day: Drew Curtis’ Fark

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Mitt Romney is not a player.

“The stupid tax just doubled.'”

—Drew Curtis’ Fark, in a typically perceptive jibe, at the announcement by Powerball officials that in order to increase the attractiveness of the multi-state super-lottery, it will be raising the levels of jackpots, lowering the odds against winning, and to make more money, doubling the cost of a ticket.

Fark. com was a guilty pleasure before I started an ethics blog, but is now a daily assignment, as Drew Curtis’s clever link collection where he simultaneously uncovers interesting news items and attaches one-line jokes to them has proven to be a rich source of ethics stories.

The various lotteries are all unethical, as state governments too cowardly to pass taxes on those who can afford it duck their duties by enticing the desperate, the poor, the  gambling addicted, and, as Fark correctly notes, the stupid, to spend money they should be saving or spending on necessities. Their foolish objective, nourished by state promotions, is to buy a remote chance at a life-changing stroke of luck—which, statistics say, is more likely to ruin their lives than to fix them. The original argument for these cynical and degrading devices was that they would balance state budgets and improve the schools. You can see how well that is working out.

So, times being tough, the biggest government pocket-picking scheme of them all,  Powerball,  is trying to suck in more people who shouldn’t be playing and who are grossly irresponsible to waste their money, while charging them more to do it. It’s unfair to have a tax on being stupid—being stupid in the 21st Century costs too much already.

But Fark is right. That’s exactly what Powerball is.