Winning vs. Playing the Lottery

When freedom fades, selling a hopeful ticket is a scoundrel's paradise.

My story is not unusual. I am the descendant of courageous people that abandoned their native homes and villages in Europe and immigrated to the United States. One of my great grandfathers immigrated from Denmark at the age of 2. Upon reaching adulthood, he studied law, passed the bar, and became a lawyer. He achieved that distinction prior to the requirement of attending law school. His career trajectory took him from lawyer, to mayor, to state attorney general to an appointment to the Federal bench by President Warren G. Harding.

Another great grandfather immigrated from Scotland. He journeyed to the grain rich area of North Dakota known as the Red River valley. At the turn of the 20th century, he earned a patent on an automatic grain measuring device. He served his community in business as well as the town council.

Yet another great grandfather, whose origins are from Norway, was born on the East Coast of the United States and followed the westward expansion to the Dakota Territory. He created a savings and loan bank and financed a portion of the growing agriculture business of the Dakotas prior to them being admitted as States. Finally, a grandfather, whose origins are from Norway, began his family as a chauffeur. He leveraged those humble beginnings into entrepreneurship and moved to a small town in Northwest Minnesota where he operated a granite works company.

Life in the early 20th century was not easy for my ancestors nor the millions of others who immigrated to an expanding United States of America. But they all had one thing in common. They all had a sense that they had won the lottery. Not the Mega Millions or Powerball lotteries of today, but the freedom lottery. It is said that people don't quit companies, they quit bad leadership. The same goes with immigration, people don't leave countries, they flee bad governance. In the 1800 and 1900s, The United States became that "shining city on the hill" where success and outcome were not guaranteed, however the freedom to pursue happiness was. As the old European political systems were crumbling under the weight of elite governments, economic incompetence, and industrialization, the United States was thriving.

The efforts of my grandparents as well as the entire generation that secured the American way of life by defeating the Axis of Evil in World War II, created the baby boomer generation and the greatest expansion of the middle class the world has ever known. I am the product of that generation. As such, by luck of birth, I was a de facto freedom lottery winner. I was born a citizen of the freest country on earth at a time of unprecedented economic expansion. My grandparents, parents and teachers all made it abundantly clear that my fortune was due to my citizenship of the United States and that no other country on earth offered that guarantee of freedom. In fact, in the early 1980’s, much was taught regarding the antithesis of the United States, the Soviet Union, and how its iron fist suppressed the freedoms Soviet citizens.

In less than 70 years, the United States transitioned from the country where one's citizenship represented winning the freedom lottery, to the country that now peddles a mere chance at freedom in the form of a lottery ticket. 45 states now have some form of lottery and the revenue raised from this practice is well into the billions. This trend started in the 70s with a few states, and by the 1990s, most states were in the lottery business. Most recently, a billion-dollar Powerball winning ticket was sold in California. That individual played a game of chance and won their freedom.

For citizenship in these United States, is no longer the equivalent of winning the freedom lottery. Our governing document, the Constitution, has been under constant attack over the past 70 years. The Bill of Rights is crumbling under the weight of government oppression, starting first and foremost with our First Amendment right of free speech. United States citizens are burdened with some of the highest tax rates on the planet. On top of that burden, citizens spend countless hours and thousands of dollars trying to interpret and comply with the world's most complicated tax code.

It is not surprising that a citizenry shackled by a greedy and wholly uncaring government apparatus, would see playing the lottery as a chance to escape their bondage. Even though the odds of winning the Powerball are 1 in 292.2 million, the freedom allure of winning draws many to purchase a ticket. Winning the lottery, in the eyes of most who purchase a ticket, is not about the money, but what the money can buy. Surely, lottery ticket buyers dream of purchasing a new house or taking a grand vacation. But mostly, they dream of removing the chains of bondage that tie them to their labor. There is great freedom in wealth.

Elon Musk, with his “f*** you” billions can say what is truly on his mind because he has the financial security to back it. For most of us hoi polloi, every uttered (or written) word that runs afoul established group think risks, at a minimum, excommunication from work, family, and social circles; at worst, brands one an insurrectionist that may end with incarceration. The power governments have at limiting freedoms come from the burdens they place upon citizenship that require time and treasury to comply. Most U.S. citizens must work to earn the right to remain a “free” citizen. Millionaires, billionaires, and lottery winners don't.

My grandparents and great grandparents would have never dreamed of purchasing a chance at freedom, they lived with a sense that they were already free. As the prophetic Ronald Reagan said:

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free." 

What Ronald Reagan didn't tell us is that the freedom stories of the past that we hand down to our children and grandchildren, will not come from the comfortable confines of our homes, but from and occupied land whose politicians sold our sovereignty in the form of debt to our greatest adversaries. And, like the Kingdom of Judah, in 597 BC that failed to pay their debt to Babylon, a reckoning is coming our way that will be of biblical proportions.

The easiest approach for freedom and soul crushing governments to placate the masses is to sell them a chance at freedom versus following the dictates laid out in our governing documents that guarantee it. One would think that I am criticizing the government. To the contrary, government instituted among men, always migrates towards tyranny. My criticism lays firmly at the feet of a citizenry that accepts buying a chance at freedom over demanding freedom for all. Government, after all, is the reflection of its people not the reverse. A nation that “Netflix and chills” while hoping about the Monopoly board game of life, ever tossing the dice and hoping the draw the Chance Card that wins them their freedom, gets the government they deserve.

A nation sold on purchasing a chance at freedom verses demanding it from their elected officials will also believe that our conquering foe will, in Cyrus the Great fashion, allows us to resume our life of abundant consumerism while maintain our right to petition our overlords for redress of grievances.  Anyone want to buy a chance at that outcome?