COMMENTARY

The mind-boggling Powerball jackpot

High-rollers get the publicity, but casinos, bookies and lotteries batten on those of low and average income. Few players ever beat the game.

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The Swansea couple, Sheila and Antone Botelho, hit Rhode Island's largest Powerball jackpot for $151.9 million dollars.

This one big killing, this staggering amount, creates a gambling frenzy bordering on mass hysteria.

Indeed, the astronomical sum of the prize prompts a question which has long intrigued students of gambling: whether players prefer to stake their money on a small probability of winning a large prize, or on a large probability of winning a small prize.

Prof. John Cohen asserts that if players could be quite sure of winning one of two possible prizes, almost everyone would prefer it, provided it was large enough in relation to his money values, however much larger the uncertain prize might be.

The catch is that the prize has to be large enough. For instance, a blue-collar worker might well prefer a big chance of winning $10,000, rather than a very small chance of winning $100,000; whereas the millionaire might prefer the more uncertain prize because $10,000 means little or nothing to him.

The more money we have, the less we value a given increase. That's why the low-income in society are the heavy lottery players. For them, winning makes a big difference. Indeed, concerned lawmakers think of lotteries as a kind of sneaky tax on the poor, even though some of the state gambling money eventually goes back to provide welfare for the impoverished.

A lottery differs from games of chance and from betting on one of several outcomes of an event insofar as it is totally devoid of any element of skill, and prizes are distributed by a randomizing device. But the idea of luck is found in all of them.

Emerson tells us, "Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect." But the Italian proverb, "An ounce of luck is better than a pound of wisdom" disputes this.

Luck has two meanings: one, an unearned advantage, that is, something fortunate befalling a person without any effort on his part; and the other, that what happens is unexpected, against the odds, unpredictable, intrinsically fickle and capricious.

For the religious person who believes in the governance of all things in the universe by divine Providence, there is no such thing as luck. Or more properly, what appears to be luck to humans, actually falls in some way under God's causative power. So Lactantius could say, "Ignorance of causes forged the idea of fortune."

People tend to believe they have stores of luck that can be depleted and replenished. If, therefore, one of two players has been winning for a time, he may think he has used up his luck, while his opponent's store has remained intact. Gamblers also talk about "streaks" of winning and losing, and the laws of probability suggest that streaks are indeed real.

High-rollers get the publicity, but casinos, bookies and lotteries batten on those of low and average income. Few players ever beat the game. Hence the adage: "Bookies never cheat, they just wait." High-roller Nick the Greek remarked, "Gamblers never get rich but bookies do – slowly – on the sure percentage."

Hope abounds in youth. So does the feeling of being lucky. With increasing age this feeling modulates. Women generally feel luckier than men, but when it comes to the use of lucky charms, numbers, colors, systems, rituals, etc., there are no sex differences.

Neanderthal man gambled and so does 60 percent of American adults. Yet psychologists say there is no such thing as a gambling instinct. They do concede that the normal (as opposed to the compulsive) gambling impulse is part of the human drive for self-expression. By taking a chance, whether it be an adventure, a daring sport, or simply a bet, we assert our independence and shake our puny fists at Fate.

Moreover, gambling provides an outlet for those locked into humdrum, boring lives. It enables them to cast off temporarily the harsh realities of a cause-and-effect society, and furnishes, a psychiatrist says, a "form of maturbatory pleasure." While life teaches us there is no such thing as a free lunch, gambling lets people dream of getting something for nothing.

Finally, belief in luck has social value. It allays discontent. If a person makes a fortune merely because he is believed by others to be lucky, and not because he has the right connections or any special merit, then he is safe from green-eyed envy. Someone else might have been lucky.

Similarly, the unsuccessful need not lose face; they are merely unlucky. The proverb, "Fools have all the luck" is balm to life's losers. The words, "I had bad luck" are more comforting than the words, "I deserved it."

There are those who maintain that gambling is a painless way of raising money for churches, service groups and the state, and so can be truly charitable. But we are only kidding ourselves to pretend that donations which are part of gambling losses are equivalent to self-conscious and purposeful support of worthy causes.

Optimists predict that the lure of gambling will diminish as American life gets fuller. Citizens, finding greater challenge in their jobs, their families, their sports, their reading and their travels, will no longer have to resort to the artificial excitement of gambling. So that strange and beguiling itch to risk will disappear.

Don't bet on it.

Rev. Joseph L. Lennon, O.P. is a resident of St. Thomas Aquinas Priory, Providence College.