The casting of lots to determine fates, or to give away property and slaves, has a long record in human history, including several instances in the Bible. Lotteries in which players pay to select numbers or have machines randomly spit out positions are more recent; they first appeared in the 17th century, with lottery games financed by both the government and licensed promoters, for everything from municipal repairs to supplying a battery of guns for the defense of Philadelphia to rebuilding Faneuil Hall in Boston.
State governments rely on lottery revenues and are constantly under pressure to increase the size of prizes and the number of available games. Yet lottery decisions are made piecemeal, and the resulting system of governance offers little or no overview of how the game functions or how it affects people’s lives. Moreover, the decisionmaking process is highly fragmented, with responsibility and authority vested in the executive and legislative branches of each state, making it difficult to build a coherent gambling policy.
The lottery’s most fundamental flaw is that it is a form of exploitation: It draws heavily from the poor and middle classes and rewards certain socioeconomic groups at the expense of others. Research has found that, for instance, men play more than women; blacks and Hispanics play far less than whites; and the elderly and the young play much less than their proportional shares of the population. In addition, the wealthy play more than middle-class and low-income families.