Lottery? More like... nottery.

Just when I thought I'd never get a cool hook to rant about state-run lotteries, my favorite professional sports team steps up to the plate crease. Earlier this week, the Boston Bruins announced a cross-promotional campaign with the State of Massachusetts to sell Bruins lottery tickets.

I've long maintained that states should get out of the lottery business. It's wrong twofold. First, a lottery isn't anywhere close to a governmental function. Lotteries don't enable equality, they're extremely non-essential and they're not even sectors in which the government can do a better job than the free market. And second, the government decries gambling as immoral in the same breath that it sets itself up as bookie. There are matters in which the government rightfully claims a monopoly: driving rules, war and imprisonment come to mind. But in general, if something is okay for the government to do, it should be okay for the private sector to give it a try. Businesses can even provide private police forces, more or less. If states want to run a lottery — which they shouldn't — they should at least let businesses get a piece of the action.

State governments run lotteries because they're lucrative, but it's a shell game: governments should be open about the funds they need and the taxes they enact to raise them. This form of taxation also happens to be fairly regressive. That many states direct their gambling profits to particularly feel-good causes like education doesn't excuse the fact. In fact, it's a bit of an insult to raise school money from a disproportionately under-educated demographic.

Rational, schmational

My biggest problem with the free market is that humans are not rational creatures. We are influenced at least as much by emotion and impulse as we are by logic. The free market might work great on Vulcan, but here on Earth, people do irrational, self-damaging things like get addicted to drugs, pollute the air they breathe, and listen to Ashlee Simpson’s music.

Caligula’s Horse is right that our health care is rationed. Right now, the general way we ration is by providing more and better health care to wealthier individuals. I think it’s somewhat legitimate for conservatives to argue that opening up access to health care to the poor would put a strain on our already-limited medical resources. Doctors and hospitals would have to treat people who currently don’t get treatment. I disagree with the people who contend that the solution is to continue denying treatment to the poor.

A better solution would be to open more medical schools, nursing schools and hospitals. Law schools and lawyers are a dime a dozen (more law schools are opening every day and we need more lawyers like we need a hole in the head), and yet medical schools are still relatively few and far between. This is not because we don’t need more doctors. Rather, law and business schools tend to be cash cows for universities and are relatively low-cost institutions, whereas medical schools are very, very expensive.

Anyway, I digress. My point is that the free market has been tested as a means for supplying health care, and it has failed. Let's see if government can help.

Healthy, Wealthy, or Wise? Pick one.

I have a cold. It's been getting progressively worse for the last few days. I've been having trouble focusing on work, and instead I've been spending most of my time marveling at how much mucus I can produce. I've also been hoping that I won't need to see a doctor...the health insurance I get through my job doesn't kick in until next week.

Health care and health insurance seem to be on everyone's mind these days. A couple of weeks ago I saw the protesters on the National Mall expressing their outrage at the prospect of government-sponsored health care. I saw some interesting protest signs, including the following:

• "Spread my work ethic, not my wealth!"
• "Hitler: 6,000,000 Jews, Obama: 300,000,000 Americans."
• "I'll keep my guns, religion, and money...you keep the change."

Each of those is troubling in its own way. The first one implies that only lazy people would need help from the government. The second one somehow compares mass extermination with the provision of health care. The third one is just ignorant (although I've always liked the "keep the change" line).

I think it's okay to worry about the government becoming too large and unwieldy, and about taxes being too high. However, when I think about things that the government *should* provide, health care is always near the top of the list. In fact, for me, the top 5 most important functions of government are:

1. Safety and law enforcement (military, police, courts, etc.)
2. Education
3. Health care
4. Infrastructure (roads, plumbing, electricity)
5. Environmental protection

(Number 6, by the way, would probably be social security.)

Providing all of those things, and doing it well, is no easy task. Sometimes governments fail at effectively delivering needed services. But if it's a choice between getting those services from government or not getting them at all, I'd choose the former. There are people out there who have absolutely nowhere to turn for medical care. Are some of them in that predicament because they're lazy? Probably. But some of them aren't lazy, and are going to suffer (or worse) because nobody will help them. I can't have that on my conscience...I'm still feeling super guilty over the cutting board I accidentally stole from Ikea a few weeks ago (long story).

I guess my point is, if government doesn't exist to provide for the most basic needs of its citizens, why does it exist at all? What need is more basic than the need to survive?