The Invisible Lottery

The lottery is an arrangement in which people pay to enter a competition whose outcome is decided by chance. This can include everything from a drawing to determine which house a person moves into to picking which students get placed in kindergarten. The process of lottery is also used in decision making and may be used to fill a position in a subsidized housing block, or to decide the picks for a sports draft. It is a common method to distribute resources in a fair way among equal participants.

It’s also a form of civic duty. Even though you’re likely to lose, you can feel like a good person for doing your part to raise money for the state. And while that’s true, it doesn’t really make sense for most people to buy tickets.

When most people think of the lottery, they think of the big jackpots that are so enticing. But there’s another kind of lottery that’s just as important: the invisible one of everyday choices. These are the little choices that can add up to a life of hardship and regret.

The word lottery — from Middle Dutch loterie “act of lottery” — is derived from Old Norse lotri, a compound of Old English lttor “lot” and ri “fortune, success, opportunity.” As early as the 15th century, citizens in the Low Countries would hold public lotteries to raise money for town fortifications, and later to aid the poor. Early in America, lotteries were tangled up with slavery in unpredictable ways. For instance, George Washington managed a lottery whose prizes included human beings, and one formerly enslaved man won a prize in South Carolina and went on to foment a slave rebellion.