by Peter Löcke //
Win! Win! Win!
I had my first gambling experience as a young boy. The fairground barker who promised me winnings, winnings, winnings was actually right. I even won the jackpot. I won the main prize in the form of an oversized panda bear. Unfortunately, the badly stitched giant animal disintegrated just as quickly as my dream of instant happiness. As soon as I returned home, my father confessed that he had secretly bought the cuddly toy behind my back for thirty German marks. The fact that I only had rivets in my little hands had made me ask critical questions after my spontaneous euphoria. My mistake.
In retrospect, this was a lesson that proved to be a stroke of luck. I have enough passions, addictions and desires. There's no need to add gambling to the list. If I invest five euros in a restaurant's slot machine on rare occasions today, it's for a mundane reason. I've just left a conversation at the bar, annoyed. The explanation "I'm going to gamble" seems more tactful to me at such times than explaining the real reason for my escape.
Enough of my own experiences. I switch to the position of the observer. One in 140 million! That's how vanishingly small the probability of winning the jackpot in the state lottery is. And yet, week after week, millions of people live the stochastically almost impossible dream of winning the main prize in the lottery. The reality? There is only one big winner. That is the state itself [1], which regularly takes half of the money invested by lucky players. What's more. The German state is cynical enough to offer gambling, to profit from gambling and at the same time to warn against gambling as a health hazard.
Speaking of health. Why didn't Jens Spahn and later Karl Lauterbach come up with the great idea of our Austrian neighbors? During the vaccination campaign, they relied on high dreams as well as low-threshold incentives. To increase the vaccination rate, the ORF organized a nationwide lottery [2]. For just one spade, participants had the chance to win a dream home and other lucrative prizes. Theoretical bungalow or practical bratwurst? In this exceptional case, I would probably also opt for a lottery booth instead of a bratwurst booth. To avoid any misunderstandings: the ORF vaccination lottery does not refer to the Biontech lottery [3].
Is Germany belatedly remembering Austria's marketing? That is not certain. What is certain is that the Bundeswehr is now also considering a lottery [4]. A compulsory lottery is to be introduced to increase the number of recruits. How does this work in practice? Presumably like this: out of one hundred 18-year-olds who receive and complete a questionnaire from the Bundeswehr and send it back, seventy are drawn and then drafted.
The lottery proposal is currently the subject of heated debate and I am not the only one to be displeased by it. My criticism is directed at the conditions of participation. It seems to me that the nature of a lottery has not been understood here. A lottery is voluntary. This would be compulsory. In a lottery, you want your own ticket to be drawn. Here, the players hope that the chalice of winnings will pass them by. Who wants to play Russian roulette in the face of the real threat of war on European soil? Then there are only losers, losers, losers!
What do I care about what I just said? I'll play again tomorrow. Then I'm going on the go. Then I'll play the capitalist game Monopoly with a few friends. My standards for this classic board game have changed over the years. I no longer have to win. I don't believe in a bank error in my favor any more than I believe in a hotel in Schlossallee. A rented apartment in Badstrasse, some play money for real life and the "get out of jail free" card for my own safety are enough for me.
If the TV is on in the background and a political puffer tries to sell me alternative solutions, I will thankfully do without. I was sold this bear when I was a child.
Articles identified by name do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the publisher.
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2 Responses
The question is whether such a lottery procedure can be reconciled with the principle of equality in Article 3 of the Basic Law. If the answer is yes, it would have to be logical to allow women, for example, to be discriminated against again.
Whether someone is male or female is also decided by drawing lots. By Mother Nature herself. Well, parents can play tricks. But you also get parents by lot, you can't choose them.
If I were 18 again, I would say with a similarly distorted expression as Marcel Reich-Ranicki once did: "I won't accept this award."
The owners of the lottery booths always win! At least more than 99.9 % of the players. Of course, they have to give something to 0.1 % of the winners, otherwise nobody would play. In the age of nuclear war, this has changed dramatically. Nobody wins anymore. Not even the lottery stall owners, who still tell themselves that because they are sitting in the Bahamas or somewhere else. But does that really help in the nuclear winter? The lottery ticket sellers sit in a big pool of gasoline and throw matches at each other. And we all watch them do it. If just one ignites, everything blows up. What do we actually win at the "game"? Oh yes, the lottery stall owners protect us from the other lottery stall owners, who are supposed to be even worse than they are. The nuclear error calculated in. The destruction of civilization. As Albert Einstein said: "...he did not know with what weapons the third world war would be fought, but the fourth world war would be fought with sticks and stones." How long will humanity continue to watch this completely crazy game of the lottery stall owners? And now, at eighteen, you can draw lots to decide whether you want to sit further or closer to the atomic blitz. Madness. If humanity still exists in a hundred years' time, this age will be known as the age of idiots. The first age where idiocy broke out collectively.