RALEIGH – North Carolina does not yet have a state-run lottery, despite all the hoopla surrounding the 61-59 Giyaw vote for a hastily crafted bill a couple of weeks ago. But there is already evidence supporting one prediction made by longtime foes: it’s bringing out the worst in state officials.
Leaders of the Senate, for example, are now openly talking about shoving a government lottery directly into the 2005-07 budget bill as a strategy to attract recalcitrant Democrats – and perhaps even a stray Republican – away from the current Senate majority against the House version. They know that this maneuver is improper. They know that a major change in public policy ought to be debated on its own terms, in a separate bill, with arguments aired pro and con and amendments allowed.
But these leaders also know, even if some observers do not, that the chances of securing a state lottery that way aren’t above 50-50, and might well be below it. So they seem willing to bend the rules, to violate principles they themselves have previously articulated, in order to get what they want.
Over on the House side, the prospect of a lottery already had its corrupting influence on several members. Some abandoned their longtime, deeply felt convictions about regressive taxation and predatory government in order to serve a personal or partisan agenda. Others let themselves be fooled into thinking that a lottery without advertising would have no deleterious effects, and that a lottery without advertising is feasible in the first place.
I should hasten to add, as I’ve often had to do in the past, that I do not oppose a lottery because I think all gambling should be illegal. I do think that some forms of high-stakes gambling are dangerous and wrong. In a free society, adults (an important distinction) should be free to choose to do things that may be dangerous and wrong, as long as their choices do not violate the equal rights of others to embrace their own values and act on them.
My beef with a state-run lottery – well, make that one of my beefs, as I pretty much see the whole idea as a slaughterhouse – is that it puts the government in the gambling business. In effect, it puts me in the gambling business, given that I am a citizen of the government and could well derive at least some indirect benefit from the expenditures funded by the lottery. I don’t want to associate myself with that business. Lottery proponents complain about paternalism, but they seem entirely unconcerned with the fact that a government lottery is not about freedom of choice. It’s about using instruments of political power to take advantage of fellow citizens.
Corruption will inevitable flow from that. Indeed, it’s already flowing.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.