Winning the Lottery

Here in Taiwan there are a number of lotteries, just like the US and Canada. It seems egocentrism helps people everywhere to believe that they will indeed be that 1 in a million and manage to become rich overnight. Meanwhile, the people who do become rich overnight are the people who run the lotteries…Except in Taiwan.

Here in Taipei the city government along with the Bank of Taipei run the local lotteries and they came up with what I can only call an ingenious way of selling the tickets. They license certain individuals to be authorized sellers (much as I suspect we do in Canada), but here the only people licensed to sell lottery tickets are the handicapped!

Yes, you heard me right, they only let physically disabled people sell lottery tickets, with the seller getting their cut of the proceeds instead of some kind of government welfare. The disabled people automatically have work and a way to feed themselves and their families, and the government still gets the huge revenues that come from lottery winnings. It’s a totally win-win situation which turns a social vice into a social boon (the ethics and question of gambling itself aside), and instead of hiding in their homes the disabled are out among the rest of the people of the city being the part of society they should be.

Rob