L.Elon Musk made a provocative and strange offer in the 2024 elections: raffles He is offering $1 million a day to voters who pledge to sign his petition declaring support for the First and Second Amendments. The show raised questions about money in politics, as well as the use of what appears to be a lottery to influence voters’ choices. Later political action committee accepted that he will pick the “winners” in advance, not pick them by chance. So it’s not a lottery after all.

But this was a maneuver appropriate for our time, when elections are big business and the rules of the game are subject to a lot of manipulation: duplicate textsLines lasting hours in some neighborhoods to vote, and of course the mysterious Electoral College, which shapes how campaigns are run and whose votes are considered valuable. Musk’s alleged lottery made sense in America’s betting-obsessed culture; Here it was not enough to see stock markets rise and fall around election times; in its place private prediction markets Speculators are now allowed to bet on election results.

The widespread adoption of gambling, betting and lotteries is a reactionary way of supporting revenues from public goods in an age of austerity and tax cuts. Lotteries, then, reflect and increase inequality, while also promising huge windfalls for individual winners. Indeed, the same political and economic conditions that led to the popularity of lotteries, games of chance, and speculation also heralded a new political era shaped by Donald Trump, who ultimately built a career in this field. casinos. Uncertainty and insecurity have turned us into a nation of gamblers who believe that the wheel of fortune will bring prosperity rather than a collective investment in our democracy.

Lotteries have a long history in the United States, dating back to the colonial period. Later, legislatures were used. lotteries to raise money for poor relief and universities for colonial governments, among other public goods. However, as scandals regarding rigged and unfair games emerged in the 1820s and 1830s, many states took steps to ban public and private lotteries. Reformers criticized Lotteries were seen as regressive and harmful to working people, and state constitutions soon outlawed them.

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After the Civil War, lotteries became popular again. Southern states saw these as an easy way to raise revenue without imposing new taxes. Soon people were buying tickets for the Louisiana State Lottery by mail, not just within the state but across the country. Concerned about the deterioration of public morals and President Benjamin Harrison Congress used its authority to regulate interstate commerce to crack down on state lotteries as “the robbery of the poor” until the end of the 19th century.

However, legal gambling reemerged in the 20th century. Nevada legalized casino gambling during the Great Depression. State lotteries tracked new hampshireIn 1964. Granite State was one of them a small number of states with no income or sales taxesand lottery Proceeds would go to the public school system. The cost of entry was $3, and people dreamed of taking home the winnings tied to the horse race. People can walk away with prizes ranging from a few hundred dollars to $150,000.

People played enthusiastically, and other states followed in the 1970s and 1980s as cities and states became more financially challenged by inflation, low corporate taxes, and a lack of respect for the free market. Politicians were hesitant to increase direct taxes on citizens for fear of losing re-election, and so lotteries became a popular method of raising funds.

Some states have turned to casino gambling as another source of revenue. In 1976, New Jersey voters chose to legalize gambling in Atlantic City; This decision drew casino operators to the storied boardwalk in droves for the next decade. The city was once the first destination for visitors looking to catch the sun and sea on the coast, but the city had fallen on hard times. It became clear that casino gambling was a good bet to stimulate tourism and increase revenues.

In 1984, Trump made his first foray into Atlantic City’s casino business and would expand his empire to three casinos over the next decade. He did well but his casinos didn’t—projects took on excessive debt or failed to make a profit, and each bankruptcies (Trump Taj Mahal in 1991, Trump Plaza and Trump Castle, 1992) before it was eventually shuttered or changed hands. The inhabitants of the city did the same; People’s homes were evacuated to make way for the casinos that separated the city from the beach. But still, tourists flocked to the growing opportunities to get their hands on the big deals. In 1986, Atlantic City welcomed 30 million visitors, making it the nation’s top tourist destination.

In the 1980s, the culture valued the acquisition of wealth, as did President Ronald Reagan’s administration, and the expansion of the financial industry was accompanied by Hollywood movies: Wall Street And working girl. Even when reckless speculation and deregulation led to crashes like the Savings and Loan Crisis “Black Monday” dated October 19, 1987Americans have doubled down on risk-taking and markets. Instead of creating a system aimed at serving the needs of everyone, the logic of the market and competition prevailed and was applied to every aspect of life.

This logic has even spread to the immigration system. Since 1965, the system has greatly limited visas to immigrants who have an immediate family member or employer to sponsor them. But taking advantage of better opportunities, many more people want to immigrate to the USA. In 1990, policymakers decided to create a way for them to obtain visas. Perhaps reflecting the glorification of risk-taking that pervades the culture, they turned it into a game of chance. New Diversity Visa lottery It gave people from all over the world the chance to earn immigrant visas.

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Allocating valuable but scarce goods through lotteries made sense to policymakers for practical reasons; It was cheaper to manage this way than to sift through and evaluate detailed applications by weighing the pros and cons of each candidate. But it was a fortuitous choice: the programme’s uplifting premise, taking chances, also appealed to eager immigrants who felt that luck offered better chances than restrictive bureaucrats.

This lottery, like others, recognizes the randomness that shapes our lives in the 21st century, especially as countries like the United States have reduced social safety nets and embraced deregulation, allowing inequality to shape our society and making rights largely dependent on things beyond our control: our place of birth, our gender, our state of residence. . The resulting insecurity only deepens our sense of insecurity and mistrust.

Luck shapes our lives more than we acknowledge, and the explosion of lotteries and gambling in our society in recent years both acknowledges and reinforces this fact. When hard work and determination don’t consistently bring us stability, it makes sense to turn to lottery tickets and bets in hopes of a big win, even when the odds are against us.

But while lotteries are popular and provide necessary revenues, they are no substitute for sound investments in the public goods on which we all depend, such as schools, healthcare, infrastructure and housing. Such mistrust and uncertainty can undermine our trust in each other, in government, and in democracy itself to provide what we need to survive and thrive. After all, almost everyone who enters the lottery loses; The winner’s luck depends on everyone else’s lack of luck.

Access to the good life seems more dependent on luck than ever before. Now, by sending Trump back to the White House, voters appear to have turned the wheel on democracy itself, leaving us to hope that the chance we have had at building our fragile democracy so far in our history will not run out.

Carly Goodman is an assistant professor of history at Rutgers University-Camden, senior editor of Made by History at TIME, and author of: Dreamland: America’s Immigration Lottery in the Age of Restriction (UNC Press, 2023).

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Read more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of TIME editors.