Neighborhood Lottery

Speaker 1 0:00

No, it's. When I'm saying these are your cans, I'm saying they're your earphones, but what does it mean?

Speaker 2 0:05

normally Is it butter. I think you have to clarify.

Speaker 1 0:08

But oh, but you mean like if you're saying look at the can on that lady, can you just talking about like one boob yeah?

Speaker 2 0:13

Well, I thought it was cans.

Speaker 3 0:16

No, but a can on that, wait, I thought. Okay, I thought, that's what am I off? Cans is boob.

Speaker 2 0:22

Maybe, one can is but and two cans is boob.

Speaker 3 0:25

Okay, I've got. Urban dictionary says it is.

Speaker 1 0:33

Wow, I have been incorrectly complimenting people but it's plural cans.

Speaker 2 0:39

Yeah, oh nice can nice cans on that broad.

Speaker 3 0:48

Okay, it comes from them being brawless. Also that brawless.

Speaker 2 0:52

Oh, it's more. Can canny.

Speaker 3 0:55

This is not gonna be on that. How is?

Speaker 1 0:57

that it might be.

Speaker 2 1:08

We have a guest here today with us we do this is unusual. Do you want to introduce yourself, owen Reich? I Don't know how to do. What is I? Never?

Speaker 1 1:16

that's neither an introduction nor an invitation. Yeah Well, yes, we do have a guest welcome.

Speaker 3 1:23

Welcome to the podcast, oh yeah, great to be here a long time listener.

Speaker 2 1:28

Yeah, I'm guest.

Speaker 3 1:29

I had a, I had a spirit when Adam first introduced me to the podcast.

Speaker 5 1:33

I listened to a number of episodes and love them, and then I dropped off. Yeah, you'll come back.

Speaker 1 1:39

You'll be back. That's how podcast goes.

Speaker 2 1:45

Yeah, jump in for a while, jump out because the beautiful thing about solutions is that they're evergreen. You can listen to the first episode. It's the same, because no one's actually done any of the solutions yet. We still have all the stupid problems. So right, when you have a solution for us today.

Speaker 1 1:59

Oh, do you want to dive right in? Welcome to solutions from the multiverse everyone. I'm scott moppin, I'm adam bros. As we said earlier, we have a guest today. We're terrible at introducing our own podcast, so we have to remember whenever we do focus on it. Yeah, but today we have oh, and no one's coming to bring us the solution. Adam, you don't know what it is. I have no idea. I am.

Speaker 2 2:16

We're usually a podcast where every week we have a new solution, and this time, oh, and just bringing it to us Sweet.

Speaker 3 2:21

Do you?

Speaker 2 2:22

want to dive right in and tell us what's up. Well, I'm gonna give you one in your background and everything as we go.

Speaker 3 2:27

Okay the only bit of background that I'm going to give is this Adam and I know each other and we have Some overlap in terms of what we really get into To a lot of around learning, education, motivation, those kinds of things. Okay, um, and you know, adam was like, hey, you should join the podcast sometime. But you know, we kind of set the like main things I care about to the side and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna come up with something new that I don't actually know anything about and that's what.

Speaker 2 2:59

I did today and I gave no guidance like that he decided I just said you ever? I just said do you have a solution that no one's ever heard of?

Speaker 3 3:05

and he said I yeah, yeah, yeah and I said great come, come on, okay, perfect. So I I made up my own game and I said let me figure something.

Speaker 2 3:14

So this is not gonna be like education or urbanism.

Speaker 3 3:17

Oh, this is cool.

Speaker 2 3:17

Okay.

Speaker 3 3:18

That's right, I did like three or four hours and satisfy your own curiosity.

Speaker 5 3:23

Yeah, because one and I vibe on urbanism too.

Speaker 2 3:25

We just happen to be like total urbanism as well so it's interesting.

Speaker 3 3:28

Yeah, yeah, okay. So what is?

Speaker 2 3:30

it. What's the, what's the bring it.

Speaker 3 3:32

Well, I heard that there was a big jackpot. I'm listening lottery jackpot. Okay, yeah, you didn't know. We're giving out a billion dollar jackpot.

Speaker 1 3:42

Yeah, we should have.

Speaker 2 3:45

We got that big podcast money rolling in. Wait, what billions wait can we get?

Speaker 1 3:50

those billions, billions of dollars here on our.

Speaker 2 3:52

I often do lie like that. I pure fraudulent.

Speaker 5 3:57

Yeah, we gotta stop that, so wait.

Speaker 1 3:58

So I'm like looking up what is the. What is the latest jackpot?

Speaker 3 4:00

Okay.

Speaker 5 4:01

It exceeds one billion.

Speaker 3 4:03

Okay, it exceeds one billion fairly frequently.

Speaker 2 4:07

So you're talking about lottery jackpot like this, you're talking about the government lottery, yeah.

Speaker 1 4:11

I just want to know how do I win?

Speaker 3 4:13

Well, I heard that come out and what it made me think of. So how do you win?

Speaker 1 4:17

How do I win this jackpot? Yeah?

Speaker 3 4:18

the way you win the jackpot is that's not the current one, but you know, since somebody could listen to this podcast anytime it might be okay. You just go into a licensed Like gas station, convenience store. Somebody's licensed to sell a lot of tickets. Yeah, right, you're gonna pick some numbers. I think there's like a pick five, pick seven, right, not? In fact, I've never played. I tried to buy a ticket this morning for the lottery and yeah so this is a lottery solution.

Speaker 3 4:45

This is a lottery solution. So I I saw you know Adam says, yeah, we come up with some solution that nobody thought of before. And I thought, oh well, that's my businesses and my ideas, but I'm not gonna do those. And instead I heard about this lottery ticket and I thought, a billion dollars, that's kind of I don't like that, something about that I didn't like, and here's what I like. I here's what I thought. I remembered all the studies that came out about how 70 Plus now, I don't know, you know how well that holds up, but 70 plus of lottery jackpot winners are bankrupt in two to three years.

Speaker 1 5:22

Oh I am. I'm so happy we're talking about this, yeah.

Speaker 3 5:25

Really what yeah why.

Speaker 1 5:27

Just because I I mean, I'm aware of that fact too, that they're like winning the lottery makes you miserable, and I always want to dig into it. I've been never kind of odd right, so I'm very happy we're talking about this.

Speaker 3 5:36

Yes, yeah, it strikes you, you know it's. It's a theme, I think in other places too, of life where you think folks get lucky, uh, they get a big reward. They don't know what or how to do with it, and it makes you wonder could we have done something different with a billion dollars? Yeah, then given it to somebody who it ruined their life and it all just went to like yachts and strippers or something like that.

Speaker 2 6:03

Yeah, but all those yacht makers and strippers yeah, I was gonna say the jet ski salesman they're, they're loving it.

Speaker 1 6:11

They're like give more dumb gums a billion dollars, please.

Speaker 3 6:16

So this is where we have values and what we want to be economy to look like, but anyways, so that's what stuck with me A billion dollars yeah it doesn't work out, well, is there a better way? So that was so what's the solution?

Speaker 1 6:28

All right, so the answer is no, there's no better way. Thank you for bringing this and turns out everything's great. That's the way it should be, All right so imagine imagine imagine a universe where every.

Speaker 3 6:44

So five to ten years, your whole neighborhood, everyone around you say like the 500 people and your name, five to 1500 people.

Speaker 3 6:53

In your neighborhood that you have some proximity to things in common with winds. Tens of millions of dollars for Something you vote on and want in your community, like right here, adam once more like a boulevard, more trees out here, slower cars. Right makes a lot of sense to improve his property value a lot, make the neighborhood nicer, healthier, um, so you would get that. And then also every person in that community would be handed a life changing amount of money. Not life changing in a bad way, not like a hundred grand or something.

Speaker 2 7:27

Something made it. You could totally change something about your life.

Speaker 1 7:30

Exactly a conceivable amount.

Speaker 3 7:32

Wow, fix your, fix your problems. In fact, 200 thousand dollars that's what 200 thousand do we call?

Speaker 2 7:36

Is this called like neighborhood lottery. What do we call this? Neighborhood, so your whole neighborhood wins the lottery, and so your neighborhood gets a.

Speaker 5 7:45

Democratically, if I'm, if I, if I could resay it back to you so I understand it.

Speaker 3 7:49

So, because it's really cool already, I really like this yeah, so so it's cool because I cheated, but we'll get to that.

Speaker 1 7:55

Cheating in the lottery. Oh no, we got to report. This is, this is going all the way to the state house. Yeah this is fbi, as we pull off our masks. This whole thing's been in operation lottery.

Speaker 5 8:06

There's no podcats officials, we're lottery people.

Speaker 1 8:08

We're agents from the lottery police. We got you Owen.

Speaker 3 8:13

This is a reality tv show called lotto cops, people bust in people have played the lottery like do you know there's a movie about who's?

Speaker 2 8:22

the actor in the breaking bad. Yes, I was thinking that there's a movie about this. Wait, you guys want to?

Speaker 3 8:27

say the lottery. How do you?

Speaker 1 8:28

both know a movie I don't know.

Speaker 2 8:30

This is it's, it's it's with the breaking bad guy which one, the Grandston or? Jesse Okay, yeah, and he and his wife tried to. They have some scheme to hack the lottery.

Speaker 1 8:41

I've heard of this and they have to go by like 80,000 lottery tickets or something.

Speaker 3 8:45

Yeah, I don't. I'm sure they becomes him. And some kid at Harvard figured out the same hack and they were winning a lot.

Speaker 2 8:53

So, anyway, that's not what this is. You know that from statistically there, because it's random, there are actually people who win the lottery twice, which is crazy. But if you think about it mathematically, it's inevitable, like it has to be the case Like if there weren't people who won it twice, you would start to think that it wasn't random.

Speaker 3 9:10

Like it's fairly common to get struck by lightning.

Speaker 1 9:13

Yeah, I was gonna say, imagine being the guy whose probability is the lightning strike, and you're talking to the guy who's just keep winning the lottery.

Speaker 2 9:19

I just can't, I can't not. You're all tweaked out, your hair's all standing on end all the time I should play the lottery more like statistically like you're talking about you either win or lose.

Speaker 1 9:28

That's a 50-50 shot, right.

Speaker 2 9:29

So you just go and do it Right. If I play it twice, I should win.

Speaker 1 9:33

At least that's how math works.

Speaker 2 9:36

This is not the gambler's foul. This is just a new shot. You know what the odds actually are. See, you've created a new foul. The odds are closer to one in like 290 million.

Speaker 3 9:46

Oh my god, that's not that bad To win.

Speaker 5 9:47

Powerball like a national one. Yeah, that's not that bad, but wait, wait, that's why I'm whined back to your solution? Because I think it's so cool.

Speaker 2 9:53

So there's a bunch of questions here that I have about like how it works and stuff. But basically, if I understand you right, instead of one person winning the lottery like a billion dollars or 500 million dollars, 300 million dollars and it's just ruining their life instead you have, like, this neighborhood win the same amount of money but they get some fantastic like civic improvement that was sort of decided on democratically and each person has a life changing amount of money like $250,000 given to them.

Speaker 5 10:18

Yeah.

Speaker 2 10:19

So then nobody's life is ruined. That neighborhood just randomly just gets to flourish like in this great way yeah.

Speaker 3 10:27

And your odds of winning go sky high. Why is it every five years?

Speaker 5 10:30

They give out the lottery like multiple times a year.

Speaker 2 10:32

Don't they do the lottery like multiple times?

Speaker 3 10:34

a year? Yeah, but the odds of you why don't we do it once? The odds of you and your neighborhood winning are low.

Speaker 2 10:41

So what I'm saying is it becomes actually likely that you could hundreds of thousands of neighborhoods, but there's still have a low chance of winning, but that's fewer than 290 million?

Speaker 1 10:49

No, no, of course, of course, of course.

Speaker 2 10:51

Yeah, and it would be fun to celebrate too, because there could be a club of these, of the neighborhoods to run.

Speaker 3 10:56

You're starting to uncover the.

Speaker 2 10:58

There's a trick. There's a trick. There's at least 300,000 or four. How are you? There's at least a couple hundred thousand neighborhoods.

Speaker 1 11:05

What if we win the lottery? Our Nexus neighborhood wins the lottery and Adam wants to get nice boulevards and more bike lanes and I want 10 Taco Bells so that I never have to wait to get food or whatever.

Speaker 3 11:18

You know, like, how do we decide that? Okay, that's a vote. The default is that you guys get to vote on the project.

Speaker 2 11:23

Bro, 10 Taco Bells are gonna win you ever vote before you win the money or after, Because man, energy's gonna ride high after Wow that's a great question. Probably you have to vote before.

Speaker 3 11:32

I think that you should vote before.

Speaker 2 11:35

On the other hand, you may need to deter 10 Taco Bells.

Speaker 3 11:40

Wow, so it may need to be real, I don't know. Oh, I see it's anti-capitalism.

Speaker 1 11:44

Oh, I see, because I always people be silly about it. Right.

Speaker 3 11:46

But your neighborhood could also.

Speaker 2 11:47

I think you actually have to get 10 Taco Bells.

Speaker 1 11:49

The speeches that you give for running for student president and junior high or whatever, where you're like every day is gonna be all day recess and then everyone votes for you.

Speaker 5 11:57

You're like I can't do anything. If I get elected, what am I doing? I'm just spouting nonsense.

Speaker 2 12:05

So wait, let's dig into this more. So what's the trick? What you said you did a trick. What's?

Lotteries

Speaker 3 12:10

the trick. Yeah, the trick is. You know, it sounds like a great idea. Here's what I liked about the idea I gave you the odds shoot up so you think you can actually win. Right now nobody really thinks they can win the lottery. I mean maybe.

Speaker 2 12:26

But it's uncountable. Yeah, it's just sort of You're just buying hope You're just buying hope tickets.

Speaker 3 12:32

But if we in theory drop the prize to a reasonable amount where you won't go bankrupt in a hundred life, then we simultaneously make it likely that you will win. Like you think, I am probably going to win once every five to 10 years.

Speaker 2 12:47

Well, you can buy that. You can buy a thousand-dollar lottery tickets. I mean you can buy scratchers That'll give you. You know you have a hundred thousand dollars. One in a hundred thousand chance of winning a thousand dollars instead of one in a hundred, that'll give you $20, $100.

Speaker 3 13:01

That to me, I kind of think that we should just get rid of all of those Scratchers. Yeah, because those are truly, I mean the problem with the lottery that we didn't mention. So we mentioned that right now, if you win, your life goes wrong. We didn't mention that it's a tax on the poor which everyone kind of knows.

Speaker 2 13:18

Yeah, yeah, it's horrible. Yeah, so aggressive.

Speaker 3 13:20

Yeah, we're taking money from poor people and then we're giving it to a bunch of administrators fewer than before, and so we're diluting it down, we're taxing it and then we're taking the winnings that we get and we're spending them on programs that are supposed to help those people that we just took all the money from the poor. Yeah, so like education, is the current spending or expenditure for the state of California? Yeah, tax is too much.

Speaker 2 13:47

John Oliver a long time ago had an episode where he showed that actually when the lottery gets instated and it goes to education, at that same moment they move the tax revenue budget out of education by the exact percentage. So it's just.

Speaker 1 14:02

It's just shuffling around dollars.

Speaker 2 14:05

Well, it's not just shuffling around, it's turning a progressive tax, which is income tax, and property tax, which is very progressive, and state taxes. I mean, you're taxing homeowners, that's a progressive tax. And then you're taking that and you're moving it away from education and you're putting the totally regressive tax of the lottery on it, when really the whole idea that people have in their mind is education's getting all that taxes and then the lottery money's added to it right, that's what we think, but really no, it's just.

Speaker 3 14:32

It's just moving the burden. It's helping to cover that part of the budget. I think what's? Oh, you know, I have some interesting trivia too.

Speaker 2 14:39

Ooh bring it on.

Speaker 3 14:40

I looked it up, so the history of the lottery is pretty interesting. Originated in China.

Speaker 2 14:46

Have you heard? Like everything else, Kino. Kino.

Speaker 3 14:50

Well, actually this is interesting K-E-N-O.

Speaker 1 14:53

Never Is that a. It's like a gambling thing. It's a gambling thing. I've seen it. I don't know how to play it. I've just seen it's on screens. When you're eating at a restaurant in Vegas or something, they have Kino up on the screens Yep, yep, same, so it has Latin roots.

Speaker 3 15:07

That word does I?

Speaker 2 15:08

don't know, you know, I know, german Kino means movie, okay, so apparently in Latin there's a word similar to Kino Q-U-I-N-E.

Speaker 3 15:17

I don't know how to pronounce it Hoine. It means like one in five.

Speaker 1 15:20

King's wall. No, that's not right. That's not right.

Speaker 5 15:24

So it's a Latin root but it originated in China and it was basically.

Speaker 2 15:27

Makes no sense. But you just said makes no sense. Why would a Latin word be in?

Speaker 3 15:31

China, Exactly. That's why I thought it was kind of interesting.

Speaker 2 15:34

Marco Polo, bro. Yeah, Marco Polo Silk Road. Let's do this, let's gamble.

Speaker 3 15:39

Yeah, it wasn't that long ago that I came. I think it was. You know I was gonna pull up the stats on it, but I'm gonna set it aside. Like I said, don't know a lot about the subject but, I, found some interesting trivia Originated in China but it's got really interesting ties to the founding of the United States and the original colonies. So Jamestown.

Speaker 2 16:00

Jamestown, didn't they all die?

Speaker 3 16:02

Do you know how Jamestown was funded Lotteries? Yeah, that's it. Okay, yes, I guess right because of the theme.

Speaker 2 16:11

It's like every middle school teacher Today we're gonna talk about this. What do people think this has caused by? I was like the thing you just said. That is what's happening here, yeah.

Speaker 1 16:20

How did Lotteries found?

Speaker 2 16:21

Jamestown. Wait didn't Jamestown all die? Didn't they all die? Wasn't that the problem with Jamestown? Okay, so there was a company. Oh, that was Roanoke. Yeah.

Speaker 3 16:28

There was a company called the Virginia Company of London and they were making money off of exploring and colonizing. They wanted to colonize the US from like North Carolina up to modern day Long Island, new York, and they needed investment money. They asked for permission from King James I to hold a lottery that would fund the expedition, and he approved it. So that's where the money came from. Not only that, there are a lot of other initiatives that were funded, like the University of Columbia or Columbia University.

Speaker 1 17:06

In New York. Yep in New York.

Lotteries and Proposed Alternative Explained

Speaker 3 17:08

Several of the famous universities of today. I think you, penn, came from Lotteries.

Speaker 1 17:13

Came from Lotteries. Dang what?

Speaker 3 17:15

But there's a twist, a crazy twist Because you're like whoa America came from a lottery Right, but then we killed it all.

Speaker 2 17:24

There was a prohibitionary period there were like no more Lotteries.

Speaker 3 17:27

Yeah, we said no Lotteries allowed ever, and the United States.

Speaker 2 17:30

They're a little bit exploitative.

Speaker 1 17:32

They're a little bit.

Speaker 3 17:33

Yeah, there's all these problems with that.

Speaker 1 17:34

What about that Lottery I read about in middle school where, like at the end, the winner, like everyone, picks up a rock. You know what I'm talking about the Lottery, the short story, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know yes. Or you're like reading the story and then you're like, oh, she wins. Why are they all sad? And they're like because we have to murder you now and I'm like what is this story?

Speaker 2 17:50

Don't they harvest their organs, or?

Speaker 1 17:51

something. Yeah, I think you wrote that part. Well, what do you?

Speaker 2 17:54

think about that.

Speaker 1 17:54

So here's, a lottery.

Speaker 2 17:55

So there's a boot. The Buddhists say that to be alive and to encounter the teachings of the Buddha is as lucky as the whole ocean having a single wooden ring floating in it and a single turtle coming up for air and just happening To have its head come up right into the circle, the wooden circle. That's how lucky you are to be alive when you can and to encounter the Buddhist teachings. That doesn't seem that rare, though I mean you kidding the turtles could go anywhere in the ocean.

Speaker 1 18:31

Yeah, they were like. They were like look, if you take this six pack of soda cans and you throw the, thing, into the trash without, like it's for sure gonna get around a turtle's neck and I'm like, eventually, well, yeah, they're like it's definitely gonna happen if you don't cut up this six pack plastic ring thing.

Speaker 2 18:45

Wow, the Buddhists need to update their, their story. I.

Speaker 1 18:48

I do have a logistic question about the lottery, the lottery idea, the neighborhood. So if the neighborhood, if I like my neighborhood, let's say we collectively buy a thousand tickets but the neighborhood next to me collectively buys 10,000 tickets, do they have ten times a greater?

Speaker 5 19:03

shot to win. It's me, or is it?

Speaker 2 19:05

like one to one.

Speaker 1 19:06

It's a one-to-one shot.

Speaker 2 19:07

Well, um, yeah there, or can you increase your chances by paying more?

Speaker 3 19:11

the mechanics of it. This is how the mechanics look. A couple of things. One we don't want it to be a tax on the poor anymore. Right, I'd prefer it to be a tax on the rich. So you're gonna introduce some taxes. About ten dollars that every person pays in taxes is gonna go into this new pool, because the reality is to increase these odds, we we need more money. Right now, about eight billion dollars is the amount of revenue that the California state Lot of huge amount generates each year, which is quite a bit more than ten dollars per person.

Speaker 5 19:45

Wow, wow.

Speaker 3 19:46

Yeah, so we're gonna beef it up still a little more, get it closer to ten billion, and so, anyway, you'd take some of the tax dollars that are gonna go to supplement or the existing revenues, and then, well, let's see what was the problem. The problem we're running into is how to beef it up. Okay, so you beef it up, then that means that everybody has a chance, because now they've paid into it.

Speaker 2 20:15

So, since you're paying into it by default, okay, but if it's taxed flat then it's still not progressive tax. Shouldn't it just come out of tax revenue?

Speaker 3 20:22

But then people are gonna say you can't take my taxes and give it to one one neighborhood. Well, why not? That's what we do normally. I Mean we take state taxes. We don't do it well people.

Speaker 1 20:34

Yeah they go. You can't take my income and give it to people who need like money to yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 20:40

I wouldn't frame it that way, Okay okay.

Speaker 2 20:41

Okay, because the lottery people go in. But but with lotteries people go and buy the tickets. I mean the whole point of a lottery you're just talking about, you know right.

Speaker 3 20:49

So what I'm doing is I'm making it so that every neighborhood has a chance. So the way I do that is by saying let's take a little portion of the tax revenue and just assign it to the lotto. That way you're automatically entered. You don't have to do anything. But if you want to increase your odds, Then you can't pay more you and your neighborhood can go out and buy more tickets. It just gets pulled into your neighborhood, into your neighborhood.

Speaker 2 21:11

That's cool so there can be like fundraisers in your neighborhood, like hey, let's buy more for this lottery.

Speaker 3 21:15

Yeah, yeah, if you really have a project that you, but then you're gonna lose.

Speaker 2 21:19

But if you lose a few times then you're gonna like screw this. There's like a. It's like a one in 300,000.

Speaker 1 21:24

Yeah like what if the?

Speaker 3 21:24

first you know, actually 50% of Americans buy lottery tickets, so people would more than you'd expect. So people keep doing it.

Speaker 1 21:33

Yeah interesting. What imagine if, like the first winning goes to like a really nice like Bel Air neighborhood and they're just like we won.

Speaker 3 21:46

Systems crap. Okay, right for the first couple of years, boo must be poor neighborhoods, get the money.

Speaker 2 21:57

Well, I mean it's just chance, you know it would. But if you are a Bella neighborhood that wanted, you might just be like we're gonna give this to a more needy.

Speaker 3 22:03

Wow that is you know oh yeah, there's very philanthropic, I mean I would.

Speaker 2 22:09

I guess maybe I'm a weirdo, but yeah but you're not.

Speaker 1 22:12

I mean, I feel like the mentality of those people is like no, it's a numbers game and when my numbers go up, I'm winning more I deserve it.

Speaker 2 22:18

Yeah yeah, I worked really hard for this.

Speaker 3 22:21

We want to make it so that everybody has a chance. But if you want to increase your odds, you can, but it's still like this makes it like a law and you have to do government.

Speaker 2 22:29

Couldn't we start this outside of the government? Couldn't we just say we're creating a sweepstakes? Which is a private a legal version of a lottery. You can kind of run okay called a sweepstakes and what you do is you say, if you buy this, you're entered in the sweepstakes, but you don't need to buy anything to get in. You just have to go through these super complex, annoying steps to get in without buying something.

Speaker 1 22:53

But then we get, then we I feel like most people are like yeah.

Speaker 2 22:55

I'll just pay and to enter the sweepstake with money because I don't want to like send in. You know, do we lose the?

Speaker 1 23:03

public good component, the part where, like I mean, we're focused on the my eyes turned to dollar signs, when it's like everyone gets a life changing amount of money, but like the real thing is the Giant improvement for that neighborhood. And you're you know randomly, as neighborhoods win it over and over again. You're improving every neighborhood bit by bit and then you know raising.

Speaker 2 23:22

Yeah, but you can still do it, you could still implement it privately, so you could be, for example, the private people would be like. And now we're gonna, we're gonna make the city build us like lanes or something well, what you could do is you could say, you could say to the, to the neighborhoods Hi, we're a. I mean, you could do it from like an urbanism perspective, right, or from a poverty alleviation perspective.

Speaker 3 23:42

I think here's another big idea. And then, to go back to what you're saying here, yeah, another big idea is that we're rethinking how the lottery works.

Speaker 2 23:51

So right now, the lottery this would just replace the lottery the lottery is currently actually really smart. It was just replaced a lot of sided system right.

Speaker 3 23:59

On the one hand you're You're giving somebody an award and the point is that that award is really big, so more people want to buy tickets. In reality, that that does work. But there's also an offset because everybody knows their chances are so low that Generally they're not buying. There's also not much community power to it, but some places and employers have pulling right, they'll do, so that helps, but most people don't. By default, nobody does right, and this flips that around so any pulling?

Speaker 3 24:28

yeah, on the one hand, there's like there's an incentive structure with a really big award that's designed to get more people into it and. On the other hand, you have you. You have where the money goes towards public improvement projects right. So what I'm saying is okay public improvement projects. I'm not trying to change that part. That's fine.

Speaker 2 24:50

At least pull it over a lot of people.

Speaker 3 24:52

Yeah, we're totally changing the incentive structure.

Speaker 2 24:56

But why isn't there just more pooling, like you could just make an app that was like join a, join a pool, and the app terms and conditions Be like you enter into like a trust and you're a member of a trust, of your pool, and that trust buys the tickets and when the money comes in, it comes into the trust and the trust then devises out the money. Yeah so you could create an app that just did that. That's cool. Why don't we have that?

Speaker 3 25:18

Well, you could do that. That's still practical.

Speaker 2 25:21

I you know I'm no but I like your point of like the government is doing the lottery the government is doing.

Speaker 3 25:29

There's a why are we punishing people with money, right? Like making their lives systematically worse instead of making Thousands of people's lives and the whole, state Completely better city or whatever.

Speaker 2 25:40

Let her level the government, whatever level the, the lotteries being operated at, ostensibly the lotteries being run for social good. Yeah then we should set it up so that it operates to Good.

Speaker 3 25:52

Yeah, why are we awful yeah?

Speaker 2 25:54

that's brilliant who? I love that, so it should be a lot. I mean it should really be a reform we should change the government.

Speaker 3 26:01

We should do it this way yeah, I mean again three hours of research on this, but it's pretty clear. Well, I mean, your three hours is worth a lot more than other Irrefutable.

Speaker 2 26:11

I Love the cop. I searched for three hours I don't think I use the thing called goggle. Do you guys seen this thing?

Speaker 3 26:20

actually it's amazing, a lot of.

Speaker 1 26:21

GPT.

Speaker 2 26:23

Okay, so we're really really digging deep. Do you fix the?

Speaker 1 26:27

world. Oh my god. Someone just had to type that. You know there's one you're gonna say I don't know Please.

Speaker 2 26:34

Oh, I was thinking there's a whole kind of media angle to this too. So, like you know right now what is the media to Liler? It's so boring, it's like some man with no teeth in Missouri bought a reticulum and Missouri. I was born in Wisconsin, whatever, but but you know, and that's it, and it's like, it's like a one-second blip and that's it.

Speaker 3 26:56

Yeah, and it's yeah question. It's dubious too, because you see that and you know he's gonna be broke Right.

Speaker 2 27:02

Yeah, you know that, like his 15 cousins are all gonna have houses that are all gonna foreclose in 10 years, yeah, and he's gonna have no money and it's gonna be horrible, yeah that winners life changes in ways they can't imagine, which is like oh, now I'm the man to imagine and can't handle on the magnet for every sob story in my entire, like Orbit is gonna come to me and everybody like all these people, and then all of a sudden, it's gonna be gone.

Speaker 3 27:24

We're all gonna be sad and then, yeah, you, you, I think what they tend to do is accrue debts to Other things require a lot of maintenance by five people houses, you know yeah, it's five mortgages.

Speaker 2 27:36

You don't. You know you don't buy him cash.

Speaker 3 27:37

They say that about, like new you do, there's a keep and taxes, and I mean people can't actually support very well, quickly end up with assets that you're not, you're just we're not prepared to handle, and the state doesn't offer Services to prepare and a bunch of snakes show up at your door saying I can help you, I know, with a smaller amount like your brain has already been turning on that. Wow, yeah, sorry, scott no, I was.

Speaker 1 28:04

I was just saying like they do a small, like when professional athletes get their millions of dollars and they're like, ah, and they start their lifestyle, but they're like oh you, your career is gonna be a short, you know your body can't handle this for a long time, so they, they, the smart ones get a financial person to be like all right. Now we got a giant chunk. We got a partially it out, because you're not gonna be a star football player when you're 53, you know Like it's just not gonna happen.

Speaker 2 28:28

They still need to eat. Yeah. Well, the ones who don't do, yeah.

Speaker 3 28:32

Yeah, they don't do the smart version of that. Yeah, I think it's getting better because we're building up better support systems or tools and it's known they're getting conscious of the fact that risk.

Speaker 5 28:42

Yeah, and people are yeah.

Speaker 2 28:44

But, but wait to the back to the media thing though. Yeah, so now, instead of just like this person won the lottery end of story. Here's a big check. End of story.

Speaker 3 28:53

Instead, it becomes this really interesting story every time you're driving down the highway You're like, oh why is this neighborhood so gorgeous?

Speaker 2 29:00

They? Won the lottery in 2007, in March, they won a hundred, you know, a hundred two hundred fifty million dollars and put this city like look at all, look how beautiful it is, and then you could. You could really have a really awesome. Every time someone won the lottery, there would be this long story, you could tell about what they're gonna do with it and you could interview people around the neighborhood. What are you gonna do with your 250? What are you gonna do with you 250? Well, you and it would be this fluorescence.

Speaker 3 29:28

It has a community-based Marketing campaign.

Speaker 1 29:30

Now, yeah, and you can celebrate, yeah, you can celebrate with the people around you instead of like everyone being like. I'm hating that. Yeah right. How do I get our money?

Speaker 5 29:38

We all did it. It's a huge party, block party.

Speaker 2 29:41

They're all big block party and you know positive and there aren't like snakes that can come in and be like. Oh we're gonna kind of get it money. It's like they each have 250,000. They're all gonna use that money you know, in some way they talk to each other.

Speaker 3 29:53

How are you using? Yeah, they learn from it.

Speaker 1 29:55

Right, right, right right, I'm buying 10 lottery tickets. Oh sorry, putting 10 taco bells on my.

Speaker 2 30:04

So this is really why I'm really getting convinced by this. This is great, and so, from the and the perspective of or form of laws, I think makes sense. Like you could go to your congressman and be like please consider changing the lottery into the neighborhood.

Speaker 3 30:16

Yeah, look, it was prohibited for a reason. We didn't change a lot after the prohibition and we could we could do this better. Yeah, and revenues will go up.

Speaker 2 30:25

I Interesting because people will say like I would never. I don't buy ladder tickets because it's attacks for people who can't do math Right, but in this scenario I would be like, man, that's kind of cool. We have actually a one hundred thousand.

Speaker 3 30:37

Yeah, way higher your community starts identifying needs and being clear about them right what if we do anything?

Speaker 5 30:43

What would we do? And now that you?

Speaker 1 30:45

know what it is you

Speaker 2 30:46

can work towards it even if you don't let. And there's, there would be like a lot. There would also be like a lottery club, or that the people from the community would meet to decide these things.

Speaker 1 30:55

Which would create civic right like this is what we'll put at the top of our list of if, if, our neighborhood wins.

Speaker 3 31:01

This is what we're going for, right? Yeah, and then the state could use those for other purposes, maybe instead of.

Speaker 2 31:07

Valhalla neighborhood. It's just congressional district, because those are already defined lines and then that. Then you don't have to do any maps or anything.

Speaker 1 31:15

Yeah, those are all clean. Everyone agrees there's no Jerry man Strangeness going on with congressional districts.

Speaker 2 31:22

That's all very cut and dry, right well, what else do you divide them on?

Speaker 3 31:25

I don't know about zip codes, oh zip codes, but neighborhoods in a lot of municipalities are pretty cleanly defined, yeah and you track okay, okay.

Speaker 1 31:35

Here's well what if I'm little Mikey and I grow up playing across playing, you know, catch it with the kid across the street every day, and then one day, your side of the street wins the lot.

Speaker 2 31:45

No, that side of the street wins the lottery, wins the lottery.

Speaker 1 31:47

But I'm just on the other side of the line now. I'm like watching them get a life changing amount of money and like all these awesome things and I'm just like but you.

Speaker 3 31:55

Benefit, though you will enjoy their public project. Yeah, okay, you'll cross the street. Okay, they're new whatever they build.

Speaker 1 32:01

I just don't have a lot of that. They've life changing amount of money. If you really want to get back at them, scott, maybe they'll build you will encourage your neighborhood to buy a lot more tickets.

Speaker 3 32:10

Oh, okay, yeah, and then you can show that I think, I think you could all show them what a great documentary, to like the first ten neighborhoods.

Speaker 2 32:17

That one would be a great documentary. What did those ten do, or over or after? Maybe after ten years you could take a documentary of the the twelve most interesting projects.

Speaker 3 32:27

There will be tears. You win the lottery. You know there's tears, Exactly they change their lives bring the cameras.

Speaker 5 32:33

Buying a house for the cameras on the tears. Yeah, heart, what heartwarming and then that will sell more tickets like the media will circuit.

Speaker 2 32:40

Yeah, yeah, that's in a positive way, not a weird hundred percent positive way. The money is going to education Right and all the winners are going into beautifying and improving neighborhoods. All you know, one by one.

Speaker 1 32:51

I love this. I love this. Well, I haven't won the regular lottery, so I don't know what that's like, but you can.

Speaker 3 32:56

This seems you can imagine better. Have you played the lottery?

Speaker 1 33:00

like not in a serious way, where it was literally like one of those powerball things where you spend the dollar and you're like I'm not winning, I'm spending this dollar to Fantasize what would I do with the money, like do that sort of experiment with my friend or you know, like what would you do? I do this kind of crazy but, I, don't actually think I'm gonna win, so I wouldn't. I didn't play it really like that yeah.

Speaker 3 33:22

I think that's part of the problem now is that we never do and never think about it. Mm-hmm, if you do anything about it now, it's what would I do with a billion dollars?

Speaker 2 33:29

Well, it's kind of unhealthy.

Speaker 3 33:30

Nothing you can act on now, yeah, but if you're thinking what would I do with two hundred thousand?

Speaker 2 33:35

Well, yeah, actually now you're like by a house or whatever. Yeah, you said goals that are, I would pay off this set of debt? Yeah, I go back to school and you start working towards that?

Speaker 5 33:45

Yeah actually.

Speaker 3 33:46

So another kind of interesting tidbit when this idea I think Routed or where it was rooted for me kind of came from, was looking at community lending programs. Okay, and I remember there was a concept where you could have like a group of 10 friends and each year you put $500, a thousand dollars, into a pool. Now you know that's a little painful but on a standard year it's not a big deal. People could do that and but every you know, every year somebody gets all that money right.

Speaker 3 34:21

And in a very small group you could figure out who needs it the most. Yeah, like yeah, who wants it, and you can do it in kind of a circuit. Just make sure that it's not disproportionate.

Speaker 2 34:30

So these are called saving circles to in the third world, in developing world. They're extremely common among women. They'll do, you know, circles of women, and then the money goes to one at a time and it just goes around the circle a good family kind of like just like lockwork or like an emergency Happens. Well, I can you, you do you draw lots for the order. But then if somebody is like I really need this money, does someone who doesn't need the money, who's getting it next week?

Speaker 5 34:55

You trade with me and they try to voluntarily trade or not?

Speaker 2 34:58

they'll say no, I'm happy with the order.

Speaker 2 35:01

But usually people will trade, so so, but, but wait a second, though we're like saying we're almost. I mean, at first I was thinking we'd have to replace the lottery, but that's, that's not right. The lottery wants to make money. They want to run lotteries. They can just start another lottery called the neighborhood lottery and run it parallel, and then people walk up to the counter and they can decide do I want to buy the individual lottery that I have a 1 in 300 million chance, or do I want to buy the neighborhood lottery? And you can just run them in parallel. There's no reason to shut down one or no.

Speaker 3 35:31

Yeah, if you don't want to be a bold, transformative leader for the state of California, for example, you want to like timidly test out?

Speaker 2 35:39

Yeah the tiptoe? Yeah, I think it would. I think it would pull in at least them I don't know anything would be smaller.

Speaker 3 35:46

The pool would be smaller, yeah, but so you could try it out and then.

Speaker 2 35:50

But then you could start that media flywheel. Yes this neighborhood, one $250,000 everyone. They would got $15,000 and they built. They planted 10 trees. I mean nothing, you know small but, the media says wow, this is from the new neighborhood lottery which is available anywhere you buy a lottery ticket. You know, create like an advertisement on TV for it.

Speaker 3 36:09

You're making it practical. That's a good idea.

Speaker 5 36:11

Yeah, I think that's it.

Speaker 3 36:13

Yeah, I do. I mean, I want to write a letter to our Congress.

Speaker 2 36:17

Let's write a letter to Nancy Pelosi or Scott Wiener or something and be like Well, that's well, nancy well, I'm sure they're listening federal. But Scott, scott Wiener. We should send a letter, scott Wiener, and say hey, let's think, let's make the lottery, so it makes California better. Yeah, that's so cool.

Speaker 5 36:32

That's so.

Speaker 1 36:33

I do love this idea.

Speaker 2 36:34

This is really cool idea or we could send it to Estonia, because Estonia is like somebody else like it's, like it's like two million people and they're very smart. You could probably contact the president. They probably you know, they probably get your email and you'd be like Estonia, this is how you should run your lottery. Be so much better.

Speaker 5 36:49

And they'd be like yeah, clearly this is better and they would like I don't know what an Estonia accent.

Speaker 2 36:54

I've been working on it. I've been practicing Donald Trump and Estonian. Those are the two.

Speaker 3 36:58

Visiting Norway, I saw how like, immaculate and Interesting each of their little neighborhoods and villages were. From the part of the country that I explored, that seems cool. And you, you realize that it comes from all the oil money and that they're able to and I thought this is kind of like that. It's like, hey, let's give each neighborhood the resources they need to do what they really want, but it would happen on a slower timeline unless we discover, oh, like a new lithium deposit.

Speaker 1 37:25

And I love that. This address is the like, this common understanding, where everyone knows the, the saying they're like, yeah, if you win the lottery it ruins your life. You're like, yeah, but everyone thinks they're like, yeah, but let me try, like, let me have a shot at it, I bet I would be different, you know. But it's sort of undermines that and is like look, we can spread the good out, and then it's, it doesn't have that bad component With it, it helps more people it helps the general, I really like this idea.

Speaker 3 37:51

Notably the. The like when you say, hey, will the lottery make more money if we Create smaller pots and give it to more people? Like the standard research out there is gonna say no. Hmm, so that's remarkable or it's not worthy.

Speaker 2 38:05

So wait, it'll make less money. The way you're described like a neighborhood.

Speaker 3 38:08

Yeah, people will be less inclined to buy tickets because, it's not a bigger number, but we can still say a big number.

Speaker 2 38:17

We can say it's a billion dollars, and then it goes through your whole neighborhood. Yeah, I would say that the research is.

Speaker 3 38:22

It's distorted because they keep like trying to figure out, Because the original idea was big number right but smaller community and now it's like the community and bigger number, and Now you've got these negative effects on both ends. Yeah, but yeah, I think. I think that they would have to double check the research, have a more sophisticated perspective where it's like this Community effect that we're talking about.

Speaker 1 38:43

I can volunteer for that research if you guys want to. Scientists give me a large chunk of money and then just you know you can observe.

Speaker 5 38:50

And then what happens? Put the cameras up or on get. I'll spin that and then later on, give me a smaller chunk of money.

Speaker 2 38:55

See what I do with that. Yeah, see, like all for a better patient, zero, whatever are just the most.

Speaker 1 39:01

I'm a fan of genres. I'm a big scientist. I'm a man of science, you know what actually signed me up to I.

Speaker 3 39:08

When you send the letter to Wiener.

Speaker 1 39:10

Honestly we're we know we're the beta, we're the beta deal. We have two ball and two testers.

Speaker 2 39:16

Yeah, we. Yeah, scott Wiener might, because he proposes pretty interesting stuff. You know, like, like, like he did a lot of the housing sort of smart housing bills and he did, he did I guess the gay community he's LGBTQ, I guess the gay community wants to have bars open later. So he proposed bars open later. I mean, I'm not in favor of that but so he's responsive but the point is yeah, the point is, he's responsive, so so giving him a good idea.

Speaker 2 39:42

Hmm might actually, might actually be a you know we would not be a hard law to write, because it would just be like hey Lottery Division, like start a new neighborhood Lottery. Here's how it work.

Speaker 3 39:53

You just describe it. It's like 10 pages. I think some motivated interns could write up most of it. Yeah, this is such a do-it-yourseless solution.

Speaker 2 40:02

I love when solutions for the multiverse are so doable, yeah right, no, scott Wiener, I mean, I could just email him.

Speaker 1 40:07

Okay, I've met him multiple times.

Speaker 5 40:09

Do it.

Speaker 1 40:09

Yeah.

Speaker 5 40:10

What are you waiting for? Why are you still here? What are we doing? Yeah, go ahead, you have somebody in Sacramento.

Speaker 2 40:15

Because you're in Sacramento, you have somebody there you could message to.

Speaker 3 40:18

I could put a sign on my window and most of the capital would see it.

Speaker 2 40:21

That's right. You're facing the capital building, right. You live right there.

Speaker 3 40:24

But I haven't met many of the leaders yet, so maybe now I have a reason. You know the challenge is the math. On this, I'm not a great math person, but when I pulled out my calculator it wasn't quite as impressive as I wanted it to be. But that aside, because math can be cast aside, wait a day.

Speaker 2 40:43

If you take a billion dollars and you split it up among like 150 or 1500 people, that's a lot of money.

Speaker 1 40:48

That's a billion dollars a person, so my math is good too, so here's the basic math You've got.

Speaker 3 40:52

eight billion is the current revenue for all these lottery programs in California. Yeah, but the population of California is like 63.6 or 68.3,.

Speaker 2 41:02

I think yeah, but neighborhood. But you just give it to one neighborhood.

Speaker 3 41:05

You give it to one neighborhood the chance of that neighborhood winning First of all the neighborhood. That's part of why I had to break it down to 1500 people so that it was enough money, but it might have been.

Speaker 2 41:15

you could do even bigger, but bigger than that. Do a little bigger. Yeah, you could.

Speaker 3 41:18

Because the price amount for the person how big is the zip code?

Speaker 2 41:22

50,000. 100,000. The zip codes are bigger. It depends on the place. Probably depends on the place. It's too big yeah.

Speaker 3 41:27

But the coolest version of this is that your like regular life becomes kind of like a game show.

Speaker 2 41:32

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 41:33

Like you actually think you might win.

Speaker 5 41:34

You might win Like in that novel.

Speaker 3 41:36

You talked about it. That was in a dystopian way.

Speaker 2 41:38

Yeah, I think we covered it. You brought an incredible solution. I really like this, this is awesome.

Speaker 3 41:43

This is top tip top, oh great.

Speaker 2 41:45

Tip top, tip top, SFM.

Speaker 3 41:47

I'm glad you liked it and I've learned about the podcast. Originally I thought this will be dense. I have to have research.

Speaker 5 41:54

I'm pulling up my notes, but this is more like radio listening.

Speaker 3 41:57

I could turn this on drive into.

Speaker 5 41:59

SFM from SAC.

Speaker 1 42:00

Exactly, ok. Well, owen, thank you for joining us. Is there a way? Do you want people to contact you, or is there a way that people could get in touch if they so chose?

Speaker 3 42:09

Yeah, look, Mr Weiner. I'm new to California, but I Don't you call me that.

Speaker 1 42:16

We just met. How dare you?

Speaker 3 42:18

I am having some trouble with that, but not much.

Speaker 2 42:21

So he just goes by Scott. Yeah, if you. Oh, he's Scott. Oh, and Mr Weiner.

Speaker 3 42:28

Mr.

Speaker 1 42:29

Scott Weiner, there we go.

Speaker 3 42:30

If you or your team would like to reach me.

Speaker 5 42:33

Yeah, let's do it.

Speaker 3 42:35

And work on this. You can reach me at on Twitter at Owen Reich, O-W-E-N-R-A-I-S-C-H or you know what. Just reach me there.

Speaker 5 42:44

I'm not like super active on Twitter.

Speaker 2 42:46

But we'll put it on the notes. Put it in the notes. What else am I to say? Yeah, it's cool, that's the way to do it. We'll put your phone number and home address as well, if anybody needs to.

Solutions From the Multiverse

Speaker 1 42:53

Yeah, we'll geolocate you at every. I slipped a tracker into your pocket, so we should help us size that Real time.

Speaker 2 43:00

People will find you.

Speaker 3 43:01

I'm panicking they will.

Speaker 1 43:04

You're like, actually never mind.

Speaker 4 43:06

I'm pretty sure people could find me anyway, this is awesome, very cool, wow.

Speaker 1 43:10

Well, thank you for joining us, owen. Thank you for having me. We appreciate it. It's been a fantastic conversation. Thanks for listening, see you again.

Speaker 2 43:16

Next comeback, next week for another awesome solution.

Speaker 5 43:18

Beautiful.

Speaker 2 43:19

Bye, bye, love you sakur.

Speaker 4 44:00

Okay is this thing on Just trying to make sure it works?

Speaker 4 44:08

There are so many problems in the world, so many problems, and that's why we need solutions from the multiverse.

Speaker 4 44:26

There are so many problems in the world, so many problems, and that's why we need solutions from the multiverse.

Speaker 4 44:42

With Adam and Scott, every week there is a new topic that they seek. They're always on top of the world problems. Adam and Scott like things like protecting bikers With protected biker lanes. We should make them like bowling. They have bumpers. We need bumpers for our bikers, our bikers, in their biker lanes. Protect them, yeah, protect our bikers.

Speaker 4 45:24

Now I'm not trying to complain, not trying to fuss, but the other day I couldn't get on the bus. I had to walk home, had to walk home, and even though my home was only a couple blocks away, I just stubbed my toe and it didn't feel okay. But if I had free transportation that day, then I would have gotten home right away. There's so many problems in the world, so many problems. That's why we need solutions from the multiverse. And I'm not talking about just problems like when there's one donut left in the box at work and everybody's staring at it and they don't know who's gonna get to that donut first. I'm talking about things like reproduction, art museums and being a wizard and VR. Yeah, I'm talking about that. I'm talking about real life problems. Every week a new topic. They seek on Solutions from the multiverse, from the multiverse.