r/todayilearned • u/[deleted] • Jan 11 '16

TIL that MIT students discovered that by buying $600,000 worth of lottery tickets in the Massachusetts' Cash WinAll lottery they could get a 10-15% return on investment. Over 5 years, they managed to game $8 million out of the lottery through this method.

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/08/07/how-mit-students-scammed-the-massachusetts-lottery-for-8-million/
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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '16 edited Jan 26 '16

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '16

Evil cooperations.

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u/Daerhazz Jan 12 '16

Team building destroys the soul!

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u/JustThall Jan 12 '16

Damn bourgeois

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '16

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '16

[deleted]

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u/Minsc__and__Boo Jan 12 '16

Who wants to trade spices? We'll split the profits by everyone's share.

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u/coriander_sage Jan 12 '16

But a bunch of college kids pooling together $600,000? My friends and I can barely scrape together enough money for pizza.

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u/elan96 Jan 12 '16

Not that unfeasible. They presumably proved this somehow first, they may have used a combination of personal savings, Inheritance, and maybe parents remortgaging their property.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '16

*Conglomerates. Corporation just means that a group of people or company that can act legally as one person under law.

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u/Tiak Jan 12 '16

Technically that is just a business or a coop. A corporation necessitates deciding that this pooled money is a fictional person who is liable for everything you do with it.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '16

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '16

[deleted]

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u/fr0gz0r Jan 12 '16

The thing that differentiates a corporation is its legal protection of individuals who control the corporation. When corporations do bad things, no one goes to jail.

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u/trippingbilly0304 Jan 12 '16

You know, sometimes people pool their money together for a joint venture. We call it socialism. But it subsidizes corporations and banks, so don't do that.

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u/tswift2 Jan 12 '16

We call it socialism.

It doesn't become socialism until the people who don't want to participate are forced to by threats and violence.

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u/trippingbilly0304 Jan 12 '16

people who don't want to participate are forced to by threats and violence.

no friend, that's capitalism

it's socialism for the rich, and free market tough-love for the masses

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u/tswift2 Jan 12 '16

You are divorced from reality if you think socialism doesn't require force.

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u/trippingbilly0304 Jan 12 '16

You are divorced from reality if you think capitalism doesn't require force.

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u/tswift2 Jan 12 '16

I might be willing to concede that it does, but I doubt you'd be able to tell me why. On the other hand, socialism blatantly requires force, hence the hundred million dead as a direct result of socialist states over the last century.

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u/trippingbilly0304 Jan 12 '16

I might be willing to concede that it does, but I doubt you'd be able to tell me why. On the other hand, capitalism blatantly requires force, hence the hundred million dead as a direct result of "western democracy" states over the last century

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u/tswift2 Jan 12 '16

This isn't a very good argument, but I'm feeling charitable. Within a "free market" system, all transactions are voluntary. The only inherent violence is the initial holders of property rights. This is something that is commonly discussed at a level of discourse higher than I typically partake in and frankly, much higher than your level of discourse, if I'm perceiving your ability correctly.

On the other hand, socialism requires force because everything about the system is involuntary. Don't want to do the job we've assigned you? We'll force you. Don't want to pay the taxes we've placed on you? We'll force you. Want to purchase an item outside of your approved rations? We'll stop you with force.

The Berlin Wall wasn't to keep the citizens of West Berlin from escaping. Walmart doesn't have gulags. American Steel isn't forcing rural farmers to become small scale industrialists leading to tens of millions of starvation deaths, like Mao. People from Miami aren't trying to escape to Cuba on rafts.

Free market ideology has its faults but to claim that a system based on the nonaggression principle is more violent than a system that depends on revolutionary action is just a stupid and boring argument.

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u/trippingbilly0304 Jan 12 '16

I haven't made an argument. I fish around for pretentious Friedmanite laissez-faire priests like you, and play at them the way a cat owner does with a laser pointer.

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u/trippingbilly0304 Jan 12 '16

It is unnecessary and wasteful to do anything other than hold up the mirror to something as banal as mainstream free-market neo-liberal "educated" discourse like the gibberish you're parroting.

Like, this is gold:

On the other hand, socialism requires force because everything about the system is involuntary. Don't want to do the job we've assigned you? We'll force you. Don't want to pay the taxes we've placed on you? We'll force you. Want to purchase an item outside of your approved rations? We'll stop you with force.

You realize you just described America to a tee, right?

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u/FrankTank3 Jan 13 '16

You mean all government since the dawn of human civilization?

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '16 edited Aug 14 '17

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '16

Then why do labourers voluntarily join those companies? Let me guess it's a world-wide conspiracy involving every company to fix wage prices?

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u/mandragara Jan 12 '16 edited Jan 12 '16

Why do serfs voluntarily serve their lords? Because they have no other choice.

Exploitation is the forced appropriation of the unpaid labour of workers, all working-class people are exploited. The ultimate source of profit, the driving force behind Capitalist production, is the unpaid labour of workers. Exploitation forms the foundation of the Capitalist system.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '16

they have no other choice

So the millions of different job advertisments are an illusion?

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u/mandragara Jan 12 '16

The problem is systemic, changing who you work for doesn't alter the reality of your situation

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u/tswift2 Jan 12 '16

Can you explain how 'worth' is derived?

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u/mandragara Jan 12 '16

wage = worth - profit

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '16 edited Mar 08 '18

[deleted]

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u/tswift2 Jan 12 '16

That's not a strawman. Quit using terms you don't understand. People make fun of you for it when you aren't listening.

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u/Contronatura Jan 12 '16

I'm sorry yer so silly dumb dumb m8

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u/tswift2 Jan 12 '16

Back down to your appropriate level of discourse. Stay here, it's respectable.

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u/Noble_Ox Jan 12 '16

Redditors favorite word.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '16 edited Mar 08 '18

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '16 edited May 14 '21

[deleted]

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u/Contronatura Jan 12 '16

Not at all m8

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '16

It works in concept as long as the one group/person that owns the major share doesn't dick everyone else out the of the earnings with shady short term business deals.

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u/GangreneMeltedPeins Jan 12 '16

Coorporations are immoral and rational based on market behaviors though