Q & A

Q: What would you do if you won the lottery?

A: Surprisingly, I have never really answered this question for myself. I have considered how people could keep from losing or blowing the winnings as they often do. I have also said that winning wouldn't change me or my lifestyle. I would still keep working my job. I would still live in my apartment or buy a modest home with some sort of workshop out back for various blue collar and artistic endeavors.

The lottery represents a windfall of sudden cash, and the appeal of those tickets is the entertainment that those daydreams create. I don't play the lottery because I'd rather buy a cup of coffee or a candy bar or something. But the daydream is an entertaining mental exercise.

A friend of mine suggested how awesome it would be if the lottery winner took all the cash, made a pile, and burnt that shit up. What a spectacle. I said that the person would be arrested for destroying the currency which makes it even more radical as fuck. That act of destruction would be such a statement and even indictment of conventional thinking that it would at least have people talking about it for decades. But it also cuts to a fundamental truth. Money has no intrinsic value. It is simply a medium of exchange. Burning it is not a destruction of wealth because the wealth it could purchase would already exist. It would also have the same effect as giving it away since that destruction of currency would increase the purchasing power of the remaining currency in the hands of the public. Of course, matched against the printing presses of the Federal Reserve, it would be like spitting in the ocean.

Money is simply the right to determine the direction of the flow of wealth. When you have a lot of money, it isn't that you suddenly have a lot of purchasing power. You have the power to make decisions and make those things happen. The problem is that people make very lousy choices with that power. I am watching Bill Gates do exactly that with his billions. He should have stuck to software.

I don't know what I would do with all that cash. Money flows to those who make the best decisions with it. Winning the lottery is simply an experiment in watching money flow to those who don't make good decisions with money. Sometimes, a rich person wins the lottery, and people say that is a waste. They want to see some poor person win it and then blow the living shit out of it on a thieving posse of friends, shyster accountants, con artists, bling, hookers, liquor, and blow. I know that I don't make great decisions with money because I would already be rich if I did. This is why I choose not to spend but to save. I would put my money in index funds and savings and live my life almost exactly as I live it now. I would essentially be leaving my money with those people who already make good decisions with money. My life is sweet now, and the really sweet things I want can't be bought.

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