Q&A: Is buying a lottery ticket “hishtadlut”?
Is buying a lottery ticket “hishtadlut”?
Question
Hello and blessings.
I was exposed today to an argument about the “obligation of hishtadlut.” Student A claims that he is having trouble making a living, and right now he cannot / does not want to / does not know how to do something for his own welfare. Therefore he makes an “effort” by buying a lottery ticket, so that if money is coming to him, it will come through winning the lottery.
Student B claims that such a purchase is not an “effort,” because statistically the expected value is lower than the price of the ticket, so he has thrown money in the trash. What is this comparable to? To someone who takes a day off from work, thereby definitely losing that day’s wages, intending to wander the streets that day and perhaps find a legitimate bargain, or an envelope of money (with no identifying marks) worth many times as much.
Who is right?
Answer
Neither of them.
There is no such thing as an obligation of hishtadlut, so there is nothing to discuss regarding its parameters. He has a small chance of making money, and if he wants, let him buy a ticket. The criterion of expected value (the ratio between the ticket price and the expected profit) is not relevant to anything when we are talking about a single trial.
Discussion on Answer
Because if a person wants to risk a little money for a lot, there is no reason not to do so. He might succeed. For example, a person has 100 shekels and needs a million in order to live. Is it not reasonable for him to invest 10 shekels for a 1-in-a-million chance of winning a million? It is his only chance at life.
Alternatively, a person needs to invest 100 shekels to earn a million with a 1-in-1,000 chance. The expected profit is positive, but there is still no reason at all to invest money in an experiment that will probably fail. Expected value is irrelevant.
And in general terms, expected value is the anticipated outcome if masses of trials are carried out (the law of large numbers), but in a single trial any result can come out (even if with small probability). In that situation, expected value is a rather arbitrary criterion.
Hello Rabbi!
Most people I know do not buy a lottery ticket only once, but rather all their lives, expecting that in the future they will win, so it is possible that the issue of expected value does apply here. (Though the numbers are not really that large.)
Does the Rabbi also think one should run to a shelter when there is a siren in Tel Aviv because of rockets from Gaza, for the same reason—that the investment is small and the gain is enormous and this is a single case—even though the chance that the rocket will hit him is negligible?
It is still a negligible number.
As for going down to a shelter, there are several points. First, I did not say anything about whether the consideration is reasonable or not. There is no schoolbook answer here. Each person makes his own calculations according to his preferences, and the same applies to going down to a shelter. Someone who does not go down is acting in a completely rational way. Except that here there is another consideration, precisely because of the law of large numbers. If I were alone in the country and they announced on the radio that there was a Red Alert, I would keep walking in the street and go on with my business as usual. There is no reason to act on the basis of such a tiny chance of being harmed. But there are millions of citizens in the country, and that tiny chance can materialize for one of them. Therefore the categorical imperative tells us that one should behave in the way one would want to become a general rule, meaning that everyone should act that way. And if the question is about everyone, then clearly one should go down to a shelter. Especially since harm to a civilian is a systemic failure of the state, and we have responsibility for all the citizens and for the state. I discussed this in my lessons on the individual and the collective in Jewish law and in general: https://soundcloud.com/mikyabchannel/sets/y7bf7zt3bcib
Why is the criterion of expected value irrelevant to anything when we are talking about a single trial?