[extropy-chat] public service announcements

[Hal Finney]

Al Brooks writes:
> Anyway, most PSA are harmless. They tell people to lose weight-- what
> could be more innocuous? Even elephants will be encouraged to exercise
> more; a treadmill is being built for elepants in an Alaskan zoo.

Those are fine, but here in California we have the government spending
money to get people to gamble!  Part of the law enabling the state
lottery requires a certain percentage of the funds to be spent promoting
the lottery.  The result is that we have the state encouraging poor
people to waste their money on a losing proposition.  These commercials
foster unrealistic dreams of future wealth with minimal effort, exactly
the opposite of the message we should be sending.

I feel sick when I see advertising like this.  I can't complain that
it's my hard-earned tax dollars at work; I don't play the lottery,
so I'm not funding the ads.  But still, it is a terrible mistake for
society to tell poor people that they should throw away their money on
futile dreams of riches instead of saving it and gaining a realistic
chance of a modest but genuine increase in prosperity.

Hal