Lotteries for Life Why Lotteries for Life? Why lotteries for social housing, educational places, medical treatments, but above all why lotteries for jobs—lotteries for short-listing, lotteries for appointments from the short-list, lotteries for promotions, even lotteries for redundancies? Because applying random selection to the most significant prizes in our lifetimes changes the things that matter most in our lives for the better. Lottery-selection could do far more to achieve a truly fair, just and democratic society than would any reform of Parliament. A crazy idea, shouldn't prizes be awarded on MERIT? We should not award prizes to those who lack merit, of course, but we should allow each of us with sufficient merit an equal chance, or at least a chance proportional to their merit. Hence the need for lotteries because many will be qualified by having sufficient merit. Nice idea, but it will never work, will it? Actually, it does work. For more than 30 years now, students have been selected for Medical School in Holland using a lottery. Every year the US government organises the Green Card citizenship lottery for entry into the USA. There are many more examples of lottery selection in current use On this website you can find out lots more about this highly democratic way of sharing out burdens and benefits. Click on one of the boxes above Let the dice, not frail and devious human judgement, decide my fate! |