How The Lottery Was Stolen
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- Опубліковано 27 січ 2022
- Numbers don’t exist in a vacuum, especially when they make up a game that’s an essential part of a community. And sometimes they turn into a game so good that states and nations want it for themselves.
Games like Policy, The Bug, and Numbers have a complex history dating back nearly two centuries in the United States, and the people involved has run the gamut from kingpins who ran cities to neighborhood moms providing for their families. How can a game where the math is so clearly against the player wind up being one of the threads that holds a community together?
The 3-digit game of Numbers is the perfect fit: it’s easy to understand. It’s easy to play, and it can cost as little as a penny. But the remarkable thing is how the odds of winning nestle with concepts like Dunbar’s Number and Girard’s mimetic desire as wins come infrequently enough to be thrilling, but often enough to keep everyone playing. And in a time when economic opportunities were slim and the socio-political climate was oppressive, a little hope went a long way.
With tens of thousands of employees and a mix of scenes from horse racing tracks to diners, Numbers and the games like it were a daily presence in the lives of millions across the United States. And while we can play these games more easily than ever almost everywhere in the world, regulating them has stripped the community bonds that made them so great.
The history of Numbers, Policy, and lotteries is a fascinating dive into community histories from Boston to Harlem to Detroit -- READ THEIR STORIES:
“The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life in the Detroit Numbers,” Bridgett M. Davis. www.amazon.com/World-Accordin...
“Numbers And Neighborhoods: Seeking And Selling The American Dream In Detroit One Bet At A Time,” Dr. Felicia George. digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_d...
Dr. George’s Detroit Numbers presentation: • Detroit Numbers Gambli...
** FURTHER READING & LISTENING **
“Stephanie St. Clair, Harlem’s ‘Numbers Queen’”: www.smithsonianmag.com/histor...
“My Mother Was a Betting Woman,” Bridgett M. Davis: www.nytimes.com/2019/02/02/op...
Criminal, Episode 108: thisiscriminal.com/episode-10...
“Kings: The True Story of Chicago’s Policy Kings and Numbers Racketeers, an Informal History,” Nathan Thompson. www.amazon.com/Kings-Chicagos...
** LINKS **
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Hosted and Produced by Kevin Lieber
Instagram: / kevlieber
Twitter: / kevinlieber
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Research and Writing by Matthew Tabor
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Editing by John Swan
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Huge Thanks To Paula Lieber
www.etsy.com/shop/Craftality
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#education #vsauce #crime - Наука та технологія
Hello Kevin! As Fannie Davis's daughter, and the author of the book about her, I am blown away by your knowledge, your perspective and your respect for her and so many like her. Basically, wow! Thank you. And thanks for shouting out both Felicia George and Louise Meriwether, who paved the way for me to tell my mom's story.
Wait no way you really are who you claim to be. Are you?
@@TheRandomizerYT Yep!
@@abebitu1
Hm, I have no intentions to be toxic or unbelieving, but considering how unreliable just words have become, is there any (sorry to ask) proof for the same, implying you truly are the daughter?
@@TheRandomizerYT Odd question, especially since I don't know who YOU are.
@@TheRandomizerYT Is it really hard to believe that her daughter would be interested in a video like this?
It never really occurred to me that the lottery would've been invented by someone, even less that the government would've stole it.
If someone didnt invent it how did it come to be
@@TheJbro765 sounds obvious but we don't think about things we take for granted to exist
@@DeJay7 i know lol im just playing, it sounded funny to me. I think the roots of it all is super interesting, i had no idea about this.
No one really invented numbers. A lot of very similar "policy" games existed around the same time in the 1860s, eventually moving to the three-digit box and straight format in the early 20th century in order to pick winners fairly using digits published in newspapers. Lotteries predate numbers games by centuries.
Lottery, by any other name, predates the founding of the U.S. But in this fashion it was a new thing because how people played it, not how it worked.
In Spain, in Christmas, there is a national lottery and a lot of people play it. The fun thing is that you can buy the same number as other people (each number can be bought up to ten times) so you usually have a number you share with your family, one with your friends, one with your job, etc… so when you win something, a bunch of people you know also win
to be fair spain is about as large as most states
I love that
@@dingaia lol, Spain is more populous that all of them, and larger than all but 2
Fellow Spanish neighbour, yes, it is so cool if you win. Even if it is just 20 €
@@dingaia what's your point?
And FYI, all of us living outside of the USA would really like that you guys get over yourself. Please.
Edit: typo
I can't think of anything more American than criminalizing something that makes money then using it themselves.
Actually, in many countries, the government is the only group allowed to hold lotteries.
Hotdog
School shooting moment
@@MemeMarine in the uk only charities can hold them and the licensing is real strict.
Capitalism: become government, let everyone work for you. Stop taxing the rich. Done.
Some people still think the game is NOT rigged. That capitalism is good for everyone. Child labor, slavery, pollution: it's all good because of capitalism!!
US: We've banned lottery
People: Why?
US: Because it's gambling
US realizes that the house always win.
US: We're bringing back lottery!
People: So we can play numbers again?
US: Nah, we're gonna take everything from what made numbers good and just have gambling left.
And because a black lady made it up.
@@24KinfO Yeah sure that's why
@@jazzabighits4473 since it's the US i wouldn't say it was NOT why it was banned lol
Just like how they banned marijuana until they realized that if they control it and tax it they can benefit from it. Same goes for alcohol in areas where it was previously banned.
@@digitalfootballer9032 Exactly, it's about the government getting a piece of the pie, nothing to do with race or gender.
Kudos to Kevin for being the only Vsauce who uploads frequently.
Or at all hah... hahhhh........SIGH
RIP Vsauce 1, DING and so on (I don't class shorts as CONTENT so to me, they do not count).
Kevin and vsauce 2 is the best of the three by far
@@thephoenixking1086 dont you mean dong
@@thephoenixking1086 yeah this new trend of UA-camrs putting out only shorts is so dumb
@@anactualfingbottleofranch747 tbf, I got into Vsauce because of the og Vsauce 1 and the old content over there, originally I didn't even like Vsauce 2 much, but Vsauce 2 has grown on me since then, and I don't even check Vsauce 1 anymore
So, when the government engages in "racketeering", then it's OK. No hypocrisy there at all...
Racketeering is basically the definition of a government.
Wait 'till you hear about taxes.
Wait till you understand fractional reserve banking!
@@tobymcculloch4375 Taxation is obviously worse than fractional reserve.
Its not hypocrisy if the government is the one benefiting from it. Funny how that works, isn't it?
The communal aspect of The Numbers reminds me a lot of how local schools/churches/businesses do fundraisers. Donate $5 and be entered to win a prize! Since it was a community game, it didn't matter too much if you lost because someone local that you knew ended up with it. Although, I guess there wasn't a guaranteed winner for every pull. Loving these history videos!
I get what you mean. Raffles would sound a lot less fun if people called them gambling. And that's essentially what The Numbers was.
"But the highly regulated mass production of fun strips the complex social function from a game that's the perfect blend of math and people."
I feel like this quote is quite relevant in today's world. So many games today have had the fun engineered out of them in exchange for you to pay to progress, to skip the grind, or just keep up.
Yeah. It's a little like paying to watch someone else have sex on your couch with your spouse & calling it what... progress?
@@tysonion01
😣 Oof... Some internal issues huh? You realize this is the internet, right...
Food has had the living engineered out, working has had the humanity engineered out, academia has had the education engineered out, manufacturing has had obfuscation engineered in, capitalism has evil engineered in... It's almost as if, Titles such as: A brave new world, the neo-Seoul storyline in Cloud Atlas, or Soylent green, heck even Wall-E... Are trying to warn us of our own desire for comforts. As if, this isn't new, these ideas of excess and complacentcy.
@@Robert_McGarry_Poems Nah. The world is changing. Open minded people are coming out of hiding thanks to the internet.
Ironically, I'd still rather spend $100 on EA game microtransactions than on a Numbers game.
This is one of your best, explaining the social context of numbers and how it went to state controlled lotteries encompasses a lot of what happened in America in the twentieth century.
Agree. I love all Vsauce2 episodes, but this one is the best of the best.
Meanwhile, I've noticed BINGO as more of a social activity for certain groups- a place to drink coffee, groan at just missing, and cheering on winners.
But you need a license from the government.
It never clicked until just now why it is that bingo is associated with retirement homes.
excuse me, you need a license to play bingo in the us??
@@yararinamiil You need a license to bet on bingo. Playing with no by in and no winnings is perfectly legal.
I've never heard anyone bring up the social aspect of old numbers games.
Yo, shout out for using your platform to signal boost the real human voices and experts that most people would never hear of on their own.
Now, let's calculate the probability that people would have heard of them on their own...
Thank you for talking about this :) as a kid I heard my grandparents talk about running the numbers back in the day but when I was born it wasn't really much of a thing anymore. I'm happy I could learn about an aspect of my community from Era I didn't live through in a mathematical way.
So this is what “grandma plays the numbers” means. Great video!!
I always knew that “running numbers” was gambling rings BUT I never realized how literal that expression was.
"My cage of balls broke"
A legendary statement
Let's make a Vsauce2 Community Numbers so we all can have a chance to see Kevin's cage of balls breaking apart more often.
Government greed ruins fun. Does this really surprise anyone?
Or individual greed
@@iv9753 or corporations' greed.
you forgot to mention that you only pick the number in the 1's position before the spin, so I had to rewatch the whole cage spin several times before I realized it on my own. this means that you could literally put single digit numbers in the cage and they could all each have 10 1's 2's 3's 4's 5's 6's 7's 8's 9's and 0's each and it would be the same.
OMG this brought me back to my 8th grade English class when the teacher had a ball machine like the one at 1:49 and a classmate once said that he'd give me $200 if I drew 72, and there were 100+ balls in there. And I just rolled the machine and drew a ball without looking and I drew _exactly_ 72. You don't have to believe me, but I hope you'd at least believe that this happened _somewhere_ .
He didn't give me the $200 dollars though >:(
Thanks for the history lesson here. For probably 40 years I've wondered why the government could do the lottery but nobody else could.
This video was really great!
Here in France the state-ran lottery system "La Française des Jeux" has become a serious problem, because it's basically a reversed income tax: the poorer people are, the more they spend on average. It has also become much worse with the growing popularity of private sport bet applications which target their commercials specifically at young suburban people who often struggle financially.
The regressive tax aspect of state lotteries is true pretty much everywhere
we have an end of year lottery thing that has become quite the tradition here in The Netherlands, so in some ways it still is a social kinda thing.
Though you don't win nearly as much as the game you talked about.
Awesome video Kevin. The local aspect of it reminded me of mexican Tandas, a way of saving in community. And how much I distrust government
Hahahahaha... Miss Fannie :D
All kidding aside though, I found it beautiful that you put the emphasis of the unfairness and the person behind the story. Its not just about probability and games, but the real people behind it. One of my favourite videos :)
I'm all for bringing back community numbers games. Small scale. There are private lotto companies and casinos in the US. We outlawed them where I'm from b/c you had to be rich to make one, and at that point, it's just a way to transfer money from the poor to the rich.
The way lotteries operate today (and the way legislation is crafted around them) is nothing but a tax on the poor. Lottery revenue is used to pay for school systems and such only because the funds that would have gone to them are instead given as tax breaks to corporations.
Government: That's illegal, you're in jail for doing that.
Government: It's legal now that we're doing it.
Also people: Government, can you do more things for us please?
Its the same with selling Drugs, aint illegal for them but it is for you.
Yeah, same like killing people... It's illegal when normal people do it, but when the government does it, it's a okay...
@@maxmustermann2197 Lol. True. They do have a monopoly on death I suppose.
Fun fact: all government earnings from the lottery go to education and other civil services.
Look it up -_-
If you want to know more, there was a great episode about this on the Criminal Podcast, episode is titled 'The Numbers'.
This seems humble bringing up a small part of history that made a massive change/impact, we always think about the wars and such when looking back in time
Fascinating stuff - really enjoying the recent videos.
I think Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude has a subplot about a community lottery, which was the first time I learned that these ever existed.
I like this Police Math type of videos. I think this should be a UA-cam Originals series!
UA-cam originals is no more. Idk if it was for better or worse they ended it
A real life Mathnet!
@QuantumMeme it's a recent development that UA-cam did away with Originals. Shame because Mindfield and CYSTM were great.
Kevin, hopefully being a baseball fan, has made me love this channel even more.
Kevin is a complex creature.
love all your videos, but this is my favorite one in a while!! thanks for sharing this story and these writers with us :-)
In the Netherlands there are mainly two. One where your specific postal code or streets wins and one on the 31st of December.
I think the first one is mainly motivated by fear. Imagine your street winning, and you being the only one that didn't get like a million and a car.
The other on the evening of the 31st of December definitely related to this video. Is a culture thing where families gift these to family members and friends.. And a lot of people at least win like 50,- to be fair.
My teacher lives in Reuver, where the jackpot was given out on New Year's 2021-2022. Because Reuver only has one postal number, everyone who bought a ticket got at least something, while people on a specific street got about 2 million per ticket. My teacher did not buy a ticket since he doesn't like the lottery, but an elderly friend of his now has 2 million which he cannot do anything with.
It's always a neighborhood mom running the local bingo.
Kevin, I really like the new true crime format. Your usual (sometimes) Isilly, frenetic style contrasts well with the subject, making it seem dramatic.
Great change!
Hey Kevin! My mom is Dr. Felicia George and her book is finally getting published this month about numbers gambling in Detroit. Thank you so much for your video. I'm going to make sure I share with my mom. Also I can link you her book if you're interested!
2:28 What the teacher sounds like after he yells at a student:
Playing 6 days a week and winning boxed 2 times a year? And that made people happy and excited to play? Whatever it is that makes people like gambling, I don't have it or understand it at all. Also, as a public school teacher, THANK YOU lottery!
Another commenter pointed out that part of the excitement in a communal game is even if you only won 2 times a year, with 50 people there are 100 wins a year, so people you know are winning every week
Even though Kevin is always talking directly to us it still felt like he broke the 4th wall when his balls broke out of the cage
I work at the race track. I still play my mommas birthday. One ticket straight and one ticket boxed. I hit almost twice a week. After my son tracked my Return On Investment, he said I’m spending too much money on losing tickets. He then gave me a basic battle plan to follow. He noticed Ive never once won two races in a row, and rarely twice in the same day, so the plan is basically.. after a win with my mothers BDay numbers, I cant bet any more that day. Just take the winnings and walk away, the entire day, done.
1) skip a day, on average saves me from buying 6 losing tickets
2) After every 3 loses, increase the base bet by 50cents. So at first im betting $3, then $6, then $9 etc
(A 50cent minimum bet boxing 3 numbers = 6 combinations for $3)
Result. Im skipping more losing bets, also multiplying the winning bets. So instead of winning once a week, its like winning multiple times a week.. however many times the base bet of 50cents. Ex $9 ticket = 3x the prize
Track takes about 10%. Original ROI was about -2%. New ROI ranges between +1% to +6%
Will I get rich from this, no. But its a higher percentage than a bank will offer.
I like that you put your ad-read in the middle of the video instead of at the end, like most youtubers. makes the message more impactful.
And as always, a top notch video that makes us think.
Thanks for such a brilliant channel.
And remember when someone refers to a "Numbers Runner", that's not the accountant or head of the game, that's the name of the people who take the bets, collects debts and pay out winnings.
Here in Brazil there is a lottery that was once legal but now it's illegal called "Jogo do Bicho", which is basically Numbers but with extra steps. Funny thing is that from what I've seen in my neighborhood it is way more popular than any government lottery, and even cops play it
Great video as always, keep up the good work!
Hi
hes not going to read your comment lmao
Every time Kevin uploads, my respect for lawmakers and the people who decide how and why to enforce it drops lower and lower and lower.
Like the commonwealth classic says, "Grandmas playing the numbers"
Now we know
@@LeeMadik We found out
Love your stuff. Very thoughtful.
hes not going to read your comment lmao
Great vid, Kevin. I also love your vSauce music theme at the end ... can it be (legaly) downloaded somewhere?
Governments around the world stll behave like this. They still believe they know whats best for us.
It's really that they know what's best for them, then try to spin it to make it sound like a positive thing for the public.
that line in that one song makes so much more sense now! We found out grandma plays the numbers.
Great video, brings up some interesting points regarding centralization.
I already knew about Numbers, but I never understood why it was made illegal. That sucks.
Like how you gave a shout out to their books, real respectable
I always wondered what old gangster movies meant by "running numbers" I always assumed that just meant booking bets in general.
Here in Wisconsin most bars have a weekly sign in where you pay every week and only need to sign your name in order to win. Also football game pools where you are given random numbers and win based on the score every quarter. There’s also a game that involves a deck of cards. The money rolls over every week until someone picks the right card. Bars are a big deal around here.
Spain's Christmas lottery is special in that it retains some social aspects. Each number is divided in tenths. Each tenth costs 20€, which is expensive enough so that people will rarely buy all tenths of a single number, but affordable enough so that many people would share a number with many groups of family, friends and coworkers. And it is quite different from a lottery where you write down any number you like, in that each number can be bought only up to ten times, and each winning tenth will always give exactly a tenth of the prize.
There was a really good podcast episode of "Criminal" about this. Very thorough.
Like this one. I actually watched a Film Noir called Force of Evil about the numbers game earlier this week, but that's a rather sanitised one, it really doesn't touch on the important community aspect you mentioned here (and needless to say for a 1948 studio film, pretty darn whitewashed).
A little detail that separates the old numbers game from current lotteries is that point that modern lotteries are specifically drawn, that is the sole purpose of those numbers. With the old ones, with the racetrack results etc., it adds that little drama that these events can have a big impact on people's lives, but in a way that those that run those events have no idea how. It has that extra element of it being fully decided by some whim of fate, rather than picked by a machine.
It's one thing to drink a glass of whiskey at a bar with friends.
It's another thing to drink a glass a whiskey at home alone.
Or even, given the drop in odds of winning : It's another to drink a bottle of whiskey at home alone
Both cases unhealthy and putting poison in your body, so...
I really like the way you highlight this
who else immediately thought of Snape upon hearing 394 ? I did for one.
Pretty cool they a balloon can teach so much about math :)
It's so advanced you'd almost think it's the real Kevin. But we'd never fall for that ruse.
I’m greatful that you shared this story. It’s a shame, we need to away for stories like this to be available, in the open, uncensorable, for the forever existence of our species.. There are lessons to learn from this story
“my cage of balls broke”
why was that quoted, and how long before it gets taken into an out of conext compilation
I like the music at the end, where did you get the song?
The number game ruined lots of lives. It was not always 1$ that was gambled, entire week wages, school fees, college funds, food budgets that were lost.
well you were supposed to use "disposable income" in this.
@@mirkofernd no that's the issue, the community didn't have any disposable income, those were some tough times and they got exploited to some extent.
Let’s go real early on this one
Alright I can't find it anywhere so here I am: What is the music in your outro?
I've looked everywhere but up to no prevail..
The final music in the last few mins always gives goosebumps , actually the second last one
Jake Chudnow - Olive
@@Consa_Lu yea i know jake chudnow and the serial numbers he has in his comments , just didn't know the name of this music in particular , thankyou
I had to rewatch the 'I have a cage full of balls' part about four times before I stopped laughing XD
So this is what that one fallout song meant when it said "We found out Grandma plays the numbers"
It sounds like that was a great thing back then, the sense of belonging because the community numbers, the way he described him t at the end was really nice
The entire time all I thought of was how now I understand the song from fallout 4 about grandma playing the number
I will quote a bumper sticker that Ron Paul liked to keep at his desk when he was in Congressional office: "Don't steal, the government hates competition". In this case, don't be ingenious or they will make it illegal and steal it from you. If something like this was community run and "the house" did well, consider that someone like Fannie could take some of their locally-obtained profits and help feed the homeless or projects for the disabled/elderly in the area, stuff like that, you know... what the state isn't going to do with 99% of the money. If the state is going to be able to legally run such a game, then there should be no reason companies or individuals shouldn't be able to do the same, insomuch as it's done properly and with complete equal fairness for all players.
Joey "Coco" Diez, aka Uncle Joey, has great stories about growing up in the Numbers game back in the day
In Malaysia and Singapore, this is called "3D" (i.e. 3 digits). There are still "black market" games running in neighborhoods. The term "box" is also used for permute.
beautiful video sauce man
ohh I remember going to a province in the Philippines where they bet against the last 2 digits of the final score in a basketball game :D
As soon as you said there was 3 numbers, I was like "so Daily 3?". Wow.
LOL if you didn't get that the gov ain't your friend, you'll never get it
I: Agreed, but capitalism ain´t your friend, either
Thanks for the videos, Kevin. Great work as always!
R.I.P to your cage of balls
The PA lottery even advertises playing the numbers "straight" or "boxed."
I understand that one fallout 4 song on the radio now lol. This is really interesting to hear about too but overall this just grabbed my attention thinking of that song, and lo and behold, it was the game that the song was more than likely based off of.
Love ur vids
hes not going to read your comment lmao
This sounds like something very fun for communities and I'm happy it existed for the time it was around.
This was a really cool episode
I'm really liking the real life connections style/genre of videos.
Wow, what an impressive video. Super interesting, thank you very much
Love to Tony Gwynn rant!
“Miss Fanny”
lol
This is the perfect mix of your already insightful analysis of games by and social justice in a mathematical manner
Thanks for the reading list
I had no idea South Korea has a lotto called 645, in Canada we have the Lotto 649 as one of our national lottos
Make Mindblow again please, I miss it so much
We have a really similiar game in Brazil, called 'jogo de bixo' ( game of the animals), it is illegal, but a lot of people still play it
Great topic ☑ great video ☑ great message ☑