I have been dealing with a Great Irritation – a person who wants something for nothing. The thing the person wants is not mine; it belongs to a public body. If it were mine, I would say, “Go. Take it. Live with your conscious. You have shown your true character.” But it is not mine to give away and allowing it to be taken without recompense is taking it from all of us. There is both legality and principle involved here.
And so I am involved in this long drawn out Great Irritation. I do not know when the irritation will go away. I do not know how the irritation will be relieved. But this I do know, each of us have shown our true character: 1. the other party will take possession of something that is not theirs. (between you and me I call that theft); 2. I will stand on principle (I will allow you to call that stubborn and unyielding).
I must ask myself again, is playing the lottery trying to get something for nothing?
The conscious-assuaging answer is – not really. I am trying to get something big (mega millions) for something not so much ($3.00). And it is not public money, i.e. government money. It is money paid in by the other lottery players.
But the facts remain, what I want is out of proportion to what I am willing to pay, and the same human beings who pay taxes, play the lottery. The money comes from the same source – the people.
There is circular movement to the money involved. When I write my checks to the IRS and the state tax commission my private money becomes public money. The first of every month the Dept. of Treasury writes me a pension check, and the public money becomes private. I buy my lottery ticket with private money and the extra outside of prizes is to go to schools and thus again becomes public money. The school district I work for writes me a check and it once again becomes private money. It’s all the same money. The issue is not the money itself. The issue is who, at a specific time, has jurisdiction over the money.
I buy my ticket with private money. And, if I ever win, the money will be distributed from the lottery pool while it is still private. Therefore, I am not taking something that belongs to a public body. Whew! I’m off the hook. My character is intact. Although I do admit, in wanting something big in exchange for something little my character is of the wibbly-wobbly jello variety.
But for all this soul searching and parsing of public vs. private, when it comes to dealing with the above-mentioned Great Irritation, my stubborn character is hard as granite. The item will be paid for or it will be returned. While the other party may have the use of the item at this time, the public body owns it, period, full stop, the end. The public body may sell it and there may be compromise on the dollar amount paid for it, but there will be no compromise that there will be a price paid. On that there will be no wibble-wobble parsing because some things are not up for compromise. And stealing from the public, stealing from all of us, is one of them.