Situational Ethics, a question

TomD

TomD

e publius unum
I posted this identical question on another board that I frequent, on that specializes in gold, silver and numismatics. Curious to see how/if the opinion is different in a group with a different focus.

To set the scene, last night I was at the Christmas meeting of the local Numismatics Club where they were giving away by drawing a 1/10 oz gold coin and, by raffle drawing, 30 various items worth from $10-$30. There were around 40-50 people present.

In the line to buy the raffle tickets, the guy ahead of me bought 40 raffle tickets at $1 each, which turned out to be close to 1/10th of the total sold. The drawing (not raffle related, 1 chance for each person present) was first and the guy who bought so many tickets won. Then the raffle started and the same guy, by some insane luck of the draw, won 13 of the 30 raffle drawings. At one point he had won 6 of the first 8 prizes. After a while, to me at least, it started to become grotesque as he walked time after time to claim the prizes.

As I was later in the evening describing the situation to my wife I mentioned that, if the guy had a lick of class that, after winning the gold coin and maybe 6 raffles, he would have deferred any further winnings and given the other 40 something people present a chance. My wife disagreed saying that he acted correctly because he paid the money and took the chances, just like everyone else. I agreed that he had every right to act in that way but that, in my opinion anyway, it demonstrated a certain lack of character. I would have felt extremely uncomfortable after some point in his situation.

Curious to see your take..
 
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That's the problem with randomness - you just never know.

I am guessing that most of these items being raffled were donated to help the club raise money. This guy ponied up $40, and I have to assume that he was either no good at math or he was generously trying to help the club. Each time the guy won, he had a diminishing chance of winning (less than 1/10). The reason it was less than 1/10 is because less of his tickets were available to win versus the pool of those that still hadn't won. His tickets by no means had a "lock" on the prizes, and he might just as easily have won nothing. I wouldn't let the fact that he had a really lucky streak diminish the fact that he laid out 40 bucks to help the club and could have gone home empty handed. I say he is to be congratulated. We have a christmas basket raffle at work to raise money for needy people. I saw one of my co-workers buying a huge string of tickets. My reaction at the time was, "oh, he's putting up cash for a good cause even though he probably won't win anything."
 
Something similar

About ten years ago I had been shooting in a skeet/trap league. One year the people who volunteered to handle the awards did nothing and gave out some cash awards. I was a bit loud in my denunciation of their abdication of their responsibilities and someone remarked that if I was so good then why didn't I volunteer. Well, I did and I managed the awards for two years, three leagues per year.

In addition to all the team and individual place trophies I made sure that there were t-shirts, hats and plenty of shooting related goodies for door prizes. Everybody went home with something. I used tickets for the door prizes and a ticket stub was placed on each of the door prizes. We always had some kids around for the awards dinner and I would have him/her place the tickets. I always called the tickets from the least expensive prize first.

Well, one league the top prize that was called last was a Browning double take down shotgun case that cost over a hundred dollars. Well, the kid read off the number of the ticket and it was mine. To say that I was flustered is a understatement. My mind was spinning trying to decide if I should take the prize or not. I rationalized that I had contributed the same amount to the prize fund as everyone else and received no compensation for my work in getting all the awards so it should be OK for me to take the prize.

Well, the case sits in an unopened box in my workshop and I've never been able to talk myself into using it. I haven't shot in that league for 5 or 6 years but one of these years I may just donate the case back.
 
TomD, I'm with your wife....

BTW, we're a guilt-ridden bunch eh?

American ethos....

LOL

al
 
So what's the solution?

I'm willing to accept your characterization of this guy as lacking character. I more or less agree. Personally, I've donated back prizes on lots of occasions. I won a 7mm Shilen barrel blank at one after-match raffle but I didn't need anything in 7mm so I told the guy announcing the prizes to give it away again. The guy at the mic looked at me like I was crazy but...believe it or not...the next two guys whose tickets were drawn did exactly the same thing. Sometimes I just want to make a donation and I'm apparently not the only person who feels that way.

Still, this guy bought his tickets fair and square and nothing could be done at that point to prevent him from winning more that wouldn't be a gross violation of the process.

An illustration: Many decades ago, I was a child and the family was at a car show. My sister and I were bored while my dad looked at cars. One of the manufacturers was giving away some neat swag so after the presentation we walked up and asked how to enter. We were told, in response to specific questions, that we had only to fill out these entry blanks and could enter as many times as we liked. The next drawing would be in three hours.

My sister and I sat and filled out entry cards for three hours. We filled that sucker to the top; 99% of the entries in the box were ours. Apparently, we had been observed. As soon as the time came to pull entry forms for prizes, the guy with the mic announced "It looks like someone has filled our box with a lot of trash" then proceeded to reach in and scoop out all our entries and throw them in a trash can he had brought on stage.

I don't think they would have even considered trying a crap move like that if we hadn't been kids. An adult, back in that day, would have punched the guy in the nose. As kids, we felt like we'd been punched in the gut.

Thus, I don't see anything the club can do to prevent this sort of thing. People do not react well if you change the rules once the game is started. Your club simply must accept that if they are going to sponsor a game of chance, then they, too, are taking a chance and may suffer an awkward, sub-optimal outcome.

After all, a numismatics club is not a casino with the legal right to eject any player who wins too much.
 
There's no question of rights, only a question of the correct thing for an individual to do in a situation where sometimes the solution that is "legal" may or may not be close to the optimal solution. We're not evolved from solitary predators, we are social creatures and have to consider our actions in the light of the effects on others.

If you've ever heard of the "prisoner's dilemma" and the extensions thereof, you'll know that, in a social species, there is a tension between cooperation and unmitigated self interest. Mathematically it can be proven that cooperation will be the strategy most likely to lead to long term success and that fact has been baked into our genes. That is the reason that, even among infants and very young children, there is a visceral negative reaction towards someone who is viewed as "hogging" the resources.

Admittedly the guy had every right on earth to do as he did but it was stupid to demonstrate such selfishness to his fellows for such trivial results.

Now me for instance, would I show terminal selfishness for, say, $5 million? Yep! A few hundred bucks? What do you think I am? From the old joke "We've already determined that, we're just arguing about price."
 
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Seems to me that a raffle is a way to involve people financially by working over their selfish side. If you want to spread the joy around more, maybe auctioning each item would be a more ethical route to travel, albeit one that would involve the promoters in more effort & perhaps not be as financially advantageous.

That suggestion that the the guy who anted up big is unethical but the promoters who accepted his money without qualification end up smelling like roses seems a tad grotesque to me.
 
I agree with your wife. As for deferring and giving the other folks a chance, they all had that chance; furthermore, I assume they all had a chance to buy as many tickets as they wanted. As for his "character," he may have felt uncomfortable also.
 
I am thinking this wasn't a money raising raffle. The prizes seem to out-cost the income by double. Take 1/10 ounce of gold= $170 plus 30 items at $20= $600 so approximately $770 in prizes total. Now sell 40 tickets at $1 that amounted to 1/10 of total tickets sold = $400. I'm thinking someone wasn't thinking (LOL). The man bought the tickets. He won the prizes. He can do whatever he wants with his winnings. Sort of like winning at the slot machines I hear (never played one). If you win a big pot, you can take it home or spend it all over again.

Carp
 
I fail to see a problem here. You pay your money and you take your chances. Everyone else had the same opportunity as the big winner. I wouldn't have felt embarrassed at all. I would have been happy with a nice profit. Am I missing something? If this was supposed to have been a charity event, I must have missed it in the post.

Rick
 
This is sort of like the Moose Lotery here in Maine. Quite often, a number of people in the same family will be drawn. I was at a recent outing at which an expensive rifle was raffled. As it turned out, one of the "Ontarage" won the rifle. BUT, a 5 yo drew the ticket and person who won the rifle had ponied up $100. Why would there be a question? Jelousy, perhaps?
 
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I witnessed one that was also very "interesting" last weekend. I attended the annual Foundation for North American Wild Sheep raffle and auction. In this meeting, your membership dues gave you one ticket in the raffle in which you could win a $35,000 Stone Sheep hunt (you don't really win it for free though, you have to give a "donation" of $7,500 to FNAWS, but it's still the best deal going for sheep hunters). Well, they drew the lucky ticket, then drew an alternate just in case the winner wasn't present to claim his prize. The winner was present though and it turned out to be a 11 year old kid. Well, obviously the kid wasn't even of legal hunting age. And I seriously doubt he had $7,500 in his piggy bank. But, because his dad had bid on and won a few items in the auction earlier in the evening, they awarded the kid the hunt and never even mentioned who the alternate was. Now, if it were me, knowing how coveted this tag is and how badly some folks need it, I would never put my kid in the drawing to begin with. But the father of this kid didn't seem to be bothered by it at all. He was smiling ear to ear. So either he will take the ram himself (which must be illegal since his name is not on the tag), or he will make "arrangements" to hunt at a later date with the outfitter (thereby creating a "no-hunter" situation for this year) and basically erasing anyone else's chances of going THIS year. Either way, there were about 500 people in the room who got cheated out of their chances and one person in particular (the alternate) who REALLY got screwed. Seems to me that a classy guy (and one who would like to keep his skin) would have immediately asked the auctioneer to award the prize to the alternate. That didn't happen. Could you sit in a room with 500 other people who now hate your guts and not be bothered by it? I sure couldn't.
I am now beginning to see why raffles are generally suspicious activities.
 
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I have a friend who'd never been sheep hunting, had no interest. Then about 5yrs ago he won a hunt in a fundraising raffle and got a nice book ram. It happened again 3yrs ago.... now he's got TWO sheep in the books for two raffle tickets. This last year another raffle came around and he bought one ticket, with a comment that "I guess if God wants me to shoot sheep I'll win."

And he did win. Purportedly a "$180,000.00 hunt," and of course his third sheep with a bow....this one is the new World Record (pending) and he's one sheep away from his Grand Slam!

He figures it'll take ten times as much money to fill out the one animal left!

LOL
al
 
I belong to a club that raffles of permission slips for deer & turkey hunting. I don't need one because I have a better spot to hunt, but I dropped in $10 for two tickets & won a slip.

So I offered up the winning ticket to the the highest bidder. In the end, the club got my $10, the $50 the other guy had spent, and the $25 he bid for the winning ticket. I thought it was good with $85 total for the club, and the other guy was happy to have a place to hunt.

However, some of the other members are mad, thinking I should not have bought any tickets. No good deed goes unpunished!
Ron
 
If he had bought $40 worth of tickets and not won a single raffle, would someone in the crowd give up their chance at a prize so he could win one? You pays your money and you take your chances. Nothing about greed at all in this situation.
 
Goodgrouper,

I am guessing either the father put the sons name on his ticket or the son was a member. Either way, I don't really see the problem? If the son was a member and he won, I figure he can do whatever he wants with it and if the father put his sons name on the ticket for fun, who cares. Well, I guess those who didn't win did but I bet you a million that if the tables were turned, they wouldn't give it up.

Hovis
 
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