There’s a scene in the Nicholas Roeg film ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’ in which the main character Thomas Jerome Newton approaches a patent lawyer, Oliver Farnsworth with a portfolio of world beating patents and asks “in, say 3 or 4 years, how much would this be worth to me?”.
Farnsworth replies “I’m a lawyer Mr Newton, not an accountant but I would say somewhere in the region of around 300 million dollars”* to which Newton looks disappointed and asks “Not More?”.
“More?” says Farnsworth incredulously.
“I need more…”
“What the hell for?”
Which is precisely my natural inclination when I heard that a recent record 26.5 million euro millions lottery winner is said to have already been a multi millionaire and I wonder how much more does someone want if they are a multi millionaire and still do the lottery?
*This would have been a lot of money in 1976
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3 Comments
September 10, 2007 at 7:41 pm
It’s a good questionand one I ask myself every week as I buy my Euromillions and Lotto tickets. Specifically, the question takes this form: If I won a major prize, would I continue buying tickets every week?
Sometimes I think “Why bother?” and sometimes I think “Why not?” and sometimes I think “Think of all the good you could do with the money”. Hm, yes. Except that I also think that “doing good” which, after all, implies messing with people’s lives, is rather a difficult moral issue.
Maybe I’ll just keep all the money and have a wonderful time.
The Man who fell to Earth: strange film. I didn’t really like it. It has too many holes in it. Maybe the novel is better.
September 11, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Hi Em;
Pure and simple greed. It doesn’t matter how much they already have - it will never be enough. Unless of course they plan on giving the whole of their winnings up for charity. And how much would you be willing to bet that, that will happen?
Now me, I’d settle for just enough to get me out of debt.
Take care;
Anna
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Stuff(Em) replied: I have to bite my tongue hard to quell my cynicism that these obscene amounts of lottery ‘do good’ when I’d rather (if we must have lotteries) that we had 100 winners each getting, say 100,000 each time. Seems like no amount of money is enough for many. Sending you my best wishes that some luck comes along to help with any money worries. I empathise enormously.
November 28, 2007 at 10:54 pm
why play the lottery if you dont want to win a big amout? go and play bingo you’ll only win a few k will be better for your consious. and why spend years trying to win just to give it all away to charity when you do? charity begins at home. if i won the only people that would benefit would be me, my mum and dad and sister.
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