Volume 4 · The Ledger and the Loom · Essay 156

Lottery Fallacy

You have heard Lottery Fallacy at a dinner table, perhaps from an uncle, perhaps from yourself. It is a common family inheritance.

The error is seductive because it imitates a virtue. It sounds like loyalty, or confidence, or common sense. But follow it home and you find it lives in a house with no foundation.

Consider the chit fund in a small town. It survives not on contracts but on the shame of defaulting before neighbours. Reputation is the oldest collateral in India.

Money is a good clerk and a terrible master; the arrangement is entirely up to us. Keep it like a good key: accessible, unlabelled, and used often.