ITate in the 2024 election, Elon Musk made a tempting and strange offer: o Tombo offering $1 million a day to voters who pledged to sign his petition proclaiming support for the First and Second Amendments. The stunt raised questions about money in politics, but also about the use of what appeared to be a lottery to influence voter choices. Later the political action commission PASSED that they would select the “winners” ahead of time, not randomly pick them. So not a lottery after all.

But it was a fitting trick for our times, where elections are big business and the rules of the game are subject to a lot of manipulation: duplicate textshours-long lines to vote in some precincts and, of course, the arcane Electoral College that shapes how campaigns are run and whose votes count. Musk’s alleged lottery made sense in America’s betting-obsessed culture, where it’s not enough to watch the stock market rise and fall during elections; instead dedicated prediction markets now allows speculators to bet on election results.

The widespread embrace of gambling, betting and the lottery is a regressive method of supporting revenue for public goods in an age of austerity and tax cuts. Lotteries therefore reflect and increase inequality while holding out the promise of a large payout for individual winners. Indeed, the same political and economic conditions that gave rise to the popularity of lotteries, gambling and speculation have also ushered in a new political era, shaped by Donald Trump – who, after all, has built a career in casinos. Uncertainty and insecurity have made us a nation of gamblers, betting that the wheel of fortune, rather than common investment in our democracy, brings prosperity.

Lotteries have a long history in the US, dating back to colonial times. Then, the legislations used lottery to raise funds for colonial governments, poor relief and universities, among other public goods. However, in the 1820s and 1830s, many states moved to ban state and private lotteries after scandals arose over rigged and unfair games. The reformers criticized lotteries as regressive and harmful to workers, and state constitutions soon banned them.

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After the Civil War, lotteries became popular again. Southern states saw them as an easy way to raise revenue without imposing new taxes. Soon, people were buying Louisiana State Lottery tickets by mail, not just in the state, but across the nation. Concerned with the corruption of public morality, and ca President Benjamin Harrison “Robbery of the poor,” Congress used its power to regulate interstate commerce to suppress state lotteries until the late 19th century.

But legal gambling reappeared in the 20th century. Nevada legalized gambling during the Great Depression. State lotteries followed, starting with New Hampshirein 1964. The Granite State was one of the a few states with no income or sales taxesand the lottery the proceeds were to go to the public school system. Entry cost $3 and people dreamed of taking home the winnings, which were tied to a horse race. People could walk away with a prize ranging from a few hundred dollars to $150,000.

People enthusiastically gambled, and other states soon followed in the 1970s and 1980s as cities and states became more fiscally strapped due to inflation, low corporate taxes, and the veneration of the free market. Politicians were reluctant to raise direct taxes on citizens, lest they lose re-election, and so lotteries became a popular method of fundraising.

Some states have turned to gambling as another source of revenue. In 1976, New Jersey voters chose to legalize gambling in Atlantic City, a decision that attracted casino operators in droves over the next decade. The city was once a premiere destination for visitors hoping to catch the sun and sea from the shore, but the city had fallen on hard times. Casino gambling has been seen as a good bet for reviving tourism and increasing revenue.

In 1984, Trump made his first foray into the Atlantic City casino business and expanded his empire to three casinos over the next decade. He did good, but his the casinos didn’t— projects took on excessive debt or failed to turn a profit, and everyone suffered bankruptcies (Trump Taj Mahal in 1991, Trump Plaza and Trump Castle, 1992) before eventually closing or changing hands. Nor the inhabitants of the city; people’s homes had been cleared to make way for the casinos that drowned the seaside town. And yet, tourists have flocked to the growing opportunities to touch it in a big way. In 1986, Atlantic City received 30 million visitors, making it the number one tourist destination in the country.

In the 1980s, the culture – like President Ronald Reagan’s administration – worshiped the acquisition of wealth, and the expansion of the financial industry was accompanied by Hollywood films such as Wall Street and The Working Girl. Even when reckless speculation and deregulation led to crashes like the Savings and Loan Crisis and “Black Monday” on October 19, 1987Americans doubled down on risk-taking and markets. Instead of creating a system that sought to serve everyone’s needs, the logic of markets and competition triumphed and applied itself to every part of life.

Such logic even extended to the immigration system. Since 1965, the system has largely limited visas to immigrants with a close family member or employer to sponsor them. However, many more people want to immigrate to the US, attracted by better opportunities. In 1990, policy makers decided to create a way to obtain visas. Perhaps reflecting the glorification of risk-taking that dominates the culture, they turned it into a game of chance. The new Diversity Visa Lottery gave people all over the world the chance to earn an immigrant visa.

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Allocating valuable but rare goods by lottery made sense to decision makers for practical reasons; it was cheaper to administer this mod than to screen and evaluate detailed applications, weighing the pros and cons of each applicant. But it was a fortuitous choice: Making luck the program’s cheering premise also attracted would-be immigrants who felt the chance offered better odds than narrow-minded bureaucrats.

This lottery, like others, recognizes the randomness that shapes our lives, especially in the 21st century, as countries like the US have cut social safety nets and embraced deregulation, allowing inequality to shape our society and making rights dependent on things that in are largely beyond our control: where we are born, our gender, the state in which we live. The resulting precariousness only deepens our sense of insecurity and mistrust.

Luck shapes our lives more than we feel comfortable admitting, and the explosion of lotteries and gambling in our society in recent years recognizes and reinforces this fact. When hard work and dedication don’t bring us stability for sure, it makes sense to turn to lottery tickets and bets in hopes of a big win, even when the odds are stacked against us.

However, while lotteries may be popular and generate needed revenue, they are a poor substitute for robust investment in the public goods we all depend on, such as schools, health care, infrastructure and housing. Such insecurity and uncertainty can undermine our trust in each other, in government, and in democracy itself to provide what we need to survive and thrive. After all, almost everyone who enters the lottery loses; The luck of the winner depends on the lack of everyone else.

Access to the good life seems to depend more than ever on luck. Now, by sending Trump back to the White House, the electorate seems to have turned the wheel on democracy itself, leaving us to hope that whatever luck we’ve had in building our fragile democracy so far in our history will not run out

Carly Goodman is assistant professor of history at Rutgers University-Camden, senior editor of Made by History at TIME, and author of Dreamland: America’s Immigration Lottery in an Age of Restrictions (UNC Press, 2023).

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME’s editors.