The e-mail said: “CONGRATS, you are a selected winner of the 4,000,000 GBP FACEBOOK LUCKY PROMO.” All I need to do is submit my bank details and a processing fee of 150 British pounds to someone in Amsterdam. I think I could manage that. The reason I love internet lotteries is that you always win. I’ve won so many of them, I keep paying Google that additional $2 a month for 20 GB of extra space in my mailbox.

Cumulatively, luck in the lotteries has brought my net worth to a whopping $82.3 trillion. That, I’m reliably inf­ormed, is slightly higher than the nominal gross domestic product of the entire world. All it takes for me to be many times richer than Bill and Warren and all those multis put together is to send my bank details and processing fees to an incredible number of philanthropists in Amsterdam, Lagos, Liechtenstein, Benin and other exotic locations.

Okay, so I haven’t collected those prizes yet. I’ve been busy. But getting all those e-mails makes me feel really good and brings that sense of security I so do...