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I’m hard pressed to think of any first-come, first-served system for allocating scarce goods that wouldn’t be better run as a lottery.

The problem is that typically the person selling the item doesn’t care who gets it, so there’s literally zero incentive to spend any effort making a fairer distribution system.

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What about an auction? That’s how the housing market works in e.g. Norway.

That's definitely not fair either, as it disproportionally benefits those with more funds. Which only leads to wider inequality.

I didn’t mean to imply that lottery was the best system in all cases, just that it’s pretty much always better than first one wins. Though thinking about it more a lottery probably results in more total entries, and you might end up giving the thing to someone who is closer to ambivalent than the folks willing to stand in line at 5AM.

Auctions are a great way to see that the item ends up in the hands of the person who “values” it most, where value is measured in currency. It does have the problem that in a system of high inequality the people at the bottom have essentially zero chance of winning.

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