[etrautmann]

That's an interesting point, though it's hard to imagine the total market cap would be anywhere near as large if lotteries weren't available in every corner store/gas station/etc.

If you had to directly seek it out as a black market activity, the outflow of capital from from the poor and working class would be diminished, but even if that were two orders of magnitude less, that's 70M/year flowing to organized crime.

Not sure how to feel about this, since it seems immoral for the government to implement a de-factor regressive tax scheme, but your point stands.