[nullflux]

You're making the (probably) false assumption that your lottery is as broken as the Ontario one.

I question your detachment if you are calling gambling an "investment" at all. If you want to win at probability games, look at what any professional gambler does and stick your money down only when you can prove or reasonably expect to see a positive expected value given your odds. That's how basic strategy in blackjack and most of poker math works.

Also, I assumed ticket generation for the simple games was something brute-force-ish akin to:

1. Create your winning tickets. Fill in the rest of the numbers with things that won't cause duplicate wins on the same ticket pseudorandomly.

2. Make a random ticket. Check to make sure the ticket is not solved. If the ticket doesn't solve, add it to the stack of tickets.

Randomly shuffle all tickets. Print to rolls and cut. You could probably even get away with duplicate random "losing" tickets if you had enough of them because most people likely won't end up with the same losing ticket.

[nullflux]

Also: Can we really call this a "regressive tax" like the Wired article states? There is no obligation to play the game. You are obligated to pay taxes.

Numbers games (lotteries) are run by governments now because organized crime was running them in inner cities. People still played then. See Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_game At least the "tax" from lottery proceeds often goes to benefit social goods like public school systems.

[msellout]

Calling state lotteries a regressive tax highlights the irony of the socioeconomic system. The non-lottery-playing cohort tends to have more political control and uses that power (unconsciously, perhaps) to structure the market to induce lottery-playing behavior among the poorer cohort.

In other words, there are varying methods of obligation.

[nullflux]

Can I get something to read on this premise? This type of "unconscious influence" stuff reeks of conspiracy theory or an irrelevant conclusion from sociological data. (Not calling you wrong, but I'm skeptical of this conclusion.)