I go to Vegas and gamble sometimes, which is not all that different. I don't gamble because I expect to win money; I gamble because the experience (especially with more social games like craps) is fun to me, even when I lose. Certainly it's not fun to everyone, but roller coasters aren't fun to everyone either, and that's fine.
If you only gamble or play the lottery because you genuinely think you have a reasonable shot of coming out ahead (vs. other uses for that money), then you may have a problem. Or if you have an addiction to gambling and it's actually hurting your finances.
The other bit is that if you're poor, and playing the lottery is a way for you to build a little hope into your life (even if, deep down, you know you're unlikely to win), that's... questionable, maybe? Not an indictment of yourself, but it calls into question societal structures that essentially profit off your low-level financial despair, in return for lessening that despair a little, but only with a placebo. When instead society should instead be helping you, to, y'know, not be poor.
But hey, if someone allocates $5 in their budget to buy scratch-offs every day, I'd say that's probably better for their health than eating a $5 ice cream sundae every day.
Look at the numbers of the people playing lotto/scratch-offs. Look at where they are being sold. These are targeted at a specific group of people. You can try to whitewash it all you want, but it only makes you look naive. Especially that last sentence of yours. I'm really struggling to not get banned for commenting to this, but I'd suggest taking some rose tinted glasses off and taking a real look at this issue.
Not only have I never heard that definition used, I don't see how that definition makes any sense in context. The older, more commonly used meaning is clearly the one being used here.
The poor people who buy a $5 ice-cream sundae every day are the ones addicted to food ... people are not making a freely reasoned choice to spend money gambling, poor people are in a vulnerable position and lottery runners exploit that with heavy advertising to ensure people are hooked on the idea they can improve things by spending money on what seems like hope.
> But hey, if someone allocates $5 in their budget to buy scratch-offs every day, I'd say that's probably better for their health than eating a $5 ice cream sundae every day.
What happens when you have $5, but you win the scratchcard, and now you have $10?
A person buying ice cream every day, probably isn't going to want to be buy 2 on the same day. Can the same be said for lotto patrons?
I don’t play the lottery, but I think this is not really correct.
Playing the lottery must be an action that has a negative expected value (otherwise they’d go out of business). But if, rather than expected value, you are optimizing for “probability of having a hundred million dollars” or whatever, your options are: keep the money you would have spent on the ticket (0% chance of success) or buy the ticket (very small chance of success).
So, I can see why people go for it. Especially if the ticket cost won’t make an actual difference to their life circumstances, and the winning money would.
I think it's still probably better to throw all the money down on an unlikely sports bet or some crazy options trade. The lottery is particularly skewed to the house.
You can buy a lottery ticket for every single big jackpot for a year and lose less than your average options trader. The value is the feeling you get that you and your family might not have to work for the rest of your lives. That feeling is clearly and obviously worth a dollar a day.
At least with sports betting skill can make money. Just betting on the first place team to win over the last place team for example, it won't always win, but typically will. Of course bookies know this and so the payoff isn't enough to make a living on (if you can figure out the exception and bet only on the last place teams that win you can live well). Statistics are generally well studied in sports, but if you study how a team is coached you can find cases where they have a better than statistical chance to win a game they are expected to lose. Most people betting sports either always bet for their team, or bet on statistics, so if you can exploit something else.
I can see a potential problem here in that a sizeable win from a random bet is likely to encourage some people to keep making these bets in future, with inevitable consequences.
I go to Vegas and gamble sometimes, which is not all that different. I don't gamble because I expect to win money; I gamble because the experience (especially with more social games like craps) is fun to me, even when I lose. Certainly it's not fun to everyone, but roller coasters aren't fun to everyone either, and that's fine.
If you only gamble or play the lottery because you genuinely think you have a reasonable shot of coming out ahead (vs. other uses for that money), then you may have a problem. Or if you have an addiction to gambling and it's actually hurting your finances.
The other bit is that if you're poor, and playing the lottery is a way for you to build a little hope into your life (even if, deep down, you know you're unlikely to win), that's... questionable, maybe? Not an indictment of yourself, but it calls into question societal structures that essentially profit off your low-level financial despair, in return for lessening that despair a little, but only with a placebo. When instead society should instead be helping you, to, y'know, not be poor.
But hey, if someone allocates $5 in their budget to buy scratch-offs every day, I'd say that's probably better for their health than eating a $5 ice cream sundae every day.