[Waterluvian]

What I love about this is how it demonstrates that the waiting is the most powerful part. That week is where a lotto user’s brain does all the work for the lotto corp. The anticipation! The excitement. What if? Oh let’s daydream! Oh the dopamine!

You don’t even have to sell them hope. Just sell them the sensation of hope.

[TehCorwiz]

I view buying a lottery ticket as a way to fund the things that the taxes are allocated to while also getting to fantasize until the drawing. I play maybe twice a year. There's near zero chance I'll win. That's not the point. The point is to have that fantasy, just for a moment.

[hansvm]

> taxes are allocated to

That gets messy in a hurry. Most of the time time a lottery is introduced to help fund school districts, funding from other sources for those districts dries up. Money is fungible, and the effect is as if the lottery money directly went somewhere other than its earmarked purpose.

[amelius]

Hope is a pretty good thing to have, though. And it's one of the few things many people actually _can_ have. Therefore maybe lotteries aren't so bad after all even if nobody ever wins, and posts like this are actually bad.

[Waterluvian]

Many people come down off that kind of hope when their numbers don’t come up. I’ve seen it. I have friends who felt it. You might perceive it as a sort of loan to get you through the week. But you owe it back plus the $2 interest.

[whoknowsidont]

This is a pretty dipshit take.

[amelius]

You must be in the 1% of people who can have that startup dream or have enough money to make investment worthwhile.

[whoknowsidont]

No idea where you're going with that, other than it's another dipshit perspective lol.