> Also it's hard to be against gambling if your state runs a lotto, which is gambling.
How so? Different kinds of gambling have different characteristics that could make them more or less prone to problematic behavior.
With the lottery, it's so boring and there's such a time lag between action and response that intuitively it seems like it would be harder to get addicted or harder for addiction to become really problematic.
State lotteries also run games like Keno, which run every 5-15 minutes. They have also started to run apps which have instant-play games, which are roughly equivalent to turning your phone into a slot machine. Keno and instant-play games still feel like chance, though, and the apps often have warnings and usage limits that the sports betting sites don't have.
>With the lottery, it's so boring and there's such a time lag between action and response that intuitively it seems like it would be harder to get addicted
Addictions don't reason. Win $10 and some people are hooked for life.
> or harder for addiction to become really problematic.
Example: a school teacher spending $200 a week on lotto tickets, not life devastating, but do we really want this in our society? This happens a lot.
Lottos just trick the people with less money into paying more taxes on the hopes of "winning it big!" It's essentially a hope tax for the lower and middle class. I can think of better ways of collecting taxes.
>> With the lottery, it's so boring and there's such a time lag between action and response that intuitively it seems like it would be harder to get addicted
> Addictions don't reason.
That argument was specifically based on how gambling feels and not reasoning.
Indeed, you can't argue state lotteries aren't gambling. But hey, there is a wide spectrum of how bad each form of gambling is, and lottery is very much on the lower end of it.
Very, very few people spend $200 a week on lottery tickets -- they spend a few dollars here and there a week. (Spending $200 is just silly and barely increases the chance of winning or return -- if someone can't see that, well, can't stop them from wasting money) Of course, I would like state lotteries to be further restricted, but that's still much much better than online sports betting -- people can lose six digits of wealth quickly, and that has a much bigger and immediate impact on lives than state lotteries.
> Lottos just trick the people with less money into paying more taxes on the hopes of "winning it big!"
How do you explain the school teacher spending $200 per week, then? The teachers here collectively own one of the world's largest hedge funds. These are very wealthy people.
It was the teachers themselves who told me, but sage advice in general. You're quite right that teaching does tend to an attract a crowd that are out to lunch.
Still, the portfolio is public knowledge, so we can also verify what they say. In this case a stopped watch is still right sometimes.
