A very long time ago, I heard a brief news story on the radio. The story was that a convicted felon had won a big prize in Massachusetts' state lottery. He'd bought the ticket after he was convicted, but before he had been sentenced. I had the sense that the announcer reading the story did not grasp the irony, as he stated what the felony was of which this person had been convicted—bookmaking. That is, he had been convicted of a felony, for running a gambling operation.
As far as I am concerned, government-run lotteries are a form of corruption, as long as the same governments who run such lotteries deny law-abiding citizens the right, also, to run gambling operations. Either gambling is a legitimate form of commerce, or else it is not. There is simply no rational way for it to be legitimate for governments to run such operations, but not equally legitimate for private citizens and companies to do likewise. This simply is not an activity that government should be involved in, if that same government will put people in jail for engaging in the same activity.
In any event, state lotteries wind up being, in effect, a tax on stupid people—people who are dumb enough not to understand how they are being ripped off. Any gambling-for-profit operation depends on a certain degree of dishonesty, on the games being skewed against the player, in favor of the house. Where private gambling operations are allowed,they typically have a payback rate somewhere in the 90% to 95% range—that is, statistically, you can expect to win back anywhere from 90¢ to 95¢ for every dollar you bet. That 5¢ to 10¢ that the casino cheats you out of is how it makes its revenue.
State lotteries typically run at a 50% playback rate. They cheat gamblers out of half of their stake. Dumb gamblers, who don't understand the math well enough to realize what a bad deal they are getting.
