"you could be sitting alone in a dark room with nothing but a lottery ticket in your hand and be perfectly satisfied with fantasies of winning"
This is one of the biggest reasons I dislike the lottery, from a societal perspective: it satisfies people who would otherwise have an incentive to go out and create their own success. You can see this anytime the jackpots get big enough that non-players buy tickets. There is a noticeable drop in productivity as people sit back and fantasize about winning $1 billion or more. Instead of actually doing something that would improve their lives, they're happy sitting in the dark and fantasizing. If that's a one-day a year occurrence, fine. But its clearly not a one-day occurrence to the regular players, and I think it negatively impacts their lives far beyond the actual cost of the tickets.