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Comment by CryptoPunk | Hacker News Reader

>>Lotteries, mortgages, and public securities are heavily regulated to make it nearly impossible to get ripped off.

The poorest households in the US spend something like 11% of their income on lotteries. There isn't any way lotteries could rip them off any more.

In a hypothetically free market world, they would be dumping their disposable income in stocks sold over the counter in convenience stores, or directly through their phones, and perhaps traded without intermediaries on the blockchain, and would be developing some skills in investment analysis, along with an asset base, over time, instead of developing new lottery number picking techniques based on mathematical quackery and superstitions.

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> In a hypothetically free market world, they would be dumping their disposable income in stocks sold over the counter in convenience stores,

I would not be so sure about that. The poor (who buy lottery tickets) have a lot less ability to delay gratification. And if you compare the chance to double your $10 in the next year (e.g. invest in $QQQ) to having the chance of being a millionaire next week, the bet to gain $10 is not an appealing option. Firstly it takes a year and secondly it's not enough to escape their current life.

>>And if you compare the chance to double your $10 in the next year (e.g. invest in $QQQ) to having the chance of being a millionaire next week, the bet to gain $10 is not an appealing option.

There are many offerings in the DeFi/token market that offer the prospect of massive payouts on those time frames.

Penny stocks can have a similar appeal.

These markets are replete with 'scammish' offerings and outright scams too, but over time, I strongly suspect you'd see retail investors become more discerning, as they learn through a process of trial and error what works and what doesn't.

> And if you compare the chance to double your $10 in the next year (e.g. invest in $QQQ) to having the chance of being a millionaire next week, the bet to gain $10 is not an appealing option.

the odds of winning a powerball lottery is about 1 in 290 million to win about $130million. The expected value is therefore $130 x 1/290m = $0.44 , for an investment of about $10 - very small indeed.

The small chance at escaping poverty is great, but the money is not well spent. if that's how they really think, then they will find that escaping is even harder.

Investing is not gambling - investing generates equity/capital growth. You only "lost" in investing if the asset crumbles. By investing in QQQ, it's concentrated, but it's unlikely everything in the ETF crumbles at the same time. So the chance of loss is much lower than lottery.

I'm guessing you weren't invested in tech index funds in the late 90s.

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