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Comment by _b | Hacker News Reader

That is true only if making lotteries illegal made them nonexistent. In the United States, the legal lottery is arguably better than the widespread (illegal) "numbers game" it replaced.

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It's also arguably worse. It adds a conflict of interest that the "numbers game" never had. The same government that is responsible for providing an education that makes people resistant to the lottery has an interest in people being vulnerable to the lottery.

In my home state of Florida, it's pretty nefarious because they often advertise that the proceeds are used to support education. While that is true, they also removed other sources of funds such as taxes. So in the end the funding level is about the same while less of it comes from taxes. This means Florida can tax people less to pay for education but as other have pointed out, the lottery is essentially a tax on stupidity or at least innumeracy. I guess using an innumeracy tax to fund education is kind of poetic but what Florida has done is tax the uneducated to give tax cuts to everyone else.

I don't believe that lottery players are unintelligent or uneducated.

It's rational to play the lottery if you believe that it's the only way to make a significant economic change to your life.

That's a bigger problem than just education provision.

Why? It’s just gambling!

Last year the HN consensus was that daily fantasy sports betting was some sort of civil liberty.

The lack of a path to changing your economic circumstances through work or education is the problem.

I'd be good if all money made through the state sponsored lottery would go back into funding for education on gambling

Illegal numbers would never reach 5% of the revenue of legal state lotteries. Probably not even 1%. Plenty of law-abiding people with little or no connection to any underworld activity are nevertheless bombarded with legal state-run lottery ads out in the open and available to play at the grocery or convenience store they visit frequently, even daily -- illegal games wouldn't have ads, wouldn't be at 7-11, drawings wouldn't be televised. Further, all numbers games are low-stakes... there is no crime syndicate which could ever afford to run a Powerball or MegaMillions game with 9-figure prizes. Even 6-digit prizes wouldn't be affordable, even if it was, who would ever trust an underground game with that kind of money?

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