I am Petra, very interesting article that contained the information I was searching for in Google, thanks.

Yes, I do think that these lotteries are a bad thing if they are run by the state. But I’m also not a libertarian!

I believe that, in part for reasons that you already mentioned, these lotteries are inherently misleading. They rely on — and indeed, in their advertising practices, encourage — widespread misperceptions about probability. It is a shame, of course, that such misperceptions exist, but they do. (And there is some psychological evidence to suggest that not much can really be done about it.) I do not believe that the state must protect citizens from themselves (one of the causes of an overly litigious society, in my amateur opinion), but I also believe that the state should not actively seek to take advantage of its citizens, and I believe that these lotteries do exactly that. It is probably also true that they take undo advantage of exactly those who can least stand it financially, but, while deplorable, that aspect of these lotteries is not my main argument against them. (And lots of dumb — and some smart — rich people in fact buy the lottery tickets as well.)

By the way, private gambling establishments are a different matter. If operated in ‘the right’ way (and I won’t try to elaborate on what ‘right’ might mean here), they are fine, in my opinion. True, they also take advantage of people’s misperceptions about probability, but they are different in some important ways. First, it is very clear that they are out to make money — there is no pretense whatsoever that they are operating for some charitable purpose. Second, there is, arguably, some actual entertainment value. Third, they are not the state. Citizens do not have a right to presuppose that a private entity is not trying take advantage of them. They do have a right, in my amateur opinion, to presuppose that the state is not trying to take advantage of them. (Another difference is that the odds of winning money in a casino are actually much higher than the odds of winning the lottery….)

Just out of curiosity, do you think that these lotteries are a bad thing? I once had a professor who claimed that they were since they take advantage of low-income people and people that are, frankly, not sophisticated enough to know that they should not play these games. (I know this sounds elitist, but a.) it is not my argument, and b.) these people exist.) Moreover, the education marketing gimmick fools people into thinking that they are doing the right thing by playing, when clearly, for reasons you enumerated, it is not. To what extent should one just be a libertarian about these matters and just let people throw away their income on these games? Does the state have a responsibility to look out for the polity and see to it that lotteries and the like do not take advantage of people?