I find it puzzling that the reaction to the lottery here on HN and among many tech people I know is very different to say... fantasy sports betting.
With sports betting, not only do you have the prospect of wasting lots of time, but you end up getting hooked to obsessive watching of ESPN and tracking player stats, wasting lots of time. With lotto, I drop $2 and I'm done.
Yet the consensus seems to be the the millions of people buying lotto tickets are all rubes, but the folks flouting the law and running bookmaking operations on the internet are disrupting staid government regulation?
With sports betting, not only do you have the prospect of wasting lots of time, but you end up getting hooked to obsessive watching of ESPN and tracking player stats, wasting lots of time. With lotto, I drop $2 and I'm done.
Yet the consensus seems to be the the millions of people buying lotto tickets are all rubes, but the folks flouting the law and running bookmaking operations on the internet are disrupting staid government regulation?