I accept that a state monopoly is better than making the mob richer and stronger. However given that it's mostly the poor that play lotteries, bingo, etc and all of them are rigged against the players, the state should find a way to give back most of those money to the players (there are expenses to keep it running.) If a private company is running it for the state, the margin should be small. This is maybe even something a politician could use in a campaign.

Mob, let alone legal casino operators, would never get away with such ridiculous margins. Even organized crime faces competition from unorganized crime, your neighbor's home poker game will probably have a pretty low rake.

When I was a kid sport betting was illegal in Italy, and almost everyone I knew played illegal sport bets.

But we also had legal national Lotto[0], and _illegal_ Lotto betting with about the same margins.

And when sport betting got legalized, the odds given where about the same as the illegal one, until the latter de facto disappeared.

So, I'm not sure the mob would not get away with Lottery margins.

[0] the traditional Italian lotto is a betting game: you bet that 1-5 numbers will come out of an extraction, but it's up to you to choose how risky a bet and how much you bet, e.g. getting one number pays 11:1, 3 numbers gives you a 4500:1 etc

We had Totocalcio too. Btw, I didn't know anybody betting on sport results but I remember the TV talking about that. Interesting bits at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Totonero

I'm still not convinced that some lottery winners aren't preselected. I get it, that it is supposed to be auditable and resistant to cheating but wouldn't be the first time a large gambling system has been found to have issues. It also seems like whenever there is some financial crisis happening that Powerball and Mega Millions always go up and it gets talked about in the news.

Why would the state do that? They are making a killing by playing "fair". Unless you are suggesting literal bribery, I don't see it.

For some people winning the lottery (even smaller prices) is literally the only "realistic" way of getting a moderate amount of "wealth"

When there is an economic crisis, more people are stuck in bad situation and are more susceptible to moderate gambling. News and lotto operators are selling are happy to keep selling this dream

> For some people winning the lottery (even smaller prices) is literally the only "realistic" way of getting a moderate amount of "wealth"

That itself is questionable. Let's say somebody of poor socioeconomic background wins $100,000 in the lottery. Would they suddenly make reasonable financial choices with that money and "make it"? It's possible. But it would require completely changing the mindset that made them play the lottery in the first place. You know, the "It's a gamble and it's risky, but I feel like it's all about God." mindset. Possible. But unlikely, if you ask me.

This is a poor argument in favor of lotteries. It would be more beneficial for people in those areas to have less incentive to burn their money on lottery tickets, and the money that does get burned go to better education and improving conditions for them to climb the social latter and provide more realistic ways for building wealth. Instead of hoping for God's intervention through lottery wins.

Of course it's a poor argument and your arguement points in the right direction (though I don't have enough data to confidently make a statement about peoples ability to manage their finances)

But people like to dream and everybody knows that someone wins the lottery.

But that's partially the point, people's dreams of escaping their situation is used to exploit them. Then the state is funneling the money out of the most poor and desperate, which is out right depravity, to benefit mostly everybody else except who they take from the most.

That's not a fair and equitable system, nor arguably the way states should be managing such lotteries, particularly the profits from them.