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Comment by afiori | Hacker News Reader

Lotteries (gevernmental or not) and sport betting are worlds apart in term of societal damage

I’m curious, how so? I don’t participate in either aside from maybe a few scratchers a year (like literally, 3, maybe) but at a surface level them seem to be very similar.

Sports betting seems more social and seems more "skill based" in that you can follow a team and the news and try and make better bets vs a scratch ticket which doesn't care.

It would take a lot of effort to burn an entire paycheck on lotto tickets. It would take 60 seconds to do so with online betting.

Many states have added online lotteries.

https://lotto.com

The largest order I can make at one time is $30. It would take a lot of dedication to burn through a few thousand dollars, and it would come with no immediate feedback/reward for the effort. I'm not saying it's impossible to ruin one's life buying lotto tickets, but it seems highly unlikely and extremely boring compared to any other gambling problem I can think of.

Few people watch routinely lotto extractions with strong emotions, millions are sport fan that never skip a game.

Nobody cares wether the next lottery has a 24 and millions care very deeply about who wins the next sportball cup.

Both allow you to use them as an addiction but one has a far weaker and narrower pull.

I'm aware there are lots of differences and I agree with all these points. I was just pointing out this fact because it was a recent surprise to me that these states would allow this massive expansion of lotteries to the internet. I think a lot of people still largely view state lotteries as those scratchers and what not you have to buy with cash at gas stations but apparently they've expanded to allowing online transactions with credit cards.

I’ve seen several family members and friends who might have bought a few scratchers here and there, or even played “their” 3-5 sets of numbers twice a week, but otherwise kept their gambling to an annual trip to Vegas get sucked into sports gambling now that it’s always available on their phones.

Not just the money, but also the amount of their mental energy it comes to capture.

People can delude themselves into thinking they have an edge in sports prediction skills. There's no analogous delusion for lotto.

I mean gambling is gambling. You make it morally acceptable, it's gonna seed society. You're just probably used to lotteries which is why they seem different.

I've heard lotteries called a "hope tax," which is pretty morbid.

Tautology aside "gambling is gambling" false just like "addiction is addiction" is false.

I personally dislike tobacco and wish people would stop using it, but it would be dishonest to claim that it is as bad as heroine just because they are both addictive.

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