My rule of thumb: will your customers regret their purchase in hindsight? If you suspect most of them will, then yes, it's unethical to collect their money now

My rule of thumb: will your customers regret their purchase in hindsight? If you suspect most of them will, then yes, it's unethical to collect their money now. Elsewhere in this thread people have compared casinos to video games, tobacco, and facebook. Video games run a full spectrum from predatory to wholesome, so you'd have to look at that on a case-by-case basis. I regret some, but definitely not most of the games I've bought/played. I'm not a smoker, but I think most smokers would prefer to not need to smoke. Looking at it another way, I don't think any smokers would prefer that their children start smoking, so in my view tobacco is unethical. Facebook has both saved and ruined lives so it's in a grey zone for me. By this test, casinos/lotteries/etc. land firmly in the far unethical side of the spectrum for me personally, but you might have a different view based on your own experiences. Ideally someone would find hard data to support one view or another.