“The expected value is negative so playing the lottery is silly” also misses that someone looking for a way out of poverty and seeing a lack of alternatives mig

“The expected value is negative so playing the lottery is silly” also misses that someone looking for a way out of poverty and seeing a lack of alternatives might judge the opportunity cost of his 2 dollars and 5 minutes worth the vanishingly small chance of getting a payout. The choice gets harder to defend the more you play, but I think it’s in bad taste to say lotteries are a tax on people bad at math.