This is mostly wrong. Gambling doesn’t require that you “risk it all”. In this way, your entire post looks like it’s arguing against a straw man. There is a w

This is mostly wrong. Gambling doesn’t require that you “risk it all”. In this way, your entire post looks like it’s arguing against a straw man. There is a way to gamble in which it is very similar to insurance — extremely defensive and conservative. But that means the gambler isn’t “enjoying” gambling, they are instead just being an accountant, but not earning a salary for it. They are both games of chance, but you fail to point out why gambling is most frequently outlawed: it is a compulsive behavior that becomes addictive in some people. When 11% of a society can’t maintain a gainful living (maybe they can’t hold a job or they become a habitual liar or a thief to feed their habit), governments tend to step in to dissuade the problematic behavior. But most people who gamble frequently tend to do it with their lizard brain and most people who purchase insurance do it with their cognitive brain (even if the underlying reasons aren’t based on facts). Then again, the premise of the question is arguably wrong. The state lottery is one of the biggest forms of gambling and that isn’t illegal (even though the origins were to supplant similar mob-run games).