The thesis would consist that, although the probability of winning classical lotteries is near zero (typically between 0.0000007% in the case of Euromillions and 0.000003% in the case of national lotteries), people is willing to pay an excessive overprice because they are buying the right to dream about the possibility of winning.
Although there are extreme cases that get addicted to lotteries, this is quite uncommon if I'm not wrong, because, if you are not paying for the probability but for the possibility, a bet of 1 USD is enough to buy said possibility.
On the other hand, national lotteries are known to be "taxes on ignorance of mathematics", but if these revenues financed public expenses that revert to the common good: would you agree to pay systematically 1 USD more in your annual taxes as something that ensures the right to dream of a dear life of every taxpayer?
The right to dream? Everyone already has it! Just go to bed
The tax for those ignorant of the maths, that's more like it. I would pay that amount if it weren't additional to existing taxes. Otherwise, what's the point in feeding the machine?
Overall the lottery is the government's profit baby. Casino have their games of chance and skill, while governments use the lottery to profit from the dreams of people...99.9999%+ of these dreams never come true.
Speaking of chances then as long it wont really be dropping to 0% then they would reallybe trying out to get that 0.000001% chance of winning the lottery and realistically speaking on which
we do really even having those daydreaming on buying things that we do which it is really just that a normal kind of approach and this what makes things that people would really be that delusional
or being that too optimistic when it comes to things specially on winning that huge jackpot. We do already have those plans and divisions into that winning amount. Also, people should really be needing to
realize that if the jackpot prize is ex. $100M then it would be still on gross, you would be most likely be ending up on getting 65-75M in total due to tons of deductions.
So it isnt really that shocking anymore.