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The lottery is a scam
(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2025
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Well it's not a scam. It works exactly as advertised. But, just like in casinos, the house is always the winner.
I made a multi-threaded UK lottery simulator that draws 68 million lotteries per second on my machine. It shows the ROI on average is around 30% meaning the "house" (lottery company/government/charities) gets 70%. Here's the last line after 5.1billion draws:
Draws: 5,130,046,351. 3: 56,022,165, 4: 2,521,545, 5: 38,525 5+b 5,918 Jackpots: 113. Losses: 2,491,081,393. Cost £10,260,092,702, Winnings £3,058,100,000 ROI: 29.810%. 68,548,225.400 draws/sYes that means you will wait on average 45.4 million draws before you hit the jackpot.
In any case. You could implement the meme like the lottery and make money and I assure you, if you made the full info public people WOULD send you money and you'd keep the 70%..
I would say the scam is convincing people that they are lucky and that they specifically will eventually hit it big in their lifetime. This exact gimmick is what prevents some people from voting against their best interests because they could one day hit it big at the lotto and be in the big leagues! Assuming they don’t blow all that wealth on poor financial decisions in the few years thereafter or win at all for that matter.
I'm not sure, if a hypothetical lotto win is really the reason or even the excuse - anymore?
It is with my in-laws at least; well for some of them. It’s how they envision coming on top in their American Dream. They get to spend their weeks pumping themselves up thinking it’s their turn next to win and envisioning all the things they’ll get to do with all that money.