I know a lot of smart developers who buy loot boxes in games, for example.
I used to enjoy drinking wine, a glass of red wine every day, but I had to cut way back to "occasional" due to health concerns. Lottery's way cheaper than wine, and I still get to enjoy a little creative musing when I imagine how I would spend my time after winning. I could imagine I bought the lottery ticket, but that would be like imagining I drank the wine, heheh.
When planning disaster recovery scenarios it's much friendlier to start with "$KeyEmployee has just won the lottery and gone full F*kTheWorld" instead of morbidly assigning HitByBus.
The lottery is one of the few ways they could escape this debt spiral - if they could get a positive bank balance, they could begin to accumulate assets. That's not to say most people are able to do it, because suddenly having a lot of cash without financial literacy is dangerous. There's also a strong impulse to help out the people around you, which is tough because if the money is spread too thin none of the beneficiaries escape the debt cycle, they just reduce their balances slightly and then continue sliding downwards.
All that to say, playing the lottery is not stupid, it's a rational response to a society that's designed to drain the wallets of the most vulnerable for the benefit of the wealthy.
That is wildly counter intuitive. Is there any data to support it?
The writer played a lottery, just a different kind.
Give your money to me. I have a million things I want/need to do. So many things to do in the world. How can you possibly get bored?
For example your social network may be largely people you work with - if you stop working, you lose those connections. And lockdown has shown what impact social isolation can have.
The risk is that previously those things were "special" because you could only spend a little bit of time on them. If you spend all your time then the enjoyment can become 'commoditized' and routine. They may become as fun as brushing your teeth.
Forcibly changing economic class without taking care to also change social class can be really tough psychologically, something that you frequently see in those Reddit topics.
> Nearly one third of multi-million dollar jackpot winners eventually declare bankruptcy. Some end up worse.
Of course many of the issues related to winning the lottery are caused by the attention you suddenly receive.
But a related story from someone that was able to retire early thanks to Bitcoin - https://old.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/lz4x37/ive_...
> my advice is that you need to get prepared to deal with boredom. We grow up with our parents telling us to go to school, have a job, a car, a house and that this is life. But when you suddenly have the car, the house and everything else, what's left? Do something for yourself and have this in mind.
Most of the planet works for money because they have to. That means the majority of their time is consumed by earning money. Once you take away that imperative, you suddenly have a lot more time on your hands. That in turn effectively triggers an existential crisis - what do with all this extra time? Some people will be able to turn into taking their lives in a new direction but others are going address with drugs and alcohol.