In the 15th century, people in the Low Countries started to hold public lotteries to raise money for town fortifications and help the poor. King Francis I of France was impressed with this method of finance and decided to bring it to his kingdom. He authorized the Loterie Royale in 1539. But it was a fiasco. The tickets were very costly and the social classes which could afford them opposed the project.
The lottery is a business, and it makes sense for it to promote itself in order to attract more customers. The problem is that promoting gambling comes with consequences, especially for the poor and problem gamblers. Moreover, it is not clear that the lottery serves a useful public function.
When state lotteries first appeared in the United States, they were marketed as painless forms of taxation. The state legislated a monopoly for itself; established a public agency or corporation to run the lottery; began with a modest number of relatively simple games; and grew its operations by introducing new ones. Typically, lottery revenues expand dramatically at the beginning but then level off and, in some cases, even decline. This leads to an almost constant introduction of new games in the attempt to boost revenues.
Most people buy lottery tickets for the hope that they will win a big prize. But a lot of that hope is irrational and mathematically impossible. The real value, though, is what people get for their dollars: a couple of minutes, hours, or days to dream and imagine the win, whatever that may be.
