It&#x27;s surprising that few people have pointed out that lotteries are essentially <i>communist</i> -- the government owning a for-profit business.<p>If you believe in the free market, you can only have one of two logically consistent positions on any and all forms of gambling -- either (1) open up the market to any business that can prove it&#x27;s adequately capitalized and the odds of the games are as represented (e.g. in card games, the deck is standard and not stacked; in lotteries, the winning tickets are randomly mixed in, not given out to shill redeemers in exchange for kickbacks), or (2) ban all for-profit gambling operations.