Which really makes the lottery like almost any other form of gambling; it's designed so The House wins and profits just enough to remain quite self-sufficient.
Sure, the lottery is a tax on the mathematically-challenged...but one dollar does buy a really cheap and harmless drug, with the premise of helping some public good (not entirely sure what in this case) and helping a store with a purchase. It's willful participation. It's the ones who spend more than they can afford on tickets that potentially cause a problem.
I think buying one more ticket only dissolves your chances by the number of additional tickets against the total odds; you do not halve your chances by purchasing another ticket. Essentially, it's an infinitesimally greater chance of winning by purchasing two tickets instead of one, because there's 17,000,000 unique chances of winning, with the risk of others essentially picking the same numbers decreases the pot. So, it's a mathematical shell game of sorts...there's been plenty of jackpots split by a dozen or more tickets.
with all that money.
