Even though Americans making $13,000 or less drop a sigh-inducing 9% of their income on lottery tickets each year, according to a study reported by PBS, the adverse psychological impact of lotteries may be more significant than these lost wages. Rather than simply being stupid, poor gamblers (yes, lotteries are gambling) more likely jump at “any chance at radically improving their circumstances,” on the theory that any chance is “probably better than having no chance.”

Yet there are any number of longshot decisions and behaviors that could result in a better shot at greater prosperity than buying a lottery ticket. The twisted genius of lottery tickets is that, per purchase, their non-financial opportunity costs are so low. Is there really a better way to spend that thirty seconds of time it takes to purchase a tiny shot at a huge payday? Yet the cumulative psychological cost of buying and hoping, again and again, instead of allocating that focus, discipline, and persistence of aim in other ways, is probably far greater than we’ve given credit for…

Though lotteries reveal a path toward psychological servility more quietly powerful than anything reflected in a CBO report, they also suggest that people like us in a democratic time will need stronger and stronger secular aids in long-term thinking, and that some of them may have to come from government.