… is from pages 459 of the 1971 Augustus M. Kelley reprint of the 1880 Sixth American edition of Jean-Baptiste Say‘s 1803 A Treatise on Political Economy (Traité d’économie politique):
When a government derives a profit from the licensing of lotteries and gambling-houses, what does it else but offer a premium to a vice most fatal to domestic happiness, and destructive of national prosperity? How disgraceful is it, to see a government thus acting as the pander of irregular desires, and imitating the fraudulent conduct it punishes in others, by holding out to want and avarice the bait of hollow and deceitful chance!
DBx: While I personally have no interest in gambling, I believe that gambling should be legal, and I believe that there should be no barriers-to-entry erected to that industry. What should be illegal, however, is government-run lotteries and other gambling operations.
That said, government is forever and with other programs “holding out to want and avarice the bait of hollow and deceitful chance.” Government promises ordinary Americans that their prosperity will be increased when government obstructs their access to goods and services… government runs the deceitful program called “Social Security”… government promises that government-run schooling is both indispensable and will be improved with more money.
Government peddles countless fraudulent schemes, and it’s unlikely that government-run lotteries are the worst of them.