You always have to pay the house. The state takes a bigger skim than Vegas, but if the odds look good to you (and 1 in 18 million isn’t particularly attractive to me) you know what the risk and the maximum payout will be.
But you’ve ignored the fact that you also pay the house to play the stock market. Although the discount brokers don’t skim as much as the old full service brokers used to, they are going to take their cut except in very narrow circumstances.
I was once a buy and hold kind of guy. Then I took a beating in a big market dip and learned my lesson. The lesson was buy lowm, take profits. Rinse and repeat. During years of extreme volatility and irrationality I park my money in fixed instruments. Currently those fixed instruments are yielding 3.5 to 4 points. I can live with that.
Yes, but the percentages in the funds we use are trivial compared to the 50% the state takes of the lottery. The basic difference to me is that, if you invested in the stock market (broadly, diversified) long term, you win. The more you play the lottery, the better the odds you'll have lost 50%. The only way to win there is to win big and then quit. You're right about the odds of that being astronomical.
Personally, I dislike our government pushing gambling as a revenue source and selling it as "for the children".