> If people respect pay for work, then they despise the opposite, including wealth earning income for no work.
That logic doesn’t follow. Respecting something doesn’t always require despising it’s opposite. Plenty of hard workers hope for wealth earning with no work for themselves, check the local lottery.
I apologise that despise was a little harsh for what I was hurriedly trying to say but the very uncompressed idea is that IF the belief "a man's hard work alone determines my respect of them" is a fairly common justification of income from work AND income without work exists THEN people earning income without work goes very much against that belief that only hard work earns approval. The 'respect' part was intended to mean 'respect exclusively' like as might be exemplified in the particularly intense conviction some might have against 'lazy poor people living handouts', as well as the rich living off of capital gains. This black-and-white perspective belongs a fairly vocal minority.
Although people who sanctify work do elevate it to a question of toil, why wouldn't gambling (of any kind) just be a really expensive (albeit fairly toil-free) side-gig? No matter how different their hopes are from what is statistically likely, nor compelling the possibility that the lottery ticket could actually be a kind of masquerading windfall, the thinking isn't "this is my investment vehicle" but more "if I 'try hard enough' [by buying enough to win] I will eventually succeed."
That logic doesn’t follow. Respecting something doesn’t always require despising it’s opposite. Plenty of hard workers hope for wealth earning with no work for themselves, check the local lottery.