Casinos normalize risk so market failure loses its political charge

Evidence

Casinos are not cynical scams taking advantage of the naïve and improvident; they are the practice tables for life. Risk is the oxygen for the entrepreneurial self, but also the means through which failure is leached of its political valence. The failed should accept the verdict of the market without complaint or pleas for help. Insecurity is the incubator for risk-loving behavior. The birth of actuarial tables is the death of tragedy. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 274

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The compression of an entire political philosophy of risk-normalization into the casino-as-practice-table image, ending on the aphorism ‘the birth of actuarial tables is the death of tragedy,’ is dense enough to sit with days.
• ADDENDUM: Connects to ‘On Sacrifice: The Real Kind, with Corpses’ in that both are about how institutions leach moral/political valence from catastrophic outcomes and reframe them as natural or deserved verdicts.
• XREF: connects to: State-promoted gambling both raises revenue and distracts the precarious workforce — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 345; Economists’ endorsement legitimated derivatives markets that regulators viewed as gambling — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 1135; Neoliberalism inverted the moral status of gambling from vice to virtue — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 345 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• The discourse of risk retroactively legitimizes any market outcome. #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 343
• Neoliberalism inverted the moral status of gambling from vice to virtue #corroborates (0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 345
• Risk of undeserved loss was deliberately required to discipline individuals into market submission #expands (0.78) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 209
• The Black-Scholes model legitimized options trading by rebutting gambling stigma #expands (0.75) — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 703
• Neoliberalism induces risk-bearing then blames the victims when risk fails #complicates (0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 351
• Economists’ endorsement legitimated derivatives markets that regulators viewed as gambling #expands (0.72) — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 1135