Neoliberalism inverted the moral status of gambling from vice to virtue

Evidence

There was a time when gambling was regarded as the immoral fleecing of the working man, which motivated many attempts to declare it illegal, or at minimum, confine it to a strictly controlled sphere. A mid-twentieth-century opinion held that it was better to drive it underground than to sanction the bankrupting of people with limited means lacking the fortitude of will to walk away from the racetrack or gaming table. But in the neoliberal pantheon, the person who abjectly submits to risk (even handicapped by house advantage) is a hero, not a weak-willed fool. Hence, in modern life, and in contrast with prior regimes, gambling takes on an aura of moral probity. In a sense, playing slot machines or attending betting parlors or blackjack or roulette tables is not just the privilege of the idle rich, but rather, a mass version of simulated practice for an ideal life. In the neoliberal era, the state went from trying to quarantine gambling to insinuating it into every hamlet, high street, filling station, and Indian reservation. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 345

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how the ‘thought collective’ reshapes individual identity — the reframing of risk-taking as virtue parallels Chapter 2 (Never Let a Serious Crisis) on entrepreneurship as self-governance. — connects to: Speculation’s moral triumph over gambling rested on discursive framing rather than underlying imagination — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 616; The legitimate investor is distinguished from the gambler only by a socially constructed discourse — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 327; Cash-settled derivatives were legally classed as gambling in the US until the 1980s — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 1134 (+6 more)
• ADDENDUM: Relevant to the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ piece: both show morphing moral panics being repurposed into affirmations under new political economies — gambling flipped from sin to simulated virtue just as dress norms flip with class signaling.

Broader Connections

• The Black-Scholes model legitimized options trading by rebutting gambling stigma #exemplifies (0.90) — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 703