Gambling is an entertainment of uncertainty, a way of turning instability into play, of pretending that the structures of life don’t apply to you, that you are exempt from statistics. It’s also a way of avoiding reality, avoiding the future. When the wheel is still spinning, the fall hasn’t come.

Gambling is a symptom, almost an allegory, of American decay. What are we gambling with? What are the stakes? The man who invented poker was smart, the old expression has it, but the man who invented chips was a genius. Gambling is fun because it makes money seem like a game, a trifle. But fiscal silliness has been spreading more broadly recently. Crypto, with a market size that recently exceeded $2 trillion, has caused a widespread questioning of the very nature of money. Since 2008, the Fed has made quantitative easing—printing more cash—a part of its regularly scheduled programming. The U.S. money supply grew by $5.5 trillion, a 35.7 percent increase, from December 2019 to August 2021. Inflation is now rising faster than it has in 20 years. The number in your bank account does not mean today what it meant a month ago. Is currency itself now just the house money of the biggest house in the world? Who isn’t gambling now?

The consequences of the drastic increase in online betting are largely unknown. Gambling leads directly to increases in state revenues—that much is known, and is the primary reason for the ever-growing availability of legalized betting, from scratch-off lotto cards at the corner bodega to the apps on your phone. Gambling also leads, indirectly, to increases in violent crime, suicide, divorce, and bankruptcy. Problem gambling is a significant social cost; the pain of the lives that are ruined spreads to whole families. The rough social cost of a single problem gambler is about $10,000 a year. Gambling can also be, like many vices, quite a bit of fun for the people whose lives it doesn’t destroy, which includes myself. I once bet (and won) on a crab race. The bet seemed bizarre at the time, not to mention risky; estimating form in hermit crabs can be difficult. Now I think I was only slightly ahead of the curve.