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 …, loc. 274