This inversion of risk doesn’t come out of nowhere. It’s the predictable result of how public policy and technological change have allocated risk and reward. Since the 1970s, America has over-regulated the physical world and under-regulated the digital space. To open a daycare, build an apartment, or start a factory requires lawyers, permits, and years of compliance. To open a casino app or launch a speculative token requires a credit card and a few clicks. We made it hard to build physical-world communities and easy to build online casinos. The state that once poured concrete for public parks now licenses gambling platforms. The country that regulates a lemonade stand will let an 18-year-old day-trade options on his phone. In short: The first half of the twentieth century was about mastering the physical world, the first half of the twenty-first has been about escaping it.