It is still baffling to hear moral arguments against lotteries by people who have absolutely no problem betting on financial futures and derivatives. Indeed, the relationship between gambling and finance (let alone religion and politics) eludes even the most erudite among us because it is clouded in misunderstanding, prejudice, and good old-fashioned politics. Reuven Brenner, Gabrielle A. Brenner, and Aaron Brown have written several books in praise of gambling. In this book, they draw insights from sociological theories of gambling and propose a risk-taking model of expected utility. They use it to disentangle the relationship between fortune and providence, democracy and autocracy, chance and mobility. It is a tall order, but despite some problems they succeed admirably.

The authors begin with a brief exposition of gambling, which they define as risk-taking propensity; it “represents the small hope of getting rich when there are no other options on the horizon” (p. 218). When societies had small, dispersed populations, most risks could not be assessed because their magnitude could not be estimated. Through custom, ritual, or tradition, families or tribes provided insurance in case of catastrophic events. The future seemed more certain because social institutions made it so. Eventually, as populations expanded, the range of opportunities expanded commensurately. The invention of statistical tables, contracts, and the political means of contractual enforcement exceeded the bounds of established institutions based on minimal risk. In time, this led to the creation of full-flown capital markets.

As the authors write: “Nothing threatens established powers … more than the opening up of capital markets” (p. 202). More than trade, access to capital enables individuals to take risks. If they succeed in making products people will buy, they can repay their loans and still make a profit. Those who do not succeed lose, and so do their investors. So long as financial institutions are closed because they are controlled by government, loans come with political strings attached. Not surprisingly, “in societies that rationalize the closing of capital markets, most innovations and risk-taking are frowned upon” (p. 203). The authors use the example of communist countries and of China from the third century to the late twentieth century to justify their claim.

What implications does this argument have for democratic politics? Equating capital with power, the authors argue that access to capital increases people's “negotiating power and ability to stand up—to extract rights and to obtain financing in particular” (p. 202). Echoing economic interpretations of democratic politics, they hypothesize that democracy flourishes in societies where open capital markets help disperse political power. While the argument rings true at a general level, it requires more nuance to appeal to political scientists. First, the authors do not consider the possibility that the reverse may be true; that is, that dispersed political power opens up capital markets. As Karl Polanyi argued in his book The Great Transformation (1944), markets are built on political foundations. The implication for policymakers is that more democracy must be the first step to greater wealth and open capital markets, rather than the reverse. Second, the authors do not specify the political criteria that define regulatory oversight of capital markets. They argue that open capital markets threaten government bureaucracies by keeping people more accountable through profits and losses (p. 69), but they fail to mention that accountability takes many forms. Corruption, through Ponzi schemes and the like, afflicts not just bureaucracies but also markets, as many investors have recently discovered. Accountability through regulation may thus be the solution, rather than the problem.

The authors are at their political best when discussing lotteries and prohibitions. Highly stratified societies accepted gambling so long as it took place within classes. The moment commoners began to mingle with the nobility by gambling (often due to exogenous factors, such as sudden drops in population because of war or disease), the state stepped in to outlaw the practice. Eager to preserve the distinction of ranks, for example, the distinguished seventeenth-century English jurist William Blackstone wrote: “[A]mong the persons of superior rank, it hath frequently been attended with the sudden ruin and desolation of … opulent families” (p. 103). The key was not morality but the fact that the rich would now be poor, and perhaps the poor might become one of “us.”

Gambling, in other words, is viewed as a tool of social mobility and, consequently, a threat to entrenched interests. Better, the authors conclude, “to let the gambling sector [lotteries, casinos, and sports betting]—the online businesses in particular—operate as most others, neither prohibited [because doing so diminishes chances for mobility] nor a government monopoly, but properly taxed and regulated” (p. 150). The latter is especially important because lotteries are usually justified as additional sources of revenue earmarked for worthy causes, such as public education. Marshaling evidence to disprove the criticism that lotteries are a regressive tax on the poor, the authors also provide evidence to show that “funds that would have been used for education are frequently replaced by lottery funds” (p. 156). Underlying the political process aimed at prohibiting gambling and allowing state lotteries are special interests that seek to maximize profits and avoid taxation by keeping gambling illegal or that want to extract additional government revenues without calling them taxes.

Does propensity to gamble vary across time and place? The authors' answer is yes, but they are not fully consistent in the ways they explain it. For example, they argue that risk taking becomes more accepted in periods of hardship (p. 116). But how can we then explain the fact that since the late 1980s, a time period of unparalleled prosperity, the number of U.S. states operating casinos grew sixfold to 12, while 48 states have legalized some form of betting? Is it hardship, politics, or the real or perceived dramatic fluctuation in income, the leapfrogging instinct, as the authors maintain in Appendix 1? The answer is not clear.

Like every good book, this one has strengths but also drawbacks. One is that there seems to be no overarching theme. As a result, the book offers a series of vignettes, authored by different combinations of the three authors, rather than a powerfully argued thesis. A plan-of-the-book section would have served the manuscript well. It is also less than fully clear how the authors' arguments here add to those they developed elsewhere (except for Appendices 1 and 2, where they compare their argument with other approaches to the reasons that some societies get richer more quickly than others).

Finally, Brenner, Brenner, and Brown miss an opportunity to place their findings within a broader framework of public policy. The book is rich in insight and implications for policy choice, but these insights and implications are insufficiently developed. Risk taking is an individual attribute, while capital markets are social institutions. In light of the current financial meltdown, how can the two be combined so that one improves rather than impedes the other? This is a political question of capital importance, and it is one we would be remiss to ignore. A World of Chance does not adequately address this question. But it does underscore its political importance, and at the same time furnishes many useful insights, opening up future lines of inquiry.