When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.
 John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936). copy citation

Context

“that he is, in the above sense, a speculator. Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. The measure of success attained by Wall Street, regarded as an institution of which the proper social purpose is to direct new investment into the most profitable channels in terms of future yield, cannot be claimed as one of the outstanding triumphs of laissez-faire capitalism¾which is not surprising, if I am right in thinking that the best brains of Wall Street have been in fact directed towards a different object.” source

Meaning and analysis

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