So they're turning to sports betting, meme stocks, crypto speculation, and lottery-style trades. Is this simply bad judgment, or is it a rational response to a broken financial system?

Doug Casey: First, we should define our terms. Namely, what's the difference between saving, investing, speculating, and gambling? There's no doubt that speculating and gambling are way up. But these are four very different things, although people conflate them.

Saving is about producing more than you consume and setting aside the difference. That builds capital, which allows you to invest. Saving is the foundation of building wealth and prosperity; it's indispensable for both individuals and nations. But savers look like fools when banks typically pay no more than 3%, before tax, while the general price level is over twice that.

Investing is about taking that saved dollar and allocating it productively so that it creates more real wealth and grows. But investing only pays off after years of patience—assuming that the investment is a winner. In an unstable high-inflation environment, good investments are hard to find. Entirely apart from the fact that the average person lacks patience, and knows essentially nothing about economics, business, or finance.

Speculating is about capitalizing on distortions in the marketplace. Distortions generally arise from government intervention or mass hysteria. They're the friends of the skilled speculator, but poison for the average citizen. In a stable society with low taxes, few regulations, and no inflation, speculators would be chronically unemployed—like policemen in a monastery, or firemen in 10,000-foot-high Quito, Ecuador. But in today's economy, prices go up and down like an elevator with a lunatic at the controls. Speculation, therefore, offers great opportunities. The problem is that the public confuses it with gambling—hoping to get lucky on stocks they've heard about in the news or from a friend. Of course, the public only hears about something when it's being hyped or after the party's over.

Gambling seems like the easiest and quickest way to make big money. And it can be fun. But the public is generally unaware of how much the odds are loaded against them. State lotteries, for instance, typically take about a 50% rake. The "numbers" game, run by the Mob in big cities, is actually a much better deal with only a 33% rake—and there aren't any taxes withheld if you win.