When did Las Vegas become legitimate? Did it? It seems such a distinction from legitimate capital has become arbitrary. It’s pretty easy, and maybe accurate, to accuse politicians (Estes Kefauver, Bobby Kennedy, etc.) of going after organized crime because it sounded good on TV. Is it a legitimate enterprise for politicians to pre-package themselves in an image? Can we ignore our flaws or, better yet, say we have none because they are what make us who we are? Philosophy aside, the so-called criminals were not paying millions of dollars in taxes. As is, tax evasion has become the lawlessness of choice for individual millionaires; and not to mention that tax season is a downright profitable time for GE, Bank of America, Exxon, Chevron and other vulgarities of capitalism.
On the other hand, shiny things are nice!
On election night of 1976, the East Coast criminal underworld cheered from top floor hotel suites and penthouses. Or rather, the business executives, community leaders and generous benefactors cheered. Gambling was legalized in Atlantic City. Las Vegas was still the hub of hedonism but Atlantic City became the New Jersey of gambling. This set in motion other communities legalizing gambling (including Springfield), though none seemed to prosper or entertain as much as blindly anticipated (excluding Springfield). The shortsighted fear that Las Vegas would lose its unnamable appeal did not factor in how the influx of gambling just made it more acceptable. This meant moralists who would not have gone to Vegas a generation ago could now ride their high horses, safe from charges of innate hypocrisy. And ride they do; few people list “gambling” as a reason they go to Vegas, despite over 80% admitted they gambled while there.
Las Vegas is an honest place, it has no reason not to be.
Idealists bask in the American Dream, the ultimate sale job. But how we gamble reveals our true selves. That we gamble at all is evidence that the American Dream—prosperity by way of tenacity—is a mere back-up plan to the real goal: get rich quick, abandon the status quo. With a sneer, most casinos sell books or cards detailing specific advice on Blackjack and other game. Insulted that we should be so much as expected to read on our vacations, these pocket-sized advisers are almost entirely disregarded, in favor of alcohol and testosterone. Winning isn’t good enough, we have to win our own way so that we can feel validated by previous life decisions.
Sure, be as confident as James Bond, I’m sure that’s the key to winning.
The most regrettable misconception of Las Vegas stands as the notion that somehow the city is a beacon of libertarian freedom. But oh no. Casinos are regulated by the government. Heavily, at that. Politicians won’t stand by and have their fanny-pack-wearing constituents cheated by a roulette table. Apparently though, such regulatory efforts can’t be mustered and directed at, a much more dangerous locale, Wall Street. Many casinos even brazenly advertise these regulatory effects, boasting “97% return” on their slot machines. Literally, the machine promises to give players, collectively, 97 cents for every one dollar. And at such a deal we just can’t stuff our money in the game faster enough. Is it any real surprise, though? After the third financial collapse in a decade, how many people would kill for a 97% return on their now-defunct stocks, real estate purchases or 401k? You can’t afford to not lose money in Vegas!
Yet still, Nevada, with it’s one-part Mad Max, two-parts Gomorra reputation ranked only sixth in terms of “most free states” according to George Mason University. This put the entire state beyond such bacchanalian havens of debauchery, hedonism and villainy as New Hampshire, South Dakota, Indiana and Idaho. Truth is, the answer for this poor standing is simple: Nevada (at this point a synecdoche of Vegas) is not that free.
Marijuana possession cares a possible (albeit unlikely) life sentence. There is no gay marriage. There is no Internet gaming. There are smoking bans, with the exception of a few bars. There are health insurance mandates and a state-regulated minimum wage. Even the number of divorces in the state is only marginally above the national average. Same can be said for the marriage rate, which essentially makes Vegas “pro-family.”
In the 1990s, Las Vegas tried to repackage itself as a destination for the whole family. This effort went absolutely nowhere when it became aptly apparent that kids just don’t seem to gamble that much. Las Vegas, like the rest of America, is only family-oriented when such an orientation is profitable.
Aside from gambling, the only other prominent freedom permitted by the state/casino corporations is the sale and consumption of alcohol—though that’s only because the casinos want would-be gamblers to bludgeon their own annoying inhibitions. It’s the lack of foresight that comes with drinking, they like. It’s the inflated sense of self-esteem that comes with a BAC of .10 that one can just will the next card to be an ace and such will be done.
The casinos fear and fight competition. Not just competition among each other (indeed there’s not much of that at all), but fight the competition for your life. Casinos don’t want professional sports teams in Las Vegas, though that may become an increasingly difficult battle as Vegas has become a metro area of 2 million plus and nothing to cheer for besides the farm team for the Toronto Blue Jays. Gambling, like life, is no spectator sport; you’re spending money at movies and sports arenas, anyway, you might as well spend it fastest and most directly at the casino.
Within the next decade, the religious groups that stake out and infiltrate Vegas might find an inspired and powerful ally by teaming up with casino owners to eradicate their common enemy: lust. Strippers, prostitutes and escorts are facing battles on the fronts of immorality and commerce, and not to mention a third: technology. The immorality argument, to me, ranges between mute to uninteresting; but the casinos’ dilemma with regards to sexuality is quite the exercise in cost-benefit analysis.
Basically, Harrah’s or MGM or the Bellagio would each sacrifice their artificial sense of propriety if it meant bringing in enough new customers to cover the wages of the new nude hires. However, each of these properties are owned by people who own other properties, meaning a business backlash would go up the trunk and burn each branch connected to that same base.
Imagine this: one McDonalds’ restaurant sells tainted meat (stretch your imagination just to humor me). Even if the McDonalds CEO or whatever goes on TV saying no other branches have questionable meat, don’t you think sales would take a punch? Basically, casinos in Vegas can’t endorse the explicit selling of sex because the rest of the nation simply hasn’t caught up (or fallen so low; have your pick).
Most businesses take in 15-20% profit. Casino range closer to 50%. You giving them money costs them nothing. Business at its best.
Curiously, the symbiotic entity of Las Vegas business took its first real hit on September 12th, 2001. For years, the city was successfully cut off from all forms of geographic distractions; meaning that even if tourists didn’t come to Vegas with the explicit intention of gambling, when they arrived they had few alternatives. There are no parks, no symphonies. There is no ocean. There really isn’t any scenery or mountains or kayaking or even other nearby cities. Being in the middle of the desert was a hindrance for the earliest Nevadans, but the lack of options propelled the gambling industry. Catch was, the drive from any direction was hell and so when the airline industry nose-dived Vegas got shafted as much as any city.
Vegas became uncharacteristically regretful in the following months and years when the American public knew we had been victims of a freedom-hating enemy and that Vegas was the Superbowl of freedom. Frankly, I find it incredible that Vegas wasn’t the primary target of Al-Qaeda. Think of how many (replica) monuments could be destroyed on one city block. Beyond that, its been documented that several of the eventual 19 high-jackers actually spent a few nights in Las Vegas before their murderous end and so would have known the general city layout. Moreover, just years earlier, Las Vegas housed 12 of the 15 largest hotels in the world.
Of course it’s equally likely that the city of Vegas simply won the terrorists over, sparing itself from unwarranted reprisal. To follow that logic, maybe the world would just become a safer place if we replaced the 700-plus military bases spread around the globe with an equal number of hotel casinos and nightly performances from half-retired musicians.
Such a proposition isn’t entirely ridiculous. Virgil “The Turk” Sollozzo voiced a common enough sentiment that he and other businessmen, “don’t like violence; blood is a big expense.” And such economically motivated pacifism isn’t limited to self-directed violence either. War (like sports teams, marijuana and strippers) is a distraction from the true point of Vegas/America: gambling. Or to stretch out the point of gambling: to gain the most with the least amount of effort.
Most regrettable of all is how the casinos hold a Faustian power over the citizens of Las Vegas. The hotels and casinos are the state’s largest employers, but taxes paid are negligible. Every year, the industry shoves millions of dollars into the coffers of both Democrats and Republicans. In response, the government avoids taxation like a disease. Millions of dollars in campaign contributions, millions of dollars in tax breaks; how is this not money laundering?
To hate Las Vegas is to hate a state of mind. No city in the world is as fitted, built on and operated with such direct philosophy. Best yet, the philosophy is America taken to its ultimate end. We are founded on the idea of freedom. After speech, the right to earn money is as principal as any other and the casinos do just that. What they do with the money is a virtue of freedom. The end of capitalism is global rule of one company, in which all dollars and their multi-national variants would fall under. The end of freedom is when one’s freedom dominates another’s. The ideologies are neither opposed nor mutually exclusive, but rather they are each inevitability paradoxical, variable and self-defeating.
Once we accept Las Vegas for what it is--that the city is not an escape from the world, but rather a physical prophecy of the world--we can begin to accept the world for what it is.
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