Viva Las Vegas

"The last honest place in America . . . "

The subhead is from an entertaining, absorbing book by my friend Marc Cooper, who is graced by an illustrious lefty resume. I bought the book years ago (used, naturally), lost track of it (I have many books), found it more recently, and finally jumped into reading it. I blazed through it in two days.

Since the subject is Vegas, we should have a picture of you-know-who.

I was impressed by the point that Vegas wagering is more transparent than most financial market machinations. The precise odds disfavoring the bettors are readily-available. Obviously, despite the lousy odds, people come anyway. Rich hedge fund investors know less about their holdings. Another key political-economic factor was the transition of Vegas from mob to corporate ownership and control. Different mob, worse in some respects. The old mob elected JFK. The present one has given us far worse.

In some ways the old, murderous mob was more solicitous of its employees. Obviously there would be lines one didn’t dare cross, but the paternalism resembled the obligations of feudal lords to their peasants, or like urban machine politicians. The corporations in charge now are more ruthless about harvesting their profits, in effect more penny-pinching than the old-time gangsters.

It’s hard to read the book without thinking of the films Casino and Bugsy, both of which lean heavily on historical events. I’ve watched these movies more than once, especially Casino, probably because it is shown more often, though for me anything with De Niro and Pesci is a must-see..

The movies include a number of close analogs with actual mob history. I also read about them in the Dan Moldea book about the merger of organized crime and pro football, “Interference.” I don’t know if Moldea published before the films. Some of the correspondences are hauntingly precise, especially the murders of Anthony "The Ant" Spilotro (Joe Pesci in the movie) and his brother.

As Cooper recounts, the only fair game in Vegas used to be blackjack. Technology has eliminated that edge by introducing machines that shuffle multiple decks of cards or continually reshuffle decks. Both make ‘card counting’ difficult or impossible. I had a Chinese buddy, Stu, who among his many pastimes would gamble. He told me they used to kick him out of casinos out of fear of Asian card-counting expertise. The gambling business has always been deeply corrupt. The customers don’t care; they keep coming.

As an economist nerd, the barren public finances of Las Vegas and Nevada interested me. I wonder if the state’s impoverished public sector has progressed at all. There is in economics the idea of the “resource curse.” A nation endowed with great earthly gifts, such as oil deposits, stands to have so much cash sloshing around that it attracts bad actors who ruin it for everybody. Nevada and its gambling industry have similar characteristics. The impacts include less economic development that might otherwise take place, as well as all manner of social pathologies. Nevada’s middle name was pathology.

The pathology proved perfectly suited to the new, less rich classes that flocked to the city. “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” Ordinary, not-rich Americans needed the place to escape the misery of their lives. Now they have MAGA.

A striking thing was the meaninglessness of partisan political alignments. All the successful politicians were in the bag. The liberal, Jewish mayor of Las Vegas had been a lawyer for Meyer Lansky.

These days Nevada has become a Democratic Party stronghold, and of all things, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) nearly took over its Democratic party, until they were muscled out of what they had fairly won by the ruthless, old party establishment. Another mob. Nobody should have suspected the Revolution would be easy.

Cooper pays attention to the thread of progressive agitation in the city and state. One important factor was the independence of the local press. Local press of course has been disappearing everywhere. Even our storied Washington Post has been transformed by Amazon mogul Jeff Bezos into a pile of doggy poop.

But there was activism. One source was and is the powerful culinary workers union, which I understand provided fertile ground for the growth of the local DSA. Nor can we forget the strippers union. (I go now to lead the revolution.)

Homeless advocacy is a big part of Cooper’s story, a particular political flash point for casino interests whose revenue relies on foot traffic.

The book is twenty years old. It makes me wish for a sequel, to see how the stories unfolded. New competition in gambling is blossoming in many places. Atlantic City, Indian tribes, the Internet. The region is running out of water. Sounds bad.