Karl Klockars

While the title implies some sort of graduate level thesis or in-depth study, 5 days of hazy observation of the Vegas landscape leaves me more than qualified to drop about a thousands words worth of science about capitalistic theory, gambling and sex, its effects on its surroundings and other things that sound terribly, terribly smart.  If this is successful I’ll be teaching a class on Vegas Capitalistic Theory next semester at MIT.  Classes will be held in the second bedroom of our apartment.  Enroll today.

The thing about Vegas and how it relates to capitalism is thus:  It starts out great.  A magical land of excess and a place where no one (at least the hotel denizens and the tourists) want for nothing.  Money is everywhere.  Food is everywhere.  Drink is everywhere.  It’s splendidly and unashamedly rich in all senses of the word.

Even your surroundings are all entirely on capitalistic steroids.  Everything is devoted to one thing and one thing only.  Money and what you can do with money.  Your hotel room and feeding yourself and intoxicants and gambling cash are just one part of the equation.  Wifi?  Money.  Coffee?  Money.  Cabs or shuttles or buses or (almost) any transport?  Money.  Guys stand on the street in packs, holding small pieces of paper that they shove in your face in the hopes that you’ll spend your money on their strippers and prostitutes.  Beers are a dollar a can at the cheapest liquor store you can find.  It’s inflated, it’s excessive, and it’s pure gimme-your-cash capitalism.

For a while, this seems fine.  Pure, almost.  They’re not doing anything other than trying to get as much as they can, when they can, as often as they can.  And were you in the same situation, you’d be doing the same thing.  I used coffee as an example above.  There are no coffeemakers in any major Vegas hotel room, forcing you to go down to the main level of the casino and grab your Starbucks or whathaveyou…and maybe you wander past a slot machine that’s open, or a blackjack table whose limits are lower at 9am.  You get the idea.  They rope you in and take everything you’ve got and anything else you might have.

All that is the Strip.  One long section of Vegas.  This is the only part of town that most people who visit (around a full ten percent of the country last year, according to what I’ve seen) ever see.  So they go back home feeling great about leaving their cash behind.  And yet, this is just one major artery in this desert civilization.

Now we’re onto the second tier of Vegas as the Tiered Methamphetamine of Capitalism.  Imagine the Strip version of capitalism as being the bankers, the oil barons, the steel kings and agriculture rulers, big money all and yet a very small portion is where it’s packed into.  If you take a look around, you start to see the millions and millions of people who never make it big time, the ones who carry this capitalism on their back and don’t ask for much, they just want to get by and be happy.

This is essentially the middle class.  When you’re in Vegas, you have a pretty decent idea of the fact that yes, the cocktail waitress that walks the casino floor in a thong covered with lacy Ace bandages might actually have to live somewhere.  The reality of where she goes home to never happens to cross your mind.  But all over town, everyone who supports the Strip and all of the drunken revelers who stop by have to lay their head somewhere.  You don’t see it.  But it’s out there.  And it’s not that pretty.

Miles of subdivisions, endless ranch houses, broken down abandoned joints underwater in their mortgage and people just trying to make ends meet are the reality of Las Vegas.  You just never stop to see if because you’re there for the weekend and don’t have to care.  The one guy who gave his AIG bonus back willingly is the equivalent of the handful of people who leave the strip to just go check out the rest of town.  It’s rare.  The executives who wonder why people are mad that they’re giving out tons of bonuses while the rest of the country flounders?  That’s the parallel between the Strip and those surrounding it.

From there you just get deeper and darker – sleazy casinos that are the real face of dismal capitalism, begging and pleading for your cash in any way that they can get it, no matter what.  Uncared for, uncleaned, like a slot machine in a dentists office, for a few extra quarters from those that need a fix that minute of gambler’s high.

The whorehouses and the Gamblers Ruin type of places, the joints you end up at, not head toward.  The dregs of the Vegas Economy, where you find yourself when you hold that throttle for too long and it burns the hell out of you.  Again, this is where not too many people find themselves (especially not willingly) but where they’re forced to turn after…well, I don’t even really want to find out.

It’s like the bell curve.  You’ve got the few people on one end living it up and having a time that never consider the rest of humanity.  Then there’s the heaving, teeming masses that make up the majority of us, unwashed and without frills but still living life, and on the far end of the spectrum, the busted down misfits of reality.

Tourist.  Waitress.  Whore.  Right on down the line.

If you’ve found this interesting, I’d like to show you this matchbook which has info on where I can teach you more secrets in just a few easy lessons, payable by check, cash, or poker chip.  I’ll be easily found in a dingy classroom at an abandoned high school, possibly in the shop section, ready to dispense more science as I see fit.

Following at some point:  Random Vegas observations, thoughts, and cancelled paystubs paid directly to the dealer.