Toby Young
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If you are a libertarian conservative, Las Vegas is the heavenly city. It is not merely politically incorrect — it is a monument to political incorrectness. Whatever the opposite of a nanny state is, Las Vegas is it. Last Monday, I walked on to the casino floor of the Luxor at 9.30 a.m. and the air was thick with cigarette smoke. Men and women of all ages were crowded round the crap tables, slugging back liquor and rolling the dice. ‘What happens here, stays here’ is the city’s official advertising slogan and these people had clearly taken it to heart. It was like a scene out of the Wild West.
Of course, this degree of freedom comes at a price. As I cruise down Las Vegas Boulevard on my way to the Strip every day, I pass a middle-aged man holding up a sign that says ‘Timeshare Resales’ above a local telephone number. The funny thing is, he looks quite respectable and I can’t help wondering what has brought him to this point. Was he a hard-working family man who came to Vegas for the weekend and ended up losing everything? The casinos certainly make it easy. There are cashpoint machines next to every blackjack table that enable you to extend your overdraft at the push of a button and, failing that, the casinos are happy to lend you money so you can carry on gambling. Just put up your house as collateral and Bob’s your uncle.
Still, if you believe in this degree of freedom you have to accept that there will be casualties. The fact that a few people can’t cope doesn’t mean everyone’s liberty should be curtailed. The same argument applies to pornography — and there’s plenty of that here, too. Just because viewing pornography has an adverse effect on a small minority of people doesn’t mean the vast majority of users should be forced to forego what, for them, is a harmless pleasure. There are less draconian ways of protecting the weak and the vulnerable than by making it illegal for everyone to indulge in the activity in question.
Needless to say, there are plenty of Americans who don’t approve of Las Vegas — not least the President. Last February, Obama took a swipe at those companies that organise annual conferences in Vegas as a reward for their employees, particularly if those same companies are in receipt of federal aid. In the Las Vegas gaming industry, this is known as ‘incentive travel’ and it took a big hit after the President’s remarks: a few days later Goldman Sachs cancelled a three-day conference that was due to take place at Mandalay Bay and moved it to San Francisco. In a year in which hotel occupancy across the board is down by 13 per cent this was an unwelcome intervention.
In the long term, though, the biggest threat to Las Vegas’s future comes from the environmental lobby. One of the city’s proudest boasts used to be that the Strip was the brightest spot on earth, as seen from space — but the casinos have stopped including that factoid in their promotional literature. These days, the newer hotel-casinos stress that they’ve been built according to the guidelines stipulated by the US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. But given that Las Vegas is in the middle of a desert and consumes 190 gallons of water per person per day, it will always be a popular target for environmentalists.
Politically and economically, the deck is stacked against Vegas — and it doesn’t help that several of the city’s largest corporations, such as MGM Mirage, are horribly overextended, having embarked on expensive building programmes during the boom years. But I hope it survives. There should be at least one city in the world where you can drink and smoke at 9.30 a.m. while betting the farm on the roll of a die.
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