Whatever Happens in Vegas?

I’d like to take a deeper look at the brilliant marketing mantra “whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” My business trip there last week has convinced me that the Vegas mentality shares striking parallels with some of the prevailing trends in our culture. Some of these thoughts on aesthetics and sustainability tie back into the point of this blog which is that - in a modern democracy - the main impediment that stands between us and viable solutions to our challenges is our culture of distraction and diversion, a culture of “beer and circuses.”

Walking past the Caesar's Palace casino, the original "bread and circuses" phrase kept coming into my head, almost as compulsively as a gambler throwing quarter after quarter in the slot machine, expecting the winning bells to ring and lights to sound. With this phrase I'm engaging in the cliché literary device of reductio ad Huxley, but I believe that it has renewed relevance today.

I found the original source of this phrase, a Roman poet, Juvenal, who observed how much a people will tolerate if they are well fed, entertained, and distracted: "Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses." This will be a repeating theme in this blog.

Returning to 2008, the first thing that struck me about Las Vegas is that I wouldn't call Vegas "sin" city. Rather, I think it's "tease" city, but maybe I just wasn't in the right place. For most visitors, however, it gives them just a taste, brings them right up to the edge of some moral line, reminds them they’ve reached that line, and then pulls them right back. It has much less to do with fulfillment and attainment than it has to do with the real industry of distraction and flirtation. It’s the pursuit – not the attainment – that is the main commodity for sale here.

Driving to the hotel, the lights and movement evoke childhood memories of Barnum and Bailey. From just the first couple of hours there, I could see some obvious parallels to our popular culture: constant stimulus overdrive in a carnival atmosphere. Everywhere you look, much to drink, smoke, buy, and eat. But the second glance is more revealing: there are no clocks, no maps, no center, and no seats except for those at tables or in front of slot machines. No sense of place, of history, of causes or their effects. I feel that the sufferer of an attention deficit disorder would be in their element among the constantly flashing graphics and sounds, but then I’m reminded that the average American watches an average of 5 hours of TV per day. Perhaps the infotainment we call “news,” the TV we call “reality,” and the incessant commercials asking for our attention and our dollars would help one adapt to this environment.

Let’s pause to pay homage to Lady Luck, the patron saint of this desert town. The Vegas mindset is consistent with our expectations of the inevitability of continued economic prosperity. Just as I thought "if I can turn 100 bucks into 300, then I can easily turn 300 into 900," so too do we make false assumptions that “luck” is on our side, that housing prices will always go up, up, and up, and that all of us can easily attain the American dream. This dream was once a consistent reality of guaranteed social mobility in return for hard work. For too many of us, however, this dream now reveals itself as the myth of easy money and the paradoxical belief that we can all be winners by default. In reality, someone still has to put the quarters in the slot machines.

In a certain sense, we all gamble. It's called a 401K. Send your money to the fund manager, expect a tidy historically-certain return of 9.2% per annum, sit back, and "let us do your worrying (and profiting) for you." So, who pays all of those fees, even when your fund values go down? We’re given glossy brochures by the well-tanned, friendly representative from XYZ Capital Partners and then asked to pick which Growth Portfolio Plan looks the best for us, which for many Americans makes about as much sense as picking which slot machine to sit down at. In the last couple of months, it seems like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic to even the more savvy investors.

Looking back, the last few years were quite a rush, but now we awake with a splitting headache the morning after. Sadly, people on the precipice of retirement are finding out that not only did their account fail to outperform the market, the market itself was a house of cards built on cooked books, ungrounded speculation, bad assets, insanely unsustainable leverage ratios, and an almost religious-like belief in ever-increasing home values. From the experts on down to the amateurs, we all drank from the same punch bowl that fueled the bubble. We attribute it to bad luck, while we scramble to figure out who to blame.

Before we point the finger at someone else, let’s follow the three fingers that point back to us. "I'm maxing out my 401K, so why can't we live a little and pull some equity out of our house for a [insert depreciating asset or onetime cash outlay here]." The home, many Americans’ most important (or only) investment became a cash cow. In essence, we threw our winnings back on the table, and feel betrayed when the dealer scoops those chips away. “What happened? I was on a lucky streak.” Despite abundant evidence in the last decade, many of us failed to make the connection between stagnating real wages and skyrocketing house prices. Our greed outpaced our fear. And now fear makes its triumphant return.

America, once the land of the rugged frontier individualist, lost the healthy cynicism that had always kept a watchful eye on the government and distant, centralized business interests. However did this blind faith in the “house” emerge in the United States? Whichever the house (government, your fund manager, or the casino owner), we somehow forgot the house always wins. So, who built this house, I ask myself as I stroll down the strip. Who built this house? On balance, was it the winners who get up from the table while they’re ahead, or the losers who keep coming back for more drinks?

The answer to this question finds me as I walk through the casino on the way to breakfast, seeing some of the very same people sitting at the same tables and slot machines they were sitting at just six hours earlier. Taking the analogy to the extreme, I can’t help but ask who pays the commissions, fees, and salaries of the fund managers and CEOs, even during bad performance? Someone has to put the quarters in the slot machines.

Here in Vegas, I feel I’m standing in our cultural capital, located in a state with one of the highest foreclosure rates in the US. So, all of this begs the question, “why does the house always win?" It's because the house is packed with so many who believe there is always another person behind them who will buy at an even higher price. The house is packed to the brim with those who fall easy prey to the seductive belief that chance has a memory and that chance plays favorites. This place is less a city and more a desert shrine to worship the irreverent, fickle goddess of luck, the cocktease cocktail waitress she is: "can I get you another [free] drink, honey?" Keep spending, she winks at me. This reminds me of our outgoing President who reminded us that our patriotic duty was – in the face of economic and military challenges – to keep spending.

At this point, let’s transition from economics to ecology. Speaking of high stakes, no-limit games, many think nearby Lake Mead could dry up by 2021, a 50% chance they say. (That's almost as good as the odds my blackjack system was supposed to bring me, or at least what the little card in my pocket said.) Can we reverse this trend in our nation’s largest reservoir? Yes, I hope so. But my hope does not come from above – in our leaders or in the sky. Instead, my hope is conditional upon us changing ourselves, a challenge made even harder in our culture of beer and circuses, a culture that makes it even easier to grasp at everything but ourselves for the source of and solution to all of our problems.

I saw an excellent example of this while standing at nearby Hoover Dam, marveling at this impressive feat of human ingenuity and enterprise, as well as the deficit of one hundred or so feet of water in Lake Mead that the dam holds back. A young kid next to me, seeing the obvious high water mark, asked his father, “Daddy, why is the water so low?” “Cause it hasn't rained enough, honey,” he said casually while typing away at his BlackBerry®, a device that further blurs the distinction between family time and office time, between work and vacation. The child nods and accepts this explanation; father goes back to his half attendance in the moment.

A teachable moment missed. I felt like jumping in and mentioning the imbalance between intake and outtake (evaporation, consumption, flow of Colorado River, and downstream releases, etc), declining snow melts and lowering water tables traced back to global warming, and the responsibility that we share in return for the benefits we receive from Lake Mead. But, where do you start, especially with strangers? His oversimplification and following silence perpetuated the prevailing belief that things happen to us, but not because of us. He probably believes in luck.

We - as a society - are leading a "lucky" streak, a string of good cards. Geographical coincidence dealt us a good hand: originally endless expanse of fertile land spread over an ever-Western horizon, and now cheap, abundant energy. Your clothes, your food, your home's location in relation to your work, your vacations, garage full of goods, your “organic” asparagus flown in from Argentina in the dead of winter, your empire of over 700 military bases abroad are all made possible in part by cheap energy, cheap (and ever-distant) labor, and spending (as households, as an economy, and as a government) more than we earn. How long do you think we can beat the odds? How long can this last?

Who’s to save us from ourselves, besides ourselves? In a democracy, I don’t think there is anyone else, which presents both an opportunity and a challenge. Our political institutions and culture were not built in a bubble; instead, they were forged in and made possible by economic expansion since the earliest days of the Republic: the ever westward sky and the ever deeper well. Jefferson hit the nail on the head when he foresaw that the key to avoiding the same “mobocracy” and tyranny he saw in Europe was robust, independent, and self-reliant families.

In the absence of ongoing growth and prosperity, we run the risk that stability and order will come from other sources. Without ongoing growth, without social mobility, without abundant energy, cheap labor, and overflowing water, what happens to our experiment in self government? History is full of examples where resource bottlenecks result in social and political upheaval.

History also highlights - to the chagrin of those who believe we’ve reached “Peak Oil” – that we’ll face an almost irresistible temptation to rely on our abundant coal reserves, rather than tighten our belts and scale back our lifestyles. But of course, "clean coal" technology is politicians' cynical deus ex machina in this whole drama. It's a great idea, if we can figure where to hide the CO2. Details.

The optimist in me is certain we can avert the same ecological collapse that has been the fate of many great civilizations (for a good topical review, read Jared Diamond's Collapse), given a critical mass of changed minds that precipitate real cultural and political change. Yet, ever nipping at my heals is the annoying, barking bitch of evidence. As I flew into the sprawling city on a crystal clear, sunny day, not a single solar panel was to be seen. People come here for the sunshine, but apparently don't use it. Solar and water catchment systems ought to be on every single roof here.

Have we forgotten that this is the same nation that got us to the moon, cracked the atom, unlocked DNA, and led multiple revolutions in communications and travel? I think I saw more solar panels in cloudy former East Germany ten years ago than I saw in sunny Vegas this week. In fact, what gains the US once held in renewable energy technology have been surpassed by firms in many European companies, who can now boast some of the most advanced solar and wind energy companies in the world.

This should be our revolution too. In what amounts to a few seconds in the lifespan of the earth, in a few hundred years, we will have completely burned our way through billions of years of the sun’s energy stored in the form of coal and oil. Don’t take it from me – when it comes to an assessment of our fossil fuel situation - take it from an arch conservative dinosaur like T. Boone Pickens, a wealthy oilman who just invested billions of his own money in wind technology. Let’s take this to heart.

Sadly, some lessons must be learned twice, and oil provides a cutting example. Only 30 years ago, OPEC taught us one of our first lessons in how inextricably our economy is linked to foreign oil in less-than-democratic places. (What would George Washington say about this entangling alliance that we’ve been caught up in since the 1940s?) We’ve had this time to invent, invest and retool, but what progress has been made? Our foreign policy continues to run on an unhealthy blend of foreign oil. Steel, instead of being used to rebuild our once proud consumer and city rail networks, instead of being used to build solar systems on every house, has been used to build larger cars with declining fuel efficiency. Why? All because it’s “what the market wanted”: the gas guzzlers make the consumer feel safe, prosperous, and tough. And now the Big Three want a bail out. Let Toyota bail them out, buy them up, and remind us that the all-knowing Market cuts with two edges.

As I flew over Vegas, one of the nation’s fastest growing cities, all I see is a long, high voltage power line system stretching into the parched desert horizon, gasping for energy, like the plastic lines from the nose of so many gamblers, sucking oxygen from the tanks at their feet – cigarette in left hand, slots lever in the right. Unsustainable. Let's call a "spade a spade:” this place is a monument to our short sightedness.

All of our imbalance stands in stark contrast to the hike I did in nearby Red Rock Canyon, a desert that paradoxically lingers in my mind as an oasis. Each single lizard, snake, cactus, plant and tree I saw existed in a delicate, beautiful balance, a balance earned through millions of years of trial and error. The balance I see there is what it is - nothing more, nothing less. Elegant, simple, at One with its environment. Each well-adapted creature takes only what it needs and gives back all that it takes. When I think of Vegas, this is my monument. This is my favorite hotel. This the most exciting “show.” In harmony, yet creative and adaptive. We might take these lessons home, applying them even to something as mundane and ubiquitous as landscaping. Shouldn't the yards I see in the sprawling Vegas suburbs look more like this stunning desert flora around me and less like a planned community in Florida?

A hawk screeches, but that only serves to deepen the silence of this parched paradise. Out here, my ego shrivels quickly in the desert sun. Out here, I am humbled, I am nothing. Out here, there are no bluffs or boasts, intoxicants or distractions. Out here, I'm not being asked of anything, or asking anything of someone else, selling them, convincing them, or bluffing them. The thirst I have here is a genuine one. And the thirst I have here is easily quenched. Only hours after leaving Las Vegas, the city I just left remains nothing but a mirage of distractions from this high perch.

To be fair, I see why this play-pen for adults draws so many visitors and new residents every year. Driving back into the city, I feel the excitement and energy building. Back in the city, it is one big ego boost: I am king, I am a winner, I am a VIP, I want and I get. Anything, anyone, it all has a price. Everything is reduced to the Dollar; so much human interaction - from the tables to the bed - is openly a transaction. It's a different kind of predation than I observed in the desert. I see endless consumptive possibilities; yet, oddly invisible costs. Where are the recycling bins?


I have a dirty little secret that has managed to leave Las Vegas, contrary to the mantra. In the middle of it, I love that city, its energy and how it distracts me from the rest of the world and my nagging responsibility to it. I just fear the reasons why I enjoy it in the moment and how easily I get sucked into the dust storm of distraction. On my last day, while packing up, I finally took the time to look out the window at the mountains. Coincidentally, the whole time my room was facing the same peak that I stood on just days earlier. Isn’t it odd how on top of a high mountain you can feel humble, vulnerable, and meek, and in a smoke-filled noisy flashing air-conditioned resort you feel like you’re at the center of the universe? I have another beer and take in the whole circus. My Copernican thoughts can wait. The ego is a funny thing.



On my last day, I jumped in a cab and got a great view of the famed Strip as I headed back to the airport. If Mark Twain was right in saying our cities and our culture are merely extensions of each individual citizen or member, respectively, I think it's fair to say that each of us must rapidly learn to do a better job at mimicking these natural systems for water collection, energy generation, and food production. Rather than ape expired empires (as seen in the Luxor, Venetian, Caesars Palace, and other themed casinos and hotels passing by my window), let's mimic the empire that outlasts all others: nature.



To get in this new frame of mind of sustainability, let's start asking ourselves some questions. If we build it, will it be here in a hundred years? Will its benefits outlast its costs to our posterity and their environment? Are we paying the proper cost for it? The total cost, or just the costs that we can easily measure at this point? Are we pushing the costs to other times or to other people? Is it the most efficient use of resources? How would this purchase or action effect the environment if everyone else were to do the same? Are the world and our environment better or worse off for my brief sojourn here?

Unless we answer (let alone learn to ask) these questions, continuation of our prosperity will prove a mirage. We’ll never be able to answer or ask these questions unless we see the distractions, diversions, and addictions all around us for what they are: beer and circuses. Even as we transcend these, some will try to divert this dialogue into a mutually exclusive false choice between economic prosperity on one hand and environmental concerns on the other. Spotted owls or jobs, they’ll say, because to them, it’s really that simple. But sustainability goes above and beyond this by taking both ecological and economic concerns into a longer time horizon. This concept of sustainability is our new “West.”


At the airport on the way out, I could see both the distant mountains and the smog-covered city. I think about air quality. My thoughts return to my own hypocrisy as I prepare to board a transcontinental jet. I am part of the problem, I admit as I contemplate my flights to Australia, United Kingdom, Germany, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, Florida, and New York this year, and my daily 60 mile round-trip commute to work. That uncomfortable thought leads me to divert my concern to CNN “news” running on the TV monitor above me. Out of nowhere, I could feel my ego attempt to put my impact in some context: each week, two coal-fired power plants are built in China, so screw it, I think, as I feel a few tons of carbon fall off my shoulders. Of course, ready to distract me – and my remaining quarters – were the slots at gate B-22. Maybe I’ll be lucky this time.

I fly over what seems to be millions of square miles of rugged desert and become enveloped in child-like awe. Meanwhile, the screens above the captive audience descend and play some sitcoms (plus adverts) for the duration of the flight. Below us unfolds a more subtle drama. A cool confidence is exuded by the earth; her rugged canyons reveal basic truths that we find all too easy to ignore. I’m reminded by the economist John Maynard Keynes’ famous saying, “in the long run, we’re all dead.” When the effects of our inconsolable egos and insatiable appetites have long been forgotten and erased, I think Mother Earth will show her infinite wisdom: the house always wins. You can bet on that.

© Bjorn Beer, 2008

“Excess ain't rebellion. You're drinking what they're selling.”

~ lyrics from Cake in “Rock ‘N Roll Lifestyle” ~