As Vegas is basically the extreme version of everything else, I think this is the epitome of the short term nature of late stage capitalism. Catering only to the super rich is also what most...
As Vegas is basically the extreme version of everything else, I think this is the epitome of the short term nature of late stage capitalism. Catering only to the super rich is also what most successful retail is currently doing. It props up their numbers and business but tastes change and that 10% will abandon your business fast. So yes, it works this quarter, but I can't imagine it will be a successful approach for most brands unless they can actually make the pivot to "luxury brand". Same for Vegas. Will the 10% keep going to Vegas or get bored and look somewhere else? And as always, the employees will be the ones getting laid off when it inevitably fails.
Makes sense. There are a lot of problems with capitalism but this shift to short-term gains over everything else is particularly distressing. That’s an economy-wide reprioritization that has...
Makes sense. There are a lot of problems with capitalism but this shift to short-term gains over everything else is particularly distressing. That’s an economy-wide reprioritization that has happened within our lifetime. It wasn’t always this way. Corporations used to make plans and investments for long-term sustainability. Now even the biggest, oldest companies feel like they’re just flying by the seats of their pants from quarter to quarter. Everything is just precarious all the time.
I’m not an economist and I don’t have data for this. These are just vibes I’m feeling. I’d love for a rigorous counterpoint to set me straight.
I can only speak for North America, but it is definitely happening here for publicly traded companies or companies owned by private equity. Every quarter is about making their stock price go up or...
I can only speak for North America, but it is definitely happening here for publicly traded companies or companies owned by private equity. Every quarter is about making their stock price go up or stripping as much value from a struggling brand as possible while keeping your employees poor so you can also benefit from government assistance (SNAP, etc).
My company is foreign but under an American private equity firm. Despite posting a good revenue and profits, it wasn't enough to meet their forecasts so nobody got raises this year. I've heard...
My company is foreign but under an American private equity firm. Despite posting a good revenue and profits, it wasn't enough to meet their forecasts so nobody got raises this year. I've heard there's been a 12% resignation rate already - myself hopefully soon to join them. But I can't shake the feeling that it's just frying pan -> fire and even if I join a smaller company, it'll get gobbled up before long.
And I just can't wrap my head around purposefully making products shit, losing millions in sales because customers say "your product is shit now", then blaming it on the employees. Where is the gain in any of this except the very short term? I'm just not rich enough to know these answers I guess /s
I mean the biggest thing people are complaining about is the exact opposite. "AI" investments is bringing massive short term loss, in search of dominance, or at least survival, in the long term....
I mean the biggest thing people are complaining about is the exact opposite. "AI" investments is bringing massive short term loss, in search of dominance, or at least survival, in the long term. It's about as far from short-term gains as you can get.
Isn’t that just the first stage of the enshittification playbook? The massive rapid buildouts and operating with huge deficits is a desperate scramble, like you said, for survival or dominance....
Isn’t that just the first stage of the enshittification playbook? The massive rapid buildouts and operating with huge deficits is a desperate scramble, like you said, for survival or dominance. They know the AI bubble is coming. Only the big players are going to survive the pop, so they’re doing everything they can to position themselves to come out on top.
But after that? Price hikes. Ads. Data harvesting. More value for shareholders, tightening screws on customers. In a nutshell: these companies will self-sabotage for short-term gains because that’s the way things are done now. I mean, I hope I’m wrong but it feels inevitable. So I don’t think AI is the exception to the rule, it’s just in that early stage of laying the groundwork for what’s to come.
You can call it it, but it's nonetheless a long term playbook. You have to endure years of negative income to be in a position to reap larger rewards. This is the opposite of short-term thinking.
You can call it it, but it's nonetheless a long term playbook. You have to endure years of negative income to be in a position to reap larger rewards. This is the opposite of short-term thinking.
You're kinda talking past each other (which is easy because these terms don't map well to the reality people try to express, but they're used a lot). The issue is about the short or long term...
You're kinda talking past each other (which is easy because these terms don't map well to the reality people try to express, but they're used a lot).
The issue is about the short or long term health of the industry and the economy.
We obviously have a lot of companies with successful long term strategies who's entire purpose is to capture an industry by blitz scaling with loss leading practices to generate good will and reach, and then clamp down and drive out competition and "harvest" the gains at any cost. To the industry, community, whatever. This very clearly works, and works well, in industries where:
They can keep the near monopoly
Where the underlying support doesn't implode.
2 is where the "short term" mindset comes in because yes, a lot of companies are trying to copy what Amazon/Uber/whatever did, and regardless of if it makes sense in their area, don't always succeed and do larger damage.
If you compare that to say Costco or Steam, which while far from utopian, are certainly well known for offering a good product and generally keeping industry dominance from "better" practices (yes this is not black and white, i know) that are less likely to just beat everyone into submission but just straight up out compete their competition.
There is a very real question of if there will BE a middle class in 20-100 years, and it's a much larger discussion, but a lot of these practices do point to that not being necessary as they're clearly aiming for "so what if our workers can't afford our products/living near us" kind of thinking. Well not literally, as these things are always so silo'd/abstracted/segregated but that is obviously the concerning trend.
IMO it's a conflation between "companies doing things I don't like" and "companies doing things that are short-sighted / dumb". It's easy to want these to be the same, because then the natural...
IMO it's a conflation between "companies doing things I don't like" and "companies doing things that are short-sighted / dumb". It's easy to want these to be the same, because then the natural path is for companies to eventually do things that I like again. But it's not necessarily the case.
For Vegas, ultimately I suspect that for lower incomes, it's simply outcompeted by the internet. Why travel all the way to Vegas to gamble when you can gamble from your smartphone? It's cheaper, and easier, and takes way less time.
As a result, for Vegas as an institution to survive, they've moved up market. There's still some people that like the experience, the vibe of Vegas. Of course, to have so much preference for the mere site of where you do your degenerate gambling that you will spend PTO and hundreds of dollars of flight tickets, you're probably higher income.
It's wishful thinking to imagine that, if only these stupid Casinos could figure out how to make money and just lower prices, they would be able to operate indefinitely as the center of cheap degeneracy. Casinos absolutely know about under-pricing to attract long-time gambling addicts. This is casino business 101. They have definitely not forgotten. It just doesn't work as well anymore.
Sadly, the world moves on, and now the degenerates mog each other while stockmaxxing on their smartphones.
I mean your take on the market reasons for vegas adjustments is objectively wrong. Mobile gaming is a thing, as are lowered gaming regulations and stigma globally, but that isn’t what has been...
I mean your take on the market reasons for vegas adjustments is objectively wrong. Mobile gaming is a thing, as are lowered gaming regulations and stigma globally, but that isn’t what has been driving the Strip practices. Neither could exist (like in the 90-00s) and you’d still see this practice expanding (again see referenced time frame).
It’s very much stemming from the mindset of “okay, you made X this quarter? How are you going to make X + Y next” that’s everywhere.
Obviously markets should grow with inflation but Vegas already had its major wipeout in 08 because of this mindset and it absolutely hurt the city and the locals.
Theres nothing wrong with saying “optimal business practices are going to eventually make this town unlivable and the people doing it won’t care because they’ll be moving on to the next one “ because that ABSOLUTELY happens.
It’s always been a huge portion of the discussion for Vegas because we’ve grown past the roadside nice town turned into a big box store phase but are still heavily threatened by economic trends (although darkly gambling does go up in down turn economies). It’s because we’re a tourist economy first with our second biggest industry after gaming(which brings the tourism) being construction.
08 hit both of those industries HARD and the NGCB is…what it is…. and so yes the city is always trying to expand its draw and diversify its core industries.
Ironically the most dangerous canary in the coal mine things aren’t even being talked about on YouTube because it requires understanding why Nevada gaming regs are what they are, and how/why they’re changing. There’s very good reason for people in this city to be concerned and trends and how they’re being navigated because “business practice I don’t like” is something every politician here has been aware of because they have ALWAYS been legitimately worried it will become “business practice that makes us the next Detroit”
What's the evidence for it to be "objectively wrong"? Vegas's decline heightened with COVID. IMO it's clear that, like with many industries, COVID was a period where old business momentum hit a...
What's the evidence for it to be "objectively wrong"? Vegas's decline heightened with COVID. IMO it's clear that, like with many industries, COVID was a period where old business momentum hit a wall and never came back.
Used cars is another example. The old adage of "the car loses half it's value when you drive it off the lot" is now just wrong. Now the car drops in value in linear proportion to its wear, from new to 300k.
The decline post-COVID is from the rise of easily accessible mobile gaming. If you plot the number of users of online gambling with the visitation records of not only vegas, but other gambling centers like atlantic city, you see one fill the gap where the other falls.
I already gave an example. Fuck it’s arguable a point for the movie Casino which far predates this. My family and friends have been involved in local vegas and Nevada politics and industries for...
I already gave an example. Fuck it’s arguable a point for the movie Casino which far predates this.
My family and friends have been involved in local vegas and Nevada politics and industries for 60+ years across 3 or 4 generations. Your random headline take just isn’t right and I’m confident any local with serious experience will agree.
This has always been talked about. Be it Kennedy taking down the mob, the corporations making it kid friendly, then adult friendly, then the housing crash making it cheaper, then the club phase, COVID, sports betting expansion, and a million other inbetweens (water conservation, state tax, public transit and road construction, state monopolies, unions, and so on)
If it want to watch NGCB meetings they’re on YouTube and it’s a starting point but it’s quite obvious you’re opining based on the random videos and articles that are made about the city but are far from a complete picture.
Vegas has ALWAYS been about balancing the delicate issue of being an industry town (again like Detroit) and trying to not wind up being wiped out by that industry shift OR by corporations driving the industry into the ground.
If the extent of it amounts of anecdata and "I'm a local, believe me", can't particularly say that's very convincing. It seems like just a process of wishful thinking. I fail to see why it's even...
If the extent of it amounts of anecdata and "I'm a local, believe me", can't particularly say that's very convincing. It seems like just a process of wishful thinking.
I fail to see why it's even mutually exclusive. Sure, there were tensions between the mafia owned jank era of vegas and the corporatization that occured afterwards, but that only lays the groundwork that vegas is vulrenable to the movements of broader social trends.
The proliferation of online gambling is just another nail, and it's the one being driven into the coffin of the cheap casino era Vegas at the moment.
I have literally reference you to the NGCB youtube as a starting position. You can go ahead and dive into stuff like the older lvrj summaries but the more recent they are the more likely they are...
If the extent of it amounts of anecdata and "I'm a local, believe me", can't particularly say that's very convincing. It seems like just a process of wishful thinking.
I have literally reference you to the NGCB youtube as a starting position. You can go ahead and dive into stuff like the older lvrj summaries but the more recent they are the more likely they are to be totally inaccurate. Any history book about las vegas politics would cover it all as well. It all starts with why and how las vegas gaming law is what it is and why you can have 1000 machines at a hotel and 15 at a gas station and absolutely 0 at a restaurant EXCEPT if its a bar and why there was an older casnio in the shape of an L and so on.
It's not sexy and its not interesting because it's local state politics so there's not fun videos on it, but at the same time what more do you want? You are more than free to look up how much time effort and money has been spent trying to make sure that one of the only states where you could put money making machines in businesses legally DIDN'T wind up just having them everywhere and what that balancing act looked like and how it changed over the years.
I don't think it counts as "evidence" to just point at a youtube channel. I don't want anything, I'm presenting an argument. This is like a complete non-sequitur to anything. What does that have...
I don't think it counts as "evidence" to just point at a youtube channel.
It's not sexy and its not interesting because it's local state politics so there's not fun videos on it, but at the same time what more do you want?
I don't want anything, I'm presenting an argument.
You are more than free to look up how much time effort and money has been spent trying to make sure that one of the only states where you could put money making machines in businesses legally DIDN'T wind up just having them everywhere and what that balancing act looked like and how it changed over the years.
This is like a complete non-sequitur to anything. What does that have to do with whether or not the easy availability of gambling in the US has had an effect on the revenues of Las Vegas's casinos industry? Local politicians can dither all they want, national trends effect them nonetheless.
It is the public documentation of Nevada Gaming Law. It's not some random influencer breakdown. No you're refuting my refutation with a complete lack of what you'd accept as an acceptable example....
I don't think it counts as "evidence" to just point at a youtube channel.
It is the public documentation of Nevada Gaming Law. It's not some random influencer breakdown.
I don't want anything, I'm presenting an argument.
No you're refuting my refutation with a complete lack of what you'd accept as an acceptable example. This is not some mystery industry secret. It's very boring history stuff. Enroll in UNLV/UNR, they teach it. Watch the publicly documented meetings with the Gaming Control Board that I keep referencing. It's based on it. Buy some books on Nevada Gaming History. I'm not sure what more you could want that I can reasonably provide since "having worked in and around the industry for generations" is unacceptable anecdote.
This is like a complete non-sequitur to anything. What does that have to do with whether or not the easy availability of gambling in the US has had an effect on the revenues of Las Vegas's casinos industry? Local politicians can dither all they want, national trends effect them nonetheless.
It is, in fact, not at all a non sequitor as I have been saying this entire time. The history of this City is knowing they are one FBI raid, one congressional law, and one shortsighted industry monopoly away from becoming totally irrelevant. Vegas has ALWAYS known that national trends will affect them.
Further it's in direct relation to:
For Vegas, ultimately I suspect that for lower incomes, it's simply outcompeted by the internet. Why travel all the way to Vegas to gamble when you can gamble from your smartphone? It's cheaper, and easier, and takes way less time.
As a result, for Vegas as an institution to survive, they've moved up market.
which is the claim i am refuting. They were moving up the market, again, long long long before internet gambling was legal, or even a thing, and this relates back to the previous point in that the balance of where they're allowed to move that market is a big reason as to WHY they're moving up that market.
Hell you're also demonstrating another major ignorance of Vegas business and politics because we ALWAYS lag on realizing/adapting to tech by decades. Most casino operations didn't even want to expand cell/wifi coverage because they were stuck in the 60s mindset of trying to make sure the player zones in, while basically every other gaming jurisdiction in the world was raking in customers who posted their jackpots on instagram.
I wouldn't be shocked in the slightest if major players in the local industry still believe that internet gambling isn't even a threat to their gaming revenue because they're just that behind the times.
And hell that's not even getting into the complete shift Vegas has done on F&B as a survival strategy, which is vastly more relevant if you wanted to at least be closer.
It's a little more nuanced than that. Social media has COMPLETELY changed the value to appearance ratio of things. Used to be someone would go and write an article about the experience, and so it...
It's a little more nuanced than that. Social media has COMPLETELY changed the value to appearance ratio of things.
Used to be someone would go and write an article about the experience, and so it needed to be decent. Now you can have the cheapest shit ever but make it look fancy for that yelp/insta/whatever post that the influencer is there for, and still do well. Vegas is 100% a reflection of that kind of attention economy, as of course our whole towns business model was sorta doing that before everyone else was.
There's very much a "don't hate the player, hate the game" thing, which I know is your late stage capitalism comment, but at the same time I think it's also just an issue with people more than government or economic system.
For those who might be skeptical given the source, I can tell you from personal experience that they are understating things. I used to live in Las Vegas and it’s rather annoying that most of the...
For those who might be skeptical given the source, I can tell you from personal experience that they are understating things. I used to live in Las Vegas and it’s rather annoying that most of the things I was priced out of for lack of money had raised their prices to make it too high when I had the money to spend was a real slap in the face.
I live in Southern California. I am supposed to be the Las Vegas tourism bread and butter. But why would I go there now? It’s far too expensive for glittery things that I am usually priced out of. What would I do, walk through the beautiful malls filled with products I can’t afford? Frankly it’s a better deal staying at the resorts built on reservations, which have also have the plus of knowing my dollars are going to the benefit of the tribe running it. The strange thing is that I’ve actually noticed “reverse tourism” happening a lot more. Just yesterday I met a couple visiting Knott’s Berry Farm from Las Vegas, and they are far from the only ones I’ve come across.
There is a good time to be had in Las Vegas for those who are not rich, but it’s a very different experience. As far as I’m concerned, the area around the Fremont Street Experience - downtown - is the new Strip. They’ve got cheap rooms, table games you can afford to play more than once, affordable restaurants with good quality, and it’s actually walkable unlike the actual Strip. The actual Fremont Street Experience had the balls to block it from car traffic and fill it with people. It’s a modernized version of the idealized “old Vegas”.
The problem with it is that it’s very much a party area, so if you aren’t young or looking for that kind of atmosphere it isn’t going to be the best vacation for you. There are many places outside the strip and Fremont to stay for a more restful experience, but for Californians I would say you would likely be better served by the resorts operated by native tribes.
Honest question, why would someone be skeptical due to the source? I thought More Perfect Union and its founder, Faiz Shakir, were considered fairly reputable. Is there something I don't know...
Honest question, why would someone be skeptical due to the source? I thought More Perfect Union and its founder, Faiz Shakir, were considered fairly reputable. Is there something I don't know about them?
I actually have a high opinion of them, but I have seen others who dislike them because they are as much an advocacy organization as they are a news organization. That and there's a crazy...
I actually have a high opinion of them, but I have seen others who dislike them because they are as much an advocacy organization as they are a news organization. That and there's a crazy anti-union stigma across much of the US.
I get turned off by how they sensationalize things. And I seem to recall a conversation on Tildes in the last few months were some folks had some criticisms of them, but I can't remember beyond that.
I get turned off by how they sensationalize things. And I seem to recall a conversation on Tildes in the last few months were some folks had some criticisms of them, but I can't remember beyond that.
I've noticed the increasing sensationalization of their YouTube titles for sure. It's annoying, but if you want a YouTube channel to grow, it seems to be a necessary evil for most.
I've noticed the increasing sensationalization of their YouTube titles for sure. It's annoying, but if you want a YouTube channel to grow, it seems to be a necessary evil for most.
As someone who's professional job is literally right smack dab in this wheelhouse, I will again say "it's more complicated than that". That stuff I am comfortable saying: There's always been a lot...
For those who might be skeptical given the source, I can tell you from personal experience that they are understating things.
As someone who's professional job is literally right smack dab in this wheelhouse, I will again say "it's more complicated than that".
That stuff I am comfortable saying:
There's always been a lot of comingled tourism between vegas and California (obviously mostly LA). I think some of your observations are more anecdotal and it's kinda always been that way (both as a personal and professional observation), but that leads me to point 2 which is:
In general a lot is changing for both LA and Vegas. The status quo's of the past 40+ years are adjusting. God knows LA has been dealing with what you could charitably call growing pains, and Vegas is absolutely in its own co mingled issue.
That said the local/off strip experience is still very...unique. Like everywhere, the housing market is a fucking wreck when compared to income, and a LOT of that is from all the Californians selling their 2k sq ft $2m home and buying the same thing for $800k in Vegas and proping up the market. Vegas is still one of the only places in the US that has the wide spread of cultures that you see in places like NY/LA (and now sorta Austin), but is certainly still the cheapest by far.
All that said when looking at it from a tourist perspective, yeah we've basically marketed towards the upper crust. The strip isn't for "plebs" anymore and there's lots of reasons for that (China having MASSIVE growth and a huge population that can now travel is a part of it), and it's not like many people want to vacation here for the local stuff.
It should be mentioned that my comment was mainly concerned with the experience on the strip. Outside of it there is still a lot to like, but it's a different kind of experience than what people...
It should be mentioned that my comment was mainly concerned with the experience on the strip. Outside of it there is still a lot to like, but it's a different kind of experience than what people tend to think about when they are talking about taking a trip there. I'll reiterate that downtown in particular is wonderful!
The wide variety of people and cultures is one thing I really miss about Las Vegas. Growing up there it kind of made me wonder why people thought racism was a big deal because my schools were always filled with a mixture of people of different ethnicities. It turns out that in most of the rest of the country people are still racially geo-segregated. Where I live right now is an Asian neighborhood, and it's fairly rare to find black people, which still feels very strange in spite of now having lived here longer than I had in Vegas. The church I grew up in was a Southern Baptist congregation, and coming out of it was surprising how much of a negative opinion people had over their hateful ideology - I didn't get that for the most part.
Nowadays I have a love for the place. I don't know if the tourism industry for regular folks will ever recover, but I hope that the other businesses that have sprouted up there over the years continue to thrive and support the people who live there.
The thing I find particularly frustrating about this market change is that while the strip was always expensive for locals, it was still a place one could go to on a free day and enjoy the sights and amenities. I can't speak for them because I am no longer one myself, but it really doesn't feel like that's the case anymore. So the properties on the strip now feel like castles that locals may enter to labor in, but not to participate in.
Yeah locals all now avoid the strip. Theres new competition catering to them, and that’s where you get downtown/the arts district and the like. I went from hitting the Mirage at 3am for noodles to...
Yeah locals all now avoid the strip. Theres new competition catering to them, and that’s where you get downtown/the arts district and the like. I went from hitting the Mirage at 3am for noodles to going to the strip only if I have work at the convention center
Learned a lot about Vegas from this video. Never been, but my wife went once with a friend to see a band they love. Many folks were I live (Alberta) go to Vegas, or used to. I haven’t heard any of...
Learned a lot about Vegas from this video. Never been, but my wife went once with a friend to see a band they love. Many folks were I live (Alberta) go to Vegas, or used to. I haven’t heard any of my friends or colleagues saying they are visiting recently. Personally I was never drawn to it because a lot of the fun seems to be around things I don’t enjoy. I don’t gamble unless you count the occasional lottery ticket. I quit drinking may years ago. Parties and crowds I prefer in small amounts. The overall excess vibe of the place never appealed to me. I am 100% sure there are cool things to see and do, and given it’s a short flight for me I may one day make the trip, but not under the current US government.
I will say it's a VERY surface video and like most, it's talking about THE STRIP, not so much as "Vegas", but of course we do brand the town that way. I hidden upside to Vegas is it is still...
Learned a lot about Vegas from this video.
I will say it's a VERY surface video and like most, it's talking about THE STRIP, not so much as "Vegas", but of course we do brand the town that way. I hidden upside to Vegas is it is still probably the cheapest US cosmopolitan city I know of? We have a shitload of cross culture stuff, and unlike New York/LA, it's not completely priced out yet.
Still totally get it's not worth planning a vacation for, especially with how most of the hotels price these days. Still staying OFF strip is absolutely what I recommend, and what all my used to be local friends do when they visit because the strip and larger hotels have become more and more of a tourist trap.
Sounds like they're trying to become more exclusive, like Monte Carlo. Let the plebs go to Atlantic City.
As Vegas is basically the extreme version of everything else, I think this is the epitome of the short term nature of late stage capitalism. Catering only to the super rich is also what most successful retail is currently doing. It props up their numbers and business but tastes change and that 10% will abandon your business fast. So yes, it works this quarter, but I can't imagine it will be a successful approach for most brands unless they can actually make the pivot to "luxury brand". Same for Vegas. Will the 10% keep going to Vegas or get bored and look somewhere else? And as always, the employees will be the ones getting laid off when it inevitably fails.
Makes sense. There are a lot of problems with capitalism but this shift to short-term gains over everything else is particularly distressing. That’s an economy-wide reprioritization that has happened within our lifetime. It wasn’t always this way. Corporations used to make plans and investments for long-term sustainability. Now even the biggest, oldest companies feel like they’re just flying by the seats of their pants from quarter to quarter. Everything is just precarious all the time.
I’m not an economist and I don’t have data for this. These are just vibes I’m feeling. I’d love for a rigorous counterpoint to set me straight.
I can only speak for North America, but it is definitely happening here for publicly traded companies or companies owned by private equity. Every quarter is about making their stock price go up or stripping as much value from a struggling brand as possible while keeping your employees poor so you can also benefit from government assistance (SNAP, etc).
My company is foreign but under an American private equity firm. Despite posting a good revenue and profits, it wasn't enough to meet their forecasts so nobody got raises this year. I've heard there's been a 12% resignation rate already - myself hopefully soon to join them. But I can't shake the feeling that it's just frying pan -> fire and even if I join a smaller company, it'll get gobbled up before long.
And I just can't wrap my head around purposefully making products shit, losing millions in sales because customers say "your product is shit now", then blaming it on the employees. Where is the gain in any of this except the very short term? I'm just not rich enough to know these answers I guess /s
I mean the biggest thing people are complaining about is the exact opposite. "AI" investments is bringing massive short term loss, in search of dominance, or at least survival, in the long term. It's about as far from short-term gains as you can get.
Isn’t that just the first stage of the enshittification playbook? The massive rapid buildouts and operating with huge deficits is a desperate scramble, like you said, for survival or dominance. They know the AI bubble is coming. Only the big players are going to survive the pop, so they’re doing everything they can to position themselves to come out on top.
But after that? Price hikes. Ads. Data harvesting. More value for shareholders, tightening screws on customers. In a nutshell: these companies will self-sabotage for short-term gains because that’s the way things are done now. I mean, I hope I’m wrong but it feels inevitable. So I don’t think AI is the exception to the rule, it’s just in that early stage of laying the groundwork for what’s to come.
You can call it it, but it's nonetheless a long term playbook. You have to endure years of negative income to be in a position to reap larger rewards. This is the opposite of short-term thinking.
You're kinda talking past each other (which is easy because these terms don't map well to the reality people try to express, but they're used a lot).
The issue is about the short or long term health of the industry and the economy.
We obviously have a lot of companies with successful long term strategies who's entire purpose is to capture an industry by blitz scaling with loss leading practices to generate good will and reach, and then clamp down and drive out competition and "harvest" the gains at any cost. To the industry, community, whatever. This very clearly works, and works well, in industries where:
2 is where the "short term" mindset comes in because yes, a lot of companies are trying to copy what Amazon/Uber/whatever did, and regardless of if it makes sense in their area, don't always succeed and do larger damage.
If you compare that to say Costco or Steam, which while far from utopian, are certainly well known for offering a good product and generally keeping industry dominance from "better" practices (yes this is not black and white, i know) that are less likely to just beat everyone into submission but just straight up out compete their competition.
There is a very real question of if there will BE a middle class in 20-100 years, and it's a much larger discussion, but a lot of these practices do point to that not being necessary as they're clearly aiming for "so what if our workers can't afford our products/living near us" kind of thinking. Well not literally, as these things are always so silo'd/abstracted/segregated but that is obviously the concerning trend.
IMO it's a conflation between "companies doing things I don't like" and "companies doing things that are short-sighted / dumb". It's easy to want these to be the same, because then the natural path is for companies to eventually do things that I like again. But it's not necessarily the case.
For Vegas, ultimately I suspect that for lower incomes, it's simply outcompeted by the internet. Why travel all the way to Vegas to gamble when you can gamble from your smartphone? It's cheaper, and easier, and takes way less time.
As a result, for Vegas as an institution to survive, they've moved up market. There's still some people that like the experience, the vibe of Vegas. Of course, to have so much preference for the mere site of where you do your degenerate gambling that you will spend PTO and hundreds of dollars of flight tickets, you're probably higher income.
It's wishful thinking to imagine that, if only these stupid Casinos could figure out how to make money and just lower prices, they would be able to operate indefinitely as the center of cheap degeneracy. Casinos absolutely know about under-pricing to attract long-time gambling addicts. This is casino business 101. They have definitely not forgotten. It just doesn't work as well anymore.
Sadly, the world moves on, and now the degenerates mog each other while stockmaxxing on their smartphones.
I mean your take on the market reasons for vegas adjustments is objectively wrong. Mobile gaming is a thing, as are lowered gaming regulations and stigma globally, but that isn’t what has been driving the Strip practices. Neither could exist (like in the 90-00s) and you’d still see this practice expanding (again see referenced time frame).
It’s very much stemming from the mindset of “okay, you made X this quarter? How are you going to make X + Y next” that’s everywhere.
Obviously markets should grow with inflation but Vegas already had its major wipeout in 08 because of this mindset and it absolutely hurt the city and the locals.
Theres nothing wrong with saying “optimal business practices are going to eventually make this town unlivable and the people doing it won’t care because they’ll be moving on to the next one “ because that ABSOLUTELY happens.
It’s always been a huge portion of the discussion for Vegas because we’ve grown past the roadside nice town turned into a big box store phase but are still heavily threatened by economic trends (although darkly gambling does go up in down turn economies). It’s because we’re a tourist economy first with our second biggest industry after gaming(which brings the tourism) being construction.
08 hit both of those industries HARD and the NGCB is…what it is…. and so yes the city is always trying to expand its draw and diversify its core industries.
Ironically the most dangerous canary in the coal mine things aren’t even being talked about on YouTube because it requires understanding why Nevada gaming regs are what they are, and how/why they’re changing. There’s very good reason for people in this city to be concerned and trends and how they’re being navigated because “business practice I don’t like” is something every politician here has been aware of because they have ALWAYS been legitimately worried it will become “business practice that makes us the next Detroit”
What's the evidence for it to be "objectively wrong"? Vegas's decline heightened with COVID. IMO it's clear that, like with many industries, COVID was a period where old business momentum hit a wall and never came back.
Used cars is another example. The old adage of "the car loses half it's value when you drive it off the lot" is now just wrong. Now the car drops in value in linear proportion to its wear, from new to 300k.
The decline post-COVID is from the rise of easily accessible mobile gaming. If you plot the number of users of online gambling with the visitation records of not only vegas, but other gambling centers like atlantic city, you see one fill the gap where the other falls.
I already gave an example. Fuck it’s arguable a point for the movie Casino which far predates this.
My family and friends have been involved in local vegas and Nevada politics and industries for 60+ years across 3 or 4 generations. Your random headline take just isn’t right and I’m confident any local with serious experience will agree.
This has always been talked about. Be it Kennedy taking down the mob, the corporations making it kid friendly, then adult friendly, then the housing crash making it cheaper, then the club phase, COVID, sports betting expansion, and a million other inbetweens (water conservation, state tax, public transit and road construction, state monopolies, unions, and so on)
If it want to watch NGCB meetings they’re on YouTube and it’s a starting point but it’s quite obvious you’re opining based on the random videos and articles that are made about the city but are far from a complete picture.
Vegas has ALWAYS been about balancing the delicate issue of being an industry town (again like Detroit) and trying to not wind up being wiped out by that industry shift OR by corporations driving the industry into the ground.
If the extent of it amounts of anecdata and "I'm a local, believe me", can't particularly say that's very convincing. It seems like just a process of wishful thinking.
I fail to see why it's even mutually exclusive. Sure, there were tensions between the mafia owned jank era of vegas and the corporatization that occured afterwards, but that only lays the groundwork that vegas is vulrenable to the movements of broader social trends.
The proliferation of online gambling is just another nail, and it's the one being driven into the coffin of the cheap casino era Vegas at the moment.
I have literally reference you to the NGCB youtube as a starting position. You can go ahead and dive into stuff like the older lvrj summaries but the more recent they are the more likely they are to be totally inaccurate. Any history book about las vegas politics would cover it all as well. It all starts with why and how las vegas gaming law is what it is and why you can have 1000 machines at a hotel and 15 at a gas station and absolutely 0 at a restaurant EXCEPT if its a bar and why there was an older casnio in the shape of an L and so on.
It's not sexy and its not interesting because it's local state politics so there's not fun videos on it, but at the same time what more do you want? You are more than free to look up how much time effort and money has been spent trying to make sure that one of the only states where you could put money making machines in businesses legally DIDN'T wind up just having them everywhere and what that balancing act looked like and how it changed over the years.
I don't think it counts as "evidence" to just point at a youtube channel.
I don't want anything, I'm presenting an argument.
This is like a complete non-sequitur to anything. What does that have to do with whether or not the easy availability of gambling in the US has had an effect on the revenues of Las Vegas's casinos industry? Local politicians can dither all they want, national trends effect them nonetheless.
It is the public documentation of Nevada Gaming Law. It's not some random influencer breakdown.
No you're refuting my refutation with a complete lack of what you'd accept as an acceptable example. This is not some mystery industry secret. It's very boring history stuff. Enroll in UNLV/UNR, they teach it. Watch the publicly documented meetings with the Gaming Control Board that I keep referencing. It's based on it. Buy some books on Nevada Gaming History. I'm not sure what more you could want that I can reasonably provide since "having worked in and around the industry for generations" is unacceptable anecdote.
It is, in fact, not at all a non sequitor as I have been saying this entire time. The history of this City is knowing they are one FBI raid, one congressional law, and one shortsighted industry monopoly away from becoming totally irrelevant. Vegas has ALWAYS known that national trends will affect them.
Further it's in direct relation to:
which is the claim i am refuting. They were moving up the market, again, long long long before internet gambling was legal, or even a thing, and this relates back to the previous point in that the balance of where they're allowed to move that market is a big reason as to WHY they're moving up that market.
Hell you're also demonstrating another major ignorance of Vegas business and politics because we ALWAYS lag on realizing/adapting to tech by decades. Most casino operations didn't even want to expand cell/wifi coverage because they were stuck in the 60s mindset of trying to make sure the player zones in, while basically every other gaming jurisdiction in the world was raking in customers who posted their jackpots on instagram.
I wouldn't be shocked in the slightest if major players in the local industry still believe that internet gambling isn't even a threat to their gaming revenue because they're just that behind the times.
And hell that's not even getting into the complete shift Vegas has done on F&B as a survival strategy, which is vastly more relevant if you wanted to at least be closer.
It's a little more nuanced than that. Social media has COMPLETELY changed the value to appearance ratio of things.
Used to be someone would go and write an article about the experience, and so it needed to be decent. Now you can have the cheapest shit ever but make it look fancy for that yelp/insta/whatever post that the influencer is there for, and still do well. Vegas is 100% a reflection of that kind of attention economy, as of course our whole towns business model was sorta doing that before everyone else was.
There's very much a "don't hate the player, hate the game" thing, which I know is your late stage capitalism comment, but at the same time I think it's also just an issue with people more than government or economic system.
I would agree with that. Obviously it's more complicated than my flippant, angry comment.
For those who might be skeptical given the source, I can tell you from personal experience that they are understating things. I used to live in Las Vegas and it’s rather annoying that most of the things I was priced out of for lack of money had raised their prices to make it too high when I had the money to spend was a real slap in the face.
I live in Southern California. I am supposed to be the Las Vegas tourism bread and butter. But why would I go there now? It’s far too expensive for glittery things that I am usually priced out of. What would I do, walk through the beautiful malls filled with products I can’t afford? Frankly it’s a better deal staying at the resorts built on reservations, which have also have the plus of knowing my dollars are going to the benefit of the tribe running it. The strange thing is that I’ve actually noticed “reverse tourism” happening a lot more. Just yesterday I met a couple visiting Knott’s Berry Farm from Las Vegas, and they are far from the only ones I’ve come across.
There is a good time to be had in Las Vegas for those who are not rich, but it’s a very different experience. As far as I’m concerned, the area around the Fremont Street Experience - downtown - is the new Strip. They’ve got cheap rooms, table games you can afford to play more than once, affordable restaurants with good quality, and it’s actually walkable unlike the actual Strip. The actual Fremont Street Experience had the balls to block it from car traffic and fill it with people. It’s a modernized version of the idealized “old Vegas”.
The problem with it is that it’s very much a party area, so if you aren’t young or looking for that kind of atmosphere it isn’t going to be the best vacation for you. There are many places outside the strip and Fremont to stay for a more restful experience, but for Californians I would say you would likely be better served by the resorts operated by native tribes.
Honest question, why would someone be skeptical due to the source? I thought More Perfect Union and its founder, Faiz Shakir, were considered fairly reputable. Is there something I don't know about them?
I actually have a high opinion of them, but I have seen others who dislike them because they are as much an advocacy organization as they are a news organization. That and there's a crazy anti-union stigma across much of the US.
I get turned off by how they sensationalize things. And I seem to recall a conversation on Tildes in the last few months were some folks had some criticisms of them, but I can't remember beyond that.
I've noticed the increasing sensationalization of their YouTube titles for sure. It's annoying, but if you want a YouTube channel to grow, it seems to be a necessary evil for most.
As someone who's professional job is literally right smack dab in this wheelhouse, I will again say "it's more complicated than that".
That stuff I am comfortable saying:
There's always been a lot of comingled tourism between vegas and California (obviously mostly LA). I think some of your observations are more anecdotal and it's kinda always been that way (both as a personal and professional observation), but that leads me to point 2 which is:
In general a lot is changing for both LA and Vegas. The status quo's of the past 40+ years are adjusting. God knows LA has been dealing with what you could charitably call growing pains, and Vegas is absolutely in its own co mingled issue.
That said the local/off strip experience is still very...unique. Like everywhere, the housing market is a fucking wreck when compared to income, and a LOT of that is from all the Californians selling their 2k sq ft $2m home and buying the same thing for $800k in Vegas and proping up the market. Vegas is still one of the only places in the US that has the wide spread of cultures that you see in places like NY/LA (and now sorta Austin), but is certainly still the cheapest by far.
All that said when looking at it from a tourist perspective, yeah we've basically marketed towards the upper crust. The strip isn't for "plebs" anymore and there's lots of reasons for that (China having MASSIVE growth and a huge population that can now travel is a part of it), and it's not like many people want to vacation here for the local stuff.
It should be mentioned that my comment was mainly concerned with the experience on the strip. Outside of it there is still a lot to like, but it's a different kind of experience than what people tend to think about when they are talking about taking a trip there. I'll reiterate that downtown in particular is wonderful!
The wide variety of people and cultures is one thing I really miss about Las Vegas. Growing up there it kind of made me wonder why people thought racism was a big deal because my schools were always filled with a mixture of people of different ethnicities. It turns out that in most of the rest of the country people are still racially geo-segregated. Where I live right now is an Asian neighborhood, and it's fairly rare to find black people, which still feels very strange in spite of now having lived here longer than I had in Vegas. The church I grew up in was a Southern Baptist congregation, and coming out of it was surprising how much of a negative opinion people had over their hateful ideology - I didn't get that for the most part.
Nowadays I have a love for the place. I don't know if the tourism industry for regular folks will ever recover, but I hope that the other businesses that have sprouted up there over the years continue to thrive and support the people who live there.
The thing I find particularly frustrating about this market change is that while the strip was always expensive for locals, it was still a place one could go to on a free day and enjoy the sights and amenities. I can't speak for them because I am no longer one myself, but it really doesn't feel like that's the case anymore. So the properties on the strip now feel like castles that locals may enter to labor in, but not to participate in.
Yeah locals all now avoid the strip. Theres new competition catering to them, and that’s where you get downtown/the arts district and the like. I went from hitting the Mirage at 3am for noodles to going to the strip only if I have work at the convention center
Would you mind if I asked what it was you do for a living? Feel free to DM me if you'd rather keep it private.
Analytics
Learned a lot about Vegas from this video. Never been, but my wife went once with a friend to see a band they love. Many folks were I live (Alberta) go to Vegas, or used to. I haven’t heard any of my friends or colleagues saying they are visiting recently. Personally I was never drawn to it because a lot of the fun seems to be around things I don’t enjoy. I don’t gamble unless you count the occasional lottery ticket. I quit drinking may years ago. Parties and crowds I prefer in small amounts. The overall excess vibe of the place never appealed to me. I am 100% sure there are cool things to see and do, and given it’s a short flight for me I may one day make the trip, but not under the current US government.
I will say it's a VERY surface video and like most, it's talking about THE STRIP, not so much as "Vegas", but of course we do brand the town that way. I hidden upside to Vegas is it is still probably the cheapest US cosmopolitan city I know of? We have a shitload of cross culture stuff, and unlike New York/LA, it's not completely priced out yet.
Still totally get it's not worth planning a vacation for, especially with how most of the hotels price these days. Still staying OFF strip is absolutely what I recommend, and what all my used to be local friends do when they visit because the strip and larger hotels have become more and more of a tourist trap.
Makes sense, good reminder for me not to confuse the strip with the entire city.