Jackpot Nation Rambling and Gambling Across Our Landscape of Luck Richard Hoffer To Carol Contents Introduction It takes no great social historian to explain the American… 1 Las Vegas, Nevada I had never noticed the potential for treachery in an… 11 Salt Lake City, Utah Religious doctrine has always been fairly consistent in its opposition… 47 Cape Vincent, New York The wind blows pretty cold and pretty strong off Lake… 77 Charles Town, West Virginia The countryside is pretty enough, somewhat rolling, the Blue Ridge… 113 Santa Ynez, California Topping San Marcos Pass, coming from the California coastline near… 147 Twin Cities, Minneapolis I knew at some point, and at some place, I’d… 181 Anywhere, USA His voice originated somewhere in Costa Rica, hooked into a… 217 Acknowledgments About the Author Credits Cover Copyright About the Publisher It takes no great social historian to explain the American ten- dency toward risk-reward schemes, both dubious and legiti- mate. This country, as far as that goes, was founded on a flier. And every possible advancement in knowledge and wealth has been occasioned by some fantastic bet. We were always, just by virtue of our pioneer origins, in the game of speculation. Gold Rush, anybody? Or just a hundred shares of Pet.com? By now, through a couple hundred years of just this kind of political and economic evolution, we have been so thoroughly self-selected for risk-taking that only a righteous few of us can avoid scanning life’s tote board first thing in the morning. Good thing, when it comes to settling a nation or jetting off to the moon. Or even starting up Yahoo! Or asking that girl, too smart and too pretty for the likes of us, to marry us. Hard to imagine where this country would be if our ambition were restricted to sure shots, if we weren’t careless enough in our greed to ignore long odds. I guess we’d still be in En- gland and nobody would have iPods. Also, there would be a lot of bachelors. But what happens when this native predispo- sition toward risk-taking—now encouraged by civic institu- tions, a travel industry, a technology boom, a yawning void of recreation, a collapse in that old-time religion—becomes so pervasive that nearly every aspect of our culture is now a func- tion of chance? Well, I was curious. So, with little more than my own per- sonal treasure map (I can see where more judgmental minds 2 R I C H A R D H O F F E R might call it Satan’s TripTik—but not me) and cash advance access on four credit cards, I embarked on my own little road to ruin, exploring our landscape of luck. I didn’t set out to participate—although there I was, spinning for sausages in St. Paul and waiting for the river in Salt Lake City (and yes, I did max out those cards, but that’s another story) and standing in the Caesars Palace sports book holding a paper sack filled with $100,000 (and that’s really another story)—but to investi- gate, to discover where and how we flex that muscle, which you might have thought vestigial by now, certainly flabby. Turns out there’s a humming and thrumming economy out there, never mind our government, totally invested in its exercise. You think this is Fast Food Nation? We Americans bet each other about $80 billion last year, more than we spent on movie tickets, CDs, theme parks, spectator sports, and video games—combined! It’s more than we spent on higher educa- tion (and only a little bit less than we spent on fast food, which has the advantage of a drive-thru; the day you can take Phoenix and give six at a curbside clown, that advantage will certainly be eliminated). And, due to a confluence of trends that make it easier and ever more acceptable to gamble, we will increase that action year by year until the daily double really is more important to our economy than a double-dou- ble already is. It is impossible to know what limits there might be to such growth when our lottery libido is unleashed by civic and moral approval, not to mention Internet access. Whatever taboos there might have once been (our riverboat mentality was, for most of our history, held somewhat in check by the reigning values of hard work and self-sacrifice and Protestant morality) have fallen at such a pace that a back- room activity has become a parlor game. But why wouldn’t this country be devoted to the pursuit of luck? Like I say, the timid were left behind when the May- Jackpot Nation 3 flower sailed, the resulting start-up population already inclined toward overconfidence, a belief in destiny. But, really, what did we ever find here to discourage our sense of entitlement? Ever since we arrived, and once we relieved the Indians of their management (again, another story), it’s been one wind- fall after another. No wonder good luck has come to seem our rightful condition. The abundance, however accidental (kind of a definition of luck), has been simply stupefying. It’s been Jackpot Nation from day one, as we’ve stumbled from gold strike to gusher. American history is a timeline of providence, an epoch of flabbergasting discovery. Mother lodes, wide-open prairies, vast buffalo herds, timberland: Who among our adventuring forebears ever set out to chart this wilderness and was disappointed? Who took a chance and crapped out? This is surely our rightful condition. The idea of a payoff, whereby some small amount of industry gets applied to any crazy notion and returns investments in wild multiples, has come to seem a constitutional right. The original groundwork for such national confidence was purely a product of our nat- ural resources. But as these were explored and exhausted, our native wit became an equally valuable source of capital. We were as good at developing things as at stumbling upon them. Maybe it was the miracle of (mostly) economic democracy, but smarts became highly incentivized. In this country any- way, it was ridiculously easy to parlay ideas into wealth and power. Maybe nobody’s come up with a better mousetrap, but there’s been no end to the refinement of gadgetry to enrich our lives—or at least its inventor. It’s been a get-rich-quick country from day one, every- body’s life animated by the certainty of opportunity. We very well could discover gold, but failing that (say we prefer indoor work), we might improve our lot marketing vitamins or dab- bling in foreclosures. Basically, it’s there for the taking. 4 R I C H A R D H O F F E R It’s been the work of religion (and, once upon a time, our government) to deny, or at least counter the element of luck, which, after all, would dampen the instinct toward holy striv- ing. Something for nothing never squared with our Puritan origins, even though the team logo back then was a cornuco- pia. But to deny this continued good fortune, to ignore American serendipity, is another kind of arrogance, too. Do we really deserve what we get? Have we really earned all that we have? Surely there is another part of us that understands, as smart as we are and as hard as we work, we’ve cashed a ticket just by being American. And if you don’t appreciate that fact, take your Subway franchise to Darfur. Let me know how your expansion plans work out. To be an American is to be emboldened by our long run of luck, to be ready for every opportunity, to ante up as soon as the cards are shuffled. This has made for a pretty exciting nation, with a lot of entertaining foolishness, of course. We’ve also enjoyed a lot more progress than less adventuresome countries. Hands up, who else has the right to vote and has video-on-demand? But to be an American these days, now that all the really good adventures have been achieved, has meant a gradual retreat into the safety of choice. It’s no longer necessary to load the kids into a covered wagon and head West, fighting Indians along the way, to get ahead. Far easier just to take on a little overtime, or buy rental properties. Still, that appetite for risk remains and it’s up to us to satisfy it within the con- fines of our twenty-first-century comfort. Granted, we no longer face the somewhat daunting prospect of being scalped, but we still need the make-believe of mastery, which is why we have paintball, infomercial get-rich schemes, and all these other arenas of simulated survival.