How Will the Downturn Affect the Gambling Economy?

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How Will the Downturn Affect the Gambling Economy?

Question: Will the downturn in the economy have a lasting effect on the Las Vegas gambling economy? I am a "low roller" and even I am receiving many free offers for rooms in Las Vegas.

Paul Solman: Let's hope so. Having just finished, while on holiday in Lisbon, two superb and wise books that argue for the importance of a moral point of view in their respective disciplines, I feel moved (and justified) to get on my high horse for this answer. (The books are Harvard psychologist Jerome Kagan's An Argument for Mind on the history of psychology over the past 50 years (and his role in it) and Cold War historian John Gaddis' The Landscape of History.)

In recent times, economists have generally skirted the issue of the Good. The assumption is that something called "utility" (satisfaction) sums up what humans do and therefore SHOULD shoot for, maximizing it as rationally as possible. How do we know what "utility" IS? By what people demonstrate they desire -- their "preferences." How do they demonstrate? By buying, paying, consuming. Thus "consumer preference" is the be-all and end-all of a market system. The implicit (if not, as often, explicit) goal of an economy is the greatest Good for the greatest number ("utilitarianism"), which is the summing of utility as revealed by consumer preference.

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