So....this time I want to discuss AC at large sociologically, and why it's basically screwed economically. Again, I did a lot of research into the topic, and in a thread where people were complaining about an issue in the city, someone said "why are you focused on this and not on how the city has a 40% poverty rate?" Well, you can complain about issues with certain establishments and also keep a sociological perspective in mind. heck, I have A LOT to say about Atlantic City sociologically, and being a UBI supporter, I also have a lot of solutions. While these comments weren't addressed at me, and I was just lurking the thread, I figured I would discuss AC sociologically a bit, why it's so screwed economically (TLDR: capitalism), and what would solve it (TLDR: UBI and other second new deal proposals).
Discussing AC's history, climate, and setting the stage for failure
So....AC didn't always exist. If anything, as a touristy town, it's a relatively new invention. For most of European American history, it mostly didn't exist. It's in the marshes of south Jersey. There was little point for it to do so. Too remote to be useful economically. I know watching videos on it, some doctor used to set up a practice there for unhealthy individuals, since the relatively moderate climate was good for them in an age before modern air conditioning.
Going into the 20th century, the Mafia turned it into a sort of black market paradise, where it was "the place" to go if you wanted a good time that couldn't be met legitimately (so, gambling, booze, prostitution, etc). The expansion of rail and later road and air travel made it more accessible where it never used to be. This made it a booming town for that sort of tourist activity. And the mob realized if AC wasn't the only place that you could do that sort of stuff, it would just be "a beach with cold water."
After all, beaches are normally awesome tourist spots when they're warm, people will travel from all over the world for a good beach spot where it's warm year round. Of course, New Jersey isnt that, with the midatlantic having hot summers, cold winters, and also cold springs/falls for beach weather. So its primary tourism season basically lasts from memorial day to labor day, and while it is viable a bit before/after that, it's not PRIME for beach goers. That makes it a seasonal tourist destination, doing well in the summer but poor in the winter. Really, what made the place appealing early on WAS that illegal activity.
And then, gambling was legalized in the 1970s, but only there. And we got tons of casinos being built into the 1980s, with even our current president getting in on the fun. Ya know, because he was a real estate developer and all. Yeah, he built several casinos there, and then because they all competed with each other given the limited demand, he bankrupted them and struggled to make money off of them. Because the casino industry has always been iffy and relied primarily on being a black market monopoly, and then a legal monopoly in the area to be profitable.
And then over time, places like Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New York legalized gambling, leading to the loss of reasons to go there. I even wrote an article on this back in 2016. So yeah, AC has fallen on hard times. It's always been in hard times. Even at its best it was shady AF and now it's basically a glittering resort next to a ghetto that's only popular for non gambling reasons for 3-5 months out of the year.
And let's not even get into the harshness of capitalism
Capitalism is successful as an economic model because it's a lot like Darwinistic evolution. The "invisible hand" that keeps things efficient is basically natural selection. Life is a constant struggle for survival. Capitalism institutionalizes that struggle. Firms struggle to maintain profit margins. People struggle to maintain an income to survive. Everyone works and struggles all of the time, and the system basically forces everyone to be profitable, or to fall into destitution, where the system basically punishes you. I'd argue on the firm side of the equation, capitalism's harshness is justified. If an idea struggles to be profitable, then maybe it shouldn't continue to exist. Then people are instead pushed toward economic activity that is actually useful. This is one reason I'm not super big on being a luddite and preserving jobs. I get the idea of preserving some level of stability and income in peoples' lives, but if they're not doing useful things, what's the point? Give them a check and let the jobs go.
But that is the other side of the equation. In my own envisioning of capitalism, a UBI is almost a necessity to be built on the system. Take monopoly for instance, it needs a basic income to keep the game playable. Fun fact, monopoly is based on AC. The more you know... But I digress. Point is, if you allow this system to operate naturally, it will replicate the horrors of the state of nature, except in institutionalized form.
And that's why AC has the issues it has. In a system where people are expected to constantly turn a profit or be punished, a lot of people are punished. There simply isn't enough demand to keep AC financially successful. The place exists purely to serve tourists who want to go there and dump discretionary income there, and without that constant influx of demand that you dont get in a seasonal beach town, you don't get a lot of economic stability.
And let's discuss the wage slavery aspect
While Widerquist's "Big Casino" essay was a play on Nevada and places like Reno and Las Vegas, Atlantic City is the east coast's version of that. It basically IS the very embodiment of "the big casino." The place exists as a casino resort first, a beach town second, and falls on hard times because of that. Let's think of this place in terms of trickle down economics. The wealthy people who own the casinos get the money. They "create jobs" where you serve rich tourists for the privilege of them coming here, and your choices are to either get a job and work for them, for minimal pay and benefits of course, or you're poor. Sometimes AND you're poor but if you're not employed, you're especially screwed. Because much of the city is privatized, it's owned by the wealthy, you either pay for the privilege of being there, or you work there. You're not allowed to just exist there. As discussed in the previous article, a lot of casinos have strict policies that are sometimes even inconvenient for customers to discourage homeless from existing in their casinos. And while they will exist outside mere blocks away, that makes the areas away from the tourist spots hellish, causing them to devolve into crime that makes the tourists uncomfortable, and further disincentivizes a lot from coming here. Like I really had to work hard convincing my mom that going there was a good idea. She had last been there in the 1980s and was familiar with the more seedy aspects of it. I had to actually explain how the casino areas are safe and there's more there than gambling, they're actually full blown resorts with other stuff to do, because they had to diversify to get people in.
But, again, that's the thing. Where do normal people exist in this hyper capitalized world? Either you own a casino and make the money, you're a consumer, many of whom are wealthy, or you work there. You're not really allowed to be anything else. Such is the nature of capitalism as a "big casino." Every individual casino has their policies that reinforce this behavior, but none of them really take responsibility for it, and people act like it's just a fact of life, rather than a system we set up that operates certain rules that can be changed at any time.
So...we got a system where poor people are forced to take jobs serving much wealthier people, or they become part of that homeless class that causes problems in its own right. I'm arguing if capitalism wasn't so harsh, and did give people a more basic option to just...exist, that these problems would be alleviated. The poor wouldnt be so desperate. But that's the thing, the wealthy classes rely on this poor, desperate working class in order to perpetuate their lifestyle. While I find some of the serving others aspect of employment in capitalism distasteful, these guys freak out if their servants don't wanna serve any more, we saw a tiny taste of that in 2021 and half the country (led by these guys) threw a fit over it.
But that's what capitalism really is. The top 0.1% are the ownership class who own everything and make most of the money. The top 10-20% in general are the primary consumer class, whose fine tastes drive the system and the rest of us are just...the hired help. Yeah, the middle class exists, but the actual middle class has been in decline. For many of us in the younger generations, we're just servants in this crappy system. And the actual class that benefits from this is constantly shrinking. Most of the time, the issue is framed as a problem with joblessness and not enough work. Which is ridiculous. I'd argue we shouldnt make people work in the first place. but now, it's one of inflation and income inequality in the 2020s. The spending habits of the top 10-20% of people are now the main drivers of the economy, while the actual middle is getting squeezed out, and people are struggling to get into the top class, with many failing and falling into the masses of the servant class, where this system affords us the options to serve or to starve.
Putting it all together
Basically, atlantic city is the perfect encapsulation of american capitalism and its problems in general. They're just more exaggerated here. You got the luxurious casinos owned by a minority, constantly struggling to turn profits. You got the wealthy upper class that benefits from this system as consumers. And then you got the rest of us who are just the hired help. That's capitalism in general. A system designed to trick most of the world's population into being servants of the wealthy, while we act like it's fair, just, and has to be this way.
I ain't saying there arent benefits to capitalism. I certainly dont encourage the big casino to be what karl widerquist called "the big collective", an authoritarian collectivist state where the government tells you what to do instead and you have no choice to refuse. Rather, I encourage freedom. What we need is a better form of capitalism, a more humanistic form of capitalism. One where, if you wanna go to the big casino and operate by their rules, fine, but you can also exist elsewhere, without having to do anything for the privilege. A system where, if you wanna work to earn extra money in a casino to have a more luxurious lifestyle for yourself, fine, that's your choice, but you're not coerced by poverty, propertylessness, and a system that gives you no place to reasonably go and "just exist" if you dont.
I envision a form of society where rather than pay to play, it's free to play, with a robust store full of voluntary micro transactions for those who want it. The base experience is free, but if you wanna contribute, you earn higher standards of living, and more luxurious conditions. I feel like, we dont do this. We claim to be built on principles of voluntaryism, but when you look more closely, how voluntary is this system? Not really. And everyone knows it, they just do philosophical cartwheels about how poverty is natural and no one is entitled to anything to justify things being this way. But those attitudes are the problem. Yes, assuming society can afford it, everyone should get a UBI. Everyone should be able to secure healthcare, housing, and a decent education on top of that UBI. And we should have robust labor protections, including limits on hours worked, to avoid overwork, in order to fill in any gaps.
If we did that, Atlantic city would be a lot better for the actual residents of it. They'd be able to afford to exist, they'd be able to reject forced servitude, and while that might have economic impacts that drive casinos to either accommodate more labor demands or go out of business, and that might make entitled wealthy people unhappy, I'm fine with it. I support a vision of capitalism based on actual freedom over one that basically amounts to the forced servitude of the majority of the population just to serve a bunch of wealthy people with nothing better to do with their money but to gamble it away and spend it on luxury accommodations. Some might say those wealthy people "create jobs", but i don't want your stinking jobs. That's the point. I dont think that a place like atlantic city should exist, until every legal resident in the country has enough food, a place to live, decent healthcare, and a decent standard of living in general. Id rather raise the bottom and have a world where everyone a bit more the same in terms of the wealth they have access to, than a society of such ridiculous extremes, where you got rich fricks dropping upward of $600+ a night on hotel rooms over the weekend, eating $100 steaks, and then dropping several grand into the casino. Seriously. The idea of forcing people to work maybe made sense in an era where the alternative was not enough to go around and material shortages leading to actual starvation, but it doesnt make sense in the modern era.
Anyway, that's my take on it. Just some thoughts I had as I used this vacation to think about how my ideas would work in practice.
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