What would Las Vegas be like if America was Communist?

. . . I suppose state autonomy is still highly likely, given the American traditional of self-government and the inviability of governing the whole country from Washington, . . .
Well, since someone ought to paint a rosy view :) , let’s take a flyer and assume things go really well!

1) Less pathological gambling, both because there are less young hot shots trying to make a living playing poker and less senior citizens trying to supplement their income. Besides, more of a person’s income comes through medical care, education, and other services.

2) A very effective sex workers union, thank you very much! Things such as lap dancing are invented decades earlier so both customers and sex workers have more real choices. And yes, intercourse is still available, but the union makes damn sure current or former sex workers are not stigmatized in any official way.

3) Shows are more popular. Acrobatics with drama, a la Cirque du Soleil, invented decades earlier. In fact, magic shows are available in most large cities, often after opening in Vegas.

4) And in good, healthy communist fashion more hiking in the nature preserves of Red Rock Canyon and Mount Charleston!

5) Disability rights, decades earlier.

6) Vegas even larger and more built out than OTL.

7) Limited by the partial bowl-shaped geography of the surrounding mountains, Vegas ends up a lot like Haiwaii. A nice place to live and/or retire to, but more expensive than average for the locals.
 
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I think the 'Vacation spot for workers' thing is the most likely. Depending on the nations stance towards gambling, it may become quite similiar to OTL Las Vegas, or it may just get a popular vacation spot without it. I can't see it, becoming for party members only. Socialist nations didn't have such thing historicly. Special hospitals and apartments, yes, but that was easy to justify. After all these people were of high national importance and had been transfered the responsibility to lead the nation (polliticians and high business men nowadays have much the same actually, privileged housing and medical care but on a MUCH MUCH larger scale than in socialist nations). A city is like Vegas is something completely different.

There were resorts built for 'workers' holiday' in socialist countries.

http://theprotocity.com/sunny-beach-resort-dream-bulgarian-seaside/
 
I thought of that, too, but I wanted the places to be fairly close to each other--not as close as Hong Kong is to Macau, of course, but still in the same section of the country.

The problem, casinos are not allowed in HK and many people transit through HK to get to Macau which did not has an international airport until 1995.
 

chankljp

Donor
Just out of curiosity, any chance that you got the idea of Las Vegas under the rule of a communist regime from the HOI4 "Red World" mod? :)

Anyway, assuming that we are talking about a post-1950s POD, after the city have developed it's image as the gambling and entertainment capital of the US, I think the three possible scenarios presented in "Red World" that can be chosen are quite good:

  1. Nationalise the casinos and keep the city in business. Have it become the principal holiday resort and vacation spot for the people of the communist US, sort of like what Yalta was for the USSR. With holiday vouchers given to heroes of the people and workers that perform well in their place of employment. While the state propaganda will be saying something along the lines of 'Back during the times of capitalist regime, Las Vegas was reserved for the corrupt bourgeoisie with them being entertained by exploited and unhappy workers. Now it belongs to the people!'. With the option to also allow foreign tourist in as a way to earn some hard currency for the regime.
  2. Demolish the entire Las Vegas Strip and large parts of the city, allowing it to be rebuilt from the ground up similar to how Dresden after WW2 and Pyongyang after the Korean War were. With the government using this opportunity to completely redesign the city reflected the latest ideals of socialist city planning, transforming it into either an R&D or manufacturing hub. With the propaganda using the image of the now New Las Vegas as a symbol of the triumphs of the revolution, turning a den of vice, sin, and consumerism into a productive addition to the socialist state the contribute to humanity.
  3. Though state policy such as cutting off governmental services and redirecting the power generated from Hoover Dam elsewhere, allow the once thriving city to fall into decay and 'encourage' it's population to move away. Eventually, with the once glamour city largely deserted and in ruins, using it as a propaganda opportunity to demonstrate the failure of bourgeois democracy and the capitalist economic system. While also sending a clear message to the rest of the country that if any of them ever cause trouble for the government, the state can cutting off their vital support and do the same to you as well.
 
This makes me wonder what happens to all of Nevada in an early 20th century POD scenario. Crazy agriculture projects mentioned above are an option, but maybe it’s more likely the place remains largely ignored as well.

Interestingly no one’s mentioned divorce yet, which pre-dated gambling by several decades as the only reason to go to the desert. (There’s a sub-genre in Hollywood in the 40s of Nevada divorce movies that are largely fascinating.)

I’ve never researched Marxist opinions on divorce, maybe another member can fill us in?

If I had to guess I reckon communist regimes probably had really liberal divorce laws, and so there would be no opportunity for one state to undercut the others.

But that general idea of being a more permissive place could evolve in other ways. In capitalist America it was gambling and sex. Maybe here other cultural mores are thrown aside.
 
Given how American culture, to the extent that it exists tends to the fanatical odds are the area of las vegas would be a destructive labor camp for the 100-150 million dead a Red US would have. Look at the numbers killed under Mao or Stalin and then extrapolate more given the long tradition of witch hunts, purity spirals in the us.
 
One problem with these scenarios is the American history that produces a communist USA has to be completely different from OTL American history (see the "People's Socialist Atlas"). Depending on the nature of the POD, this changes American culture.

However, my argument is that Communist regimes were shaped more by the particular culture of their countries than vice versa, despite using similar slogans and symbolism (they all liked the color red, for example), and in fact if the first successful communist revolution had been someplace other than Russia, even these would have been different. So you get an American communism that is not a carbon copy of the Warsaw Pact one we all came to know and love. This gets more true the earlier POD you get, and especially true if the Americans go communism first, before Russia.

So go early enough, and yes you get something like Las Vegas, though the location is butterflied (almost certainly if our communist government re-organizes the states and local government, itself quite likely) and there will be subtle differences. With everyone all getting fixed and low but all but guaranteed salaries you wouldn't get nearly as much gambling and prostitution (though if I am informed correctly the Chinese like to gamble even in the People's Republic) but you would get somewhat more casual versions of both.

Now a communist federal American government that takes power after 1960 would just abolish the whole thing, but I don't know how you get that POD. Or at least one where Vegas isn't nuked as part of it.
 
. . . Look at the numbers killed under Mao or Stalin . . .
I’m hoping, just due to good luck if nothing else, we’d be more like Cuba, or Czechoslovakia, or Yugoslavia during the Tito years.

And I don’t diminish the numbers Stalin killed one iota. During the 1930s, Stalin manipulated and increased a famine which was already occurring, essentially using it as a weapon against the people of Ukraine. And I for one am more than willing to use the g word and say, Stalin committed genocide in the Ukraine.

The show trials were killing at the retail level. Starvation in the Ukraine, this was at the wholesale level.
 
An interesting thing to consider is that, if there is a Revolution, the US will be already industrialised (whether it's in the 30's or the 60's), so no Great Leap Forward, hence less death
 
. . . so no Great Leap Forward, hence less death
All U.S. farmers really needed was for the government to side with them and against the monopolies of railroads, grain elevators (wholesalers), and bankers, maybe even outcompeting the monopolists and semi-monopolists at times.

Meaning, we might get lucky.

Or, the government and the “Party” may go the route of collectivization even though such is not necessary.
 
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about the famine in the Ukraine in the 1930s . . .

WI no collectivization in the Soviet Union?

https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...-the-soviet-union.437080/page-2#post-16551007

There was this older famous asshole reporter in Moscow who had connections and who pooh-poohed and was dismissive of claims of famine. He wanted to protect his connections, and besides, debunking and using clever insults is fun.*

In contrast, 27-year-old Gareth Jones got a pass to a city in the Ukraine and then got off the train early and walked through the countryside seeing for himself. That is, he did actual journalism.

* the older famous asshole reporter was a British guy who apparently was the main correspondent for the New York Times in the Soviet Union, don't feel it's necessary to mention his name, I'd rather concentrate on the younger guy who did genuine journalism

=======

Please note, in our previous AH discussion some people were critical of writer Anne Applebaum. I think she’s good and brings up very valid points.
 
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