5 Days In Vegas

I returned from five days in the only struggling outpost of rampant capitalism on the planet, Las Vegas. I go there to get energized with Life Not On Earth. The Strip is the core pellet-housing of the life-giving capitalistic radiation emanating from the State of Nevada, a relentless onslaught of effort to please the customer, no matter what the customer is in the market for. Liquor washes down the streets like tsunamis of delight and yet i never hear a car crash, the scream of a pedestrian being hit, the sound of anger, fists never fly, and never is heard a discouraging word. If you do hear one it is drowned out by a million other excited words of people drinking-in the life force that is Las Vegas. Las Vegas is the sole outpost of the American Revolution, where the customer is king and the State is a quiet bystander, calmly collecting its protection money even though there is not a casino owner in the State who could not collect an army  in one hour to overwhelm and defeat all the law enforcement officers in Nevada. So why have them? I dunno. People feel safer knowing that at any time a stranger in a uniform could kidnap them,  incarcerate them, and take all their stuff. It gives people a sense of security, knowing this could happen. And the police, knowing people depend on this service, are forever advising lawmakers to make more laws about nothing in particular - car registration for example: or the forbidding of drugs, or weapons, or orange hats, or a left nostril, to ensure that the odds of someone becoming a candidate for kidnap, incarceration and the taking of all their stuff increase. The army of thugs the casinoes could muster would not do this to the people of Nevada. They entice the people of Nevada to voluntarily incarcerate themselves into the casinoes and whore houses and strip clubs so that their stuff will be voluntarily handed over in exchange for something called fun. It's called "the difference between capitalism and government." But people, God bless 'em, if they were forced to give up one or the other, they would retain the police. Why? That is one of the few answers I don't have.