Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 2, August 2001 | Page 133

Las Vegas, Las Vegas

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it is our tension. The imbecile on his fourth Manhattan and his mind on a thong
strengthens my sense of Self as well. Taking up his position in the game I note his
choices and how they effect the rest of us. How could one be a libertarian in
this intersubjective world? He and I are not separate, our Goods are not isolated.
No invisible hand is needed to create a common Good from our selfish pursuits.
My very Being ensures an intersubjective Good.
But gambling? Why gambling? Is it not, as George Washington claimed,
the child of avarice? Is it not the epitome of irrationality (a much stronger condem
nation for modem ears). From Washington to John Rawls, Americans have de
monized the wager. Rawls, that great American popularizer of modem Kantian
political thought, rejects all gambling as irrational. We can’t see it now, he admits,
but if we engage in a thought-experiment in which we try to answer ethical ques
tions fairly, it all becomes clear. Because we are too prone to favor ourselves in
decisions of economic distribution, for instance, the only truly fair method for
determing who is to get what is to forget our personal traits and characteristics. We
must go into an “original position” of fairness, suggests Rawls, by pullling down a
theoretical “veil of ignorance” that blinds us to our personal traits. Forgetting our
class, race, sex, ethnicity, etc., we have left only our basic human rationality as a
guide; and no one will gamble in this original position, Rawls tells us, because it
“is not worthwhile for him to take a chance for the sake of further advantage,
especially when it may turn out that he loses much that is important to him.”17
Egalitarianism depends on this logical aversion to risk. Opting for a society with
out taxes and social programs is always a possibility — and if it turns out that I am
in actuality rich (something I will only know after I lift the veil), then I will truly
benefit, not having to share any of my wealth with others. But there is always
the lingering possibility that in real life 1 am totally broke; and left without a social
safety net to catch me, I could be doomed in a society without taxation to support
some sort of assistance to the poor. Would it be worth the risk? Would I roll the
dice in the original position and take the shot at untold riches? Not if I want to
maximize gains and minimize losses: the most fundamental rule that rationality
dictates.
Opting for a society in which I might be Bill Gates includes the possibil
ity that I might end up homeless instead, and thus this “maximin” principle, my
only friend behind the veil of ignorance, will not let me take the risk. It would be
foolhardy. It would not be pragmatic. But not rational? Hasn’t this word done
enough? Hasn’t it been conscripted on both sides of enough wars for us to see that
it truly belongs on neither? Hasn’t it carried the burden of standing in for decency
and normality across sufficient expanses of time and culture? Can’t we bury it
with the corpse of Kant and move on?
If not, then this: the compulsive gambler suffers, if anything, from excess