A Report from Las Vegas

“Las Vegas is sort of like how God would do it if he had money.” (Steve Wynn)

It’s appropriate, I think, that a huge libertarian conference like FreedomFest should meet in Las Vegas.  This is not, by a long shot, a conservative city.  But it’s a libertarian one.  Everything goes.

That’s one of the reasons I’m not quite a libertarian in the full sense.

We had a fun day here, though.  As I had hoped, we did manage to catch Gilbert Bonilla and his Beatles tribute band at the V Theater in the Miracle Mile adjacent to Planet Hollywood.  He does a really fine John Lennon, and he was kind enough to give us a couple of tickets to the show.  It was very well done.  One of my great regrets is that, while I saw the Stones and the Byrds and Iron Butterfly and B. B. King and so forth, I somehow never managed to see the Beatles in concert.  But this experience today came remarkably close.

Afterwards, we had dinner with a number of people who’re here for Freedom Fest, including a classicist from Stanford, a professor of psychology from the University of California at Santa Cruz, somebody who’s currently competing in the World Series of Poker, an economist from the University of Virginia, a prominent author on economics and investments, and John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods (with whom I’ve had dinner previously at Freedom Fest).

I’m really, really mad at myself that I got into a situation where I have to leave on Friday afternoon, before the conference is over.  Marco Rubio will be speaking that evening.  And Donald Trump — they all have very mixed feelings about this one; he wasn’t planned for the program — will be speaking on Saturday afternoon.  I hope I’ll still be able to catch Steve Forbes, though.

Posted from Las Vegas, Nevada