An incredible Reddit comment that discusses Las Vegas, enshittification, corporate America, and everything in between:

It's not just Blackjack, it's everything. Just like everything else run into the ground by corporate America, it's just shittier across the board. They failed to understand that I don't have to sit down and gamble.

Roulette in Europe has 36 numbered red/blue slots and one green zero. In America we had two green zeros (0 and 00). Now that two number design is largely the bigger one everywhere because it benefits the house.

But that wasn't enough. Now there is a 000 space. Usually it has the casino logo or some kind of emblem specific to them. Still has 36 numbered spaces that are red or black.

You wouldn't think it should matter that much, but it does a lot.

Roulette was my favorite game. I know it was the worst odds in the casino but I liked roulette. I had fun playing it, drinking, and betting on the colors, odds/evens, or occasionally groups of 12, either numerically or the columns. Every now and then for fun I'd throw a 20 onto the 0/00 for a 17 to one payout. Even hit on that one a few times for an obscene amount of money (at the time, I was in my early 20s) and had a blast.

I went to Vegas a few years ago. Relatively shortly before the pandemic and these three zero tables were fucking everywhere. And I noticed that just slightly more often, green came up and no one on the table won unless they bet there. And it just seemed so spiteful. They obviously made just a little more money off of it...but the odds were already strongly in the house' favor! It was the worst odds in the house and I sat down anyway. I wanted to have fun and lose some money. Maybe walk away with some. Probably not, who cares. But you know what happened? I ran out of money faster, and I left. Less time ordering drinks. Less time getting food and refreshment nearby and coming back for a continued thrill. Just an empty feeling.

And that's what Corporate America misses every time. They look at simple numbers. I can make the idiot give me money faster so I make more money in the same amount of time. But they ignore things like the fact that if I'm not having fun, I won't come back. If I'm not having fun, I will spend less time in your business buying other things. If I'm not having fun, I'm not going to tell my friends how great it is at your place of business.

Yeah, corporate America. You won. You got my money faster that one time. And now you won't get more of it there.

What kills me is that this isn't limited to the casinos. It's everything, everywhere. Everything is so much more adversarial, predatory and it always just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Our movies are bland, our music is bland, our real estate market is fucked, our job market is fucked, our stores are poorly stocked, online businesses are filled with poor quality knock offs, scalpers get the items like anticipated electronics and event tickets we actually do want and sell them to us at horrendous markups. And yeah, I know there was never really truly a golden age and that all of those things were around before, but they're all being pushed to their true horrendous end stage. The logical conclusion. There is always just little more to wring out of us.

Except there isn't, and then the whole thing falls apart. And the people that caused it because somehow having the most wealth in human history still isn't enough will be completely fine.

The Roulette wheel adding a third green to me will be that small thing that is emblematic of the larger problem. You had a money making machine. That never fails. All you had to do was keep morons like me feeling like we were having fun. And it still wasn't enough.