Andrew's Blog

Las Vegas is describe as being Sin City - show girls, gambling, buffets, luxury hotels, big star entertainment - with every worldly luxury you could ever want and now even caters to families with its theme hotels - Aladdin, Excalibur and Treasure Island. It is one of the fastest growing cities in America where their population doubled in 10 years from 0.8 million in 1990 to 1.6 million in 2000.

The three most well known casinos - the Bellagio, Caesars Palace and Mandalay Bay - were designed and built by Steve Wynn who lost it all as he got into financial trouble back in the 90's.

Now he has returned with a new $2.7 billion casino that has everything and more than the aforementioned casinos. He said an insightful thing when being interviewed at the grand opening of the casino recently in May, and that was that he sees himself as a custodian of all that he has and not an owner.

This thinking is different from what the every day America promotes which is an Ownership Society (http://www.cato.org/special/ownership_society). The fundamental belief of an Ownership Society is that an individual is empowered to control their own lives and destiny without having to be dependant on the government.

While I believe that this concept is a positive one, if placed into context of the fact that we really are only custodians of the things that we own, given the transitory nature of our time here on earth, gives a better pespective what ownership or lack thereof should mean or not mean.

People should work, take ownership and personal responsibility for their lives, actions and what they do with what they have been given. They should live their lives to their fullest potential, but they truely can only do this if they realize that they are only custodians of what they have and that all these things have been given to then by God their Maker.