The Hoover Dam, a controversial (mainly over division of the anticipated benefit) giant federal project, was completed under budget and two years ahead of schedule.¹  People with names died; enough concrete was poured (24/7 for over two years) to pave a highway from Seattle to Miami.  A dog won a permanent, marked federal gravesite for his contribution to the mental health of the workers.

Physically bisecting the project, down the middle of the Colorado River that the dam controls, is the Arizona - Nevada state line.  There being no obvious physical/logistical bias across that border, the fact that a nonrandom majority of the 96 corpses (not including surveyors) officially produced during construction came to rest in Arizona is explained in the mythology (by, for example, the tour guides) as a desire by the close-knit workers to see the grieving family receive the superior of the two states' competing death benefits.  If you died in Arizona, said applicable law, you were worth more to your family than if you happened to kick it in Nevada.  I will resist the obvious comment that life in Nevada is particularly cheap (oops, I guess I didn't).  I had a nice time in Vegas last week anyway.

Life is competition wherever you live (and whenever that was or is).  But in the US, like the song goes, life is a carnival.  We keep trying to make baby steps forward by putting a few bits of anxiety-lowering security (civilization) in place.  But we lag behind other western nations in most measurements.  I explain this to european counterparts in the usual manner by invoking our winner-take-all political history and saying that every second of your day here is just another play in a relentless football game.  Not just the life-and-death stuff.  If you don't have your Safeway card, your groceries will cost a lot more.²  Alliances, strategy, a good memory for (what should be meaningless) detail.  Deadwood, I tell everyone, just watch Deadwood, and you will understand everything about this country.

Is healthcare ever going to not be part of the game here? What does it take to make something as obviously valuable as traffic control as valued as traffic control?  Who has to die?

¹  Pre-post-modern crisis, I guess.

²  I still can't get this sufficiently explained to my Spanish girlfriend ³.

3  Costco doesn't just make you join the club, but also, as she points out, shopping there is literally like being on the field during a game.  At least you get to go to the sidelines for a hotdog.