system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5 how did the mafia start the trend for Las Vegas and how did they lose the control they had on it compared to how Vegas is today?
gpt
When the Hoover dam was being built in the 1930s, a bunch of mostly male labourers migrated to the Vegas area to work on the construction of the dam. Certain legitimate businessmen realized that there was money to be made by building casinos and brothels to entertain the workers. By the 1950s it was well known that the mafia operated most of the casinos but the government wasn't ready/able to do much about it. Howard Hughes actually bought an entire hotel in the 1960s because he refused to leave his room and eventually bought several more, which started to move organized crime out of Vegas. By the 1980s large corporations and Wall Street billionaires were buying land on the Strip to build gigantic, family friendly luxury hotels.