Fences

I live in a small city that is growing fairly fast. Like many sun belt cities, it attracts a lot of retirees as well as others fleeing winter or California. From time to time I like to cruise the new neighborhoods, just to see what's going on.

I did this, a couple of weeks ago, on a long new street. For mile after mile it was lined with brand new gated communities. Gated communities piss me off. One very small component of this irritation is that occasionally I need to attend social events in one of them which involves hassle at the gate. Even though I have been given the gate code, I usually need to punch it in about five times to get the gate to open. Mostly, though, I hate the anti-communitarian ethos of it. There is also a racist element to it, since we are a predominantly Hispanic city and those behind the gates are mostly wealthy Anglos and Asians.

If it were up to me I would install a toll gate at each exit and make the residents pay to enter, or, at least, to leave.

I suppose the gates are a slight impediment to burglary, but we don't live in a high crime community. Anyway, come the revolution, I would just like to assure the rebels that the pickings are likely to be much richer behind those not very sturdy gates than in my neighborhood.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anti-Libertarian: re-post

The most pointed critique of social security and liberalism in general is the libertarian critique. The problem with libertarians, for a liberal, is that we have too much in common. We both believe in individual rights, tolerance of individual differences, and dislike government prescription of religion. The basic difference, it seems to me, is the different answers we give to Cain's (with thanks to the Captain - my original version had the corpse asking the question!) famous question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" That's not really my basic bitch against the libertarians though. My real complaint is the same as my complaint against most religion - its premise is a fraud. For those who can't stand to wait for the punchline, I believe that trying to implement libertarian principles leads to tyranny or social disintegration. Demonstrating that takes some historical (and pre-historical) context. For all but the last 15,000 or so of the 100,000 years the human spec
Read more

Uneasy Lies The Head

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown ........... Shakespeare Henry IV, Part II. So it is with us and our slightly distant primate cousins , so it seems. A 9-year study of wild baboons in Kenya by Princeton University and the Institute of Primate Research may turn conventional assumptions of alphas males upside down. The study found that alpha males have high testosterone levels, which allows them to dominate other baboons, get access to more food, and attract better mates. This is expected. Surprisingly, though, the alpha males also have high levels of stress hormone glucocorticoid, which scientists measured from their feces samples. In fact, the stress of alpha baboons was on par with low-ranking baboons. The convention wisdom is that access to food and females provides life security and thus less stress for dominant males. Conversely, weak males who are constantly threatened by starvation and physical violence from stronger males are thought to be more stressed. The st
Read more

We Call it Soccer

The US played its best, and maybe only good game of World Cup, but lost thanks to brilliant goalkeeping by the Swedish keeper and the bizarre method soccer uses to settle ties when three US stars could not put the ball on frame from the 12 yard spot.  At the end it came down to a blocked shot that spun in by maybe a couple of centimeters. Well, that's football - too much like life.   Which brings me to a modest proposal.  Replace the thirty minute overtimes with as many 7-player 15 minute periods as needed to settle it.  Scoring should be much easier with fewer players.
Read more