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> It’s true that if you can manage to belong within certain in-groups in these places Let’s be clear, the majority of people fall within these in-groups. As con

> It’s true that if you can manage to belong within certain in-groups in these places Let’s be clear, the majority of people fall within these in-groups. As contrasted to say California or New York, where the in-groups are defined in a much more class-based way that excludes most people. I’m just curious - are you from one of these places? Because the class distinctions you’re describing are very much in place in the same way as in big cities, they’re just mediated through many of the same forces. So you have the rich church and the poor church, but also god forbid if you’re poor and don’t go to church at all. The lowest of the low. And many people likewise just feign belief in this culture because the material circumstances are much worse on the outside than in. As to your point about homelessness, given the cost of living in California, wouldn’t you expect people to be more prone to homelessness than in a place Kansas? Especially since wages are actually quite bad in California (for the median household), relatively speaking. If you’re argument is that liberal Capitalism is more openly cruel than liberal Capitalism, mediated through religious in-groupings, I’d say sure, that’s possible.

rayiner 7y ago
I’m a coastal elite, but my wife is from small town Iowa. The kind of town where everyone went to the same high school. Yes, they have poor people. But what’s remarkable about California, New York, DC, etc., is that it’s not just the poor people who are on the outside looking in. It’s middle class people. It’s far more exclusionary in practice than places that put a heavy emphasis on religious affiliation. My wife’s high school friends who live around Des Moines own their own houses in their 30s. That’s a linchpin of stability and societal belonging that is out of reach to middle class people in places like San Francisco. Two things that really shook my views on the last several years was (1) living in downtown DC for a year; and (2) traveling regularly to Texas. In DC we lived in Chinatown, which has been completely gentrified. Everyone was rich, and nobody had children (the local schools are still terrible). There was an extreme disparity between the (white and Asian) gentrifiers and the people of color they were displacing. Despite there being lots of white people, you almost never saw a white kid working a service job. (All this gave me flashbacks to Bangladesh, so I packed up and moved my family to somewhere less dysfunctional.) Texas, especially East Texas, was the opposite. Thriving suburbs of people enjoying Big Box amenities. No Michelin star restaurants and lots of religion, but with much lower display of class and race distinctions. Tons of families with children. I encountered a cab driver in Austin who sang the city’s praises. He was from Morocco and had moved to the Austin suburbs about a decade ago. He and other cab drivers were able to buy three bedroom homes with pools in a good school district. He was living the American dream. As to cost of living in California, that goes to my point. California isn’t “liberal capitalist” in terms of housing. It’s centrally planned in the extreme.
- claudeganon 7y ago
  I agree entirely with your depiction of the professional class and their displacing of poor communities of color. It’s cruel and callous to the extreme and often dressed up with a veneer of “progressive” values that makes it all the more dark and patronizing. But I would caution you from contrasting this too much with how class differences and racial disparities manifest in more rural states. How the white working poor are treated by their “betters” (including the middle class) is often as vicious and cruel, but masked by a veneer of racial and cultural homogeneity. And the private, “dinner party” racism among middle class whites in these regions is amongst the most extreme and normalized I have ever witnessed. People do go a lot further to mask this though, hence things like the concept of “Midwestern nice.” I fail to see how housing in California is centrally planned in anyway. It seems entirely defined by laws that protect incumbent property owners and developers, who then use their resulting wealth to buy off the government and protect this advantage. But maybe this is a difference in definitions because I mean “liberal Capitalism” in its lived, pragmatic, and arguably corrupt sense, not as a philosophical ideal.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    > And the private, “dinner party” racism among middle class whites in these regions is amongst the most extreme and normalized I have ever witnessed. As a brown person myself, I don't know what midwesterners say at dinner parties. But I also don't really care. "Midwestern nice" is perfectly fine as far as I'm concerned. What is important, to me, is that it's a society that's flatter and more egalitarian than anything I've observed on the coasts. Middle class people aren't on the outside looking in, people aren't jockeying to send their kids to private schools or a handful of competitive magnets, those kids can get normal jobs and afford to live near where they grew up. You aren't defined by your job and there are institutions that draw broad swaths of society into shared experience. (Often, because there is no alternative--in small town Iowa, the surgeon's kid goes to the same high school as the farm worker's kid because that's the only high school.) And all that appears to pay real dividends in quantifiable statistics such as poverty rates and homelessness rates. > I fail to see how housing in California is centrally planned in anyway. If you need permission from the government to build anything, and permission is granted based on a central zoning plan, and you have to jump through hoops and follow detailed specifications on height limits, etc., that's central planning. By definition.

rayiner 7y ago

I’m a coastal elite, but my wife is from small town Iowa. The kind of town where everyone went to the same high school. Yes, they have poor people. But what’s remarkable about California, New York, DC, etc., is that it’s not just the poor people who are on the outside looking in. It’s middle class people. It’s far more exclusionary in practice than places that put a heavy emphasis on religious affiliation. My wife’s high school friends who live around Des Moines own their own houses in their 30s. That’s a linchpin of stability and societal belonging that is out of reach to middle class people in places like San Francisco. Two things that really shook my views on the last several years was (1) living in downtown DC for a year; and (2) traveling regularly to Texas. In DC we lived in Chinatown, which has been completely gentrified. Everyone was rich, and nobody had children (the local schools are still terrible). There was an extreme disparity between the (white and Asian) gentrifiers and the people of color they were displacing. Despite there being lots of white people, you almost never saw a white kid working a service job. (All this gave me flashbacks to Bangladesh, so I packed up and moved my family to somewhere less dysfunctional.) Texas, especially East Texas, was the opposite. Thriving suburbs of people enjoying Big Box amenities. No Michelin star restaurants and lots of religion, but with much lower display of class and race distinctions. Tons of families with children. I encountered a cab driver in Austin who sang the city’s praises. He was from Morocco and had moved to the Austin suburbs about a decade ago. He and other cab drivers were able to buy three bedroom homes with pools in a good school district. He was living the American dream. As to cost of living in California, that goes to my point. California isn’t “liberal capitalist” in terms of housing. It’s centrally planned in the extreme.

claudeganon 7y ago
I agree entirely with your depiction of the professional class and their displacing of poor communities of color. It’s cruel and callous to the extreme and often dressed up with a veneer of “progressive” values that makes it all the more dark and patronizing. But I would caution you from contrasting this too much with how class differences and racial disparities manifest in more rural states. How the white working poor are treated by their “betters” (including the middle class) is often as vicious and cruel, but masked by a veneer of racial and cultural homogeneity. And the private, “dinner party” racism among middle class whites in these regions is amongst the most extreme and normalized I have ever witnessed. People do go a lot further to mask this though, hence things like the concept of “Midwestern nice.” I fail to see how housing in California is centrally planned in anyway. It seems entirely defined by laws that protect incumbent property owners and developers, who then use their resulting wealth to buy off the government and protect this advantage. But maybe this is a difference in definitions because I mean “liberal Capitalism” in its lived, pragmatic, and arguably corrupt sense, not as a philosophical ideal.
- rayiner 7y ago
  > And the private, “dinner party” racism among middle class whites in these regions is amongst the most extreme and normalized I have ever witnessed. As a brown person myself, I don't know what midwesterners say at dinner parties. But I also don't really care. "Midwestern nice" is perfectly fine as far as I'm concerned. What is important, to me, is that it's a society that's flatter and more egalitarian than anything I've observed on the coasts. Middle class people aren't on the outside looking in, people aren't jockeying to send their kids to private schools or a handful of competitive magnets, those kids can get normal jobs and afford to live near where they grew up. You aren't defined by your job and there are institutions that draw broad swaths of society into shared experience. (Often, because there is no alternative--in small town Iowa, the surgeon's kid goes to the same high school as the farm worker's kid because that's the only high school.) And all that appears to pay real dividends in quantifiable statistics such as poverty rates and homelessness rates. > I fail to see how housing in California is centrally planned in anyway. If you need permission from the government to build anything, and permission is granted based on a central zoning plan, and you have to jump through hoops and follow detailed specifications on height limits, etc., that's central planning. By definition.