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BMcC
The reason the government can deregulate is that homeowners associations are picking up the slack!
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AC
I saw this and thought the same. Governance and governing is changing as governments get out of the business of creating and managing public spaces. Think two tier society.
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BMcC
Damned right! (Actually it's an n > 2 tier society, just like we live in an n > 2 tier world....)
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Wrong! Mankind has always been a n > 2 tier society. It happens between boys in every school playground. It happens between drug gangs in inner cities. It happens in politics, big business, organised religions, etc. It happens *at birth* in the case of hundreds of millions of Indians and woe betide any Hindu who aspires to a higher caste. In many ancient societies you were put to death if you tried to "pass off" by wearing clothes of the wrong colour or the wrong style. It's called rank order and it happens in every social mammal species and it happens more precisely in the primates than most.
What Arthur is suggesting is much more serious. Ever since man began inventing things, there have been separations into an n = 2 society. None has become permanent species brachiation yet, but there's nothing to prevent the possibility. We are not immune from evolutionary selection. Personally, I believe that if technological change continues to occur at the present -- and perhaps accelerated -- pace in the coming decades, then there's a distinct possibility.
Biologists now know that species brachiation, even in genetically complex mammals, can occur quite quickly -- maybe within 15-30 generations. In mankind's short lifetime we have already seen an IQ separation of 10-15 IQ points between Africans and Europeans, and almost that much between Europeans and East Asians. Much more recently, there's has been a separation of about 10-15 IQ points between Ashkenazi Jews and average Europeans. Much more recently still in England (within, say, two generations) an IQ difference has occurred between southerners and northerners. I am sure there are similar significant differences between American states.
Gated communities in England and America, widening differences between the scholarship of the best American universities and the remainder, huge differences between broadsheet and tabloid newspapers in England. All these are straws in the wind. I believe something very serious might be going on and it's no use raising one's hands in horror or hurling vituperation at the messenger. Let's have more clarity of observation and less sloganising.
Keith Hudson
Keith Hudson, 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath, England
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