“California”, argues Victor Davis Hanson, is “becoming pre-modern” despite ballooning government solutions. Like fictional pre-modern societies it is becoming a two tier society; a landscape of fantastical castles amid a sea of peasants. It is as if the technologically sophisticated components of the Golden State were creating its shadow of poor, homeless, drug-addicted and unskilled populations.
Huge global wealth in high-tech, finance, trade and academia poured into the coastal corridor, creating a new nobility with unprecedented riches. Unfortunately, the new aristocracy adopted mindsets antithetical to the general welfare of Californians living outside their coastal enclaves. The nobodies have struggled to buy high-priced , pay exorbitant power bills and deal with shoddy infrastructure — all of which resulted from the policies of the distant somebodies.
Yet in some respects not only California but the whole global world is morphing into a similar two-tier arrangement. This may be driven by something called knowledge inequality. The processes by which a society produced its goods and governed itself were once common knowledge to a large percentage of the population. But they are not now.
Relative technological simplicity and cultural homogeneity made knowledge equality easier. This in turn facilitated rational governance. At the time of the American revolution the knowledge of what was possible and affordable was within the grasp even of a farmer or workman. However today — and California may be an extreme example — society is reliant on processes only a tiny few understand. Under these circumstances public policy and even economics becomes recondite.
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See Also:
(1) California’s Gavin Newsom, now running scared
(2) Seniors at California complex ‘abandoned’ during blackout
(3) New California fire grows as crews make headway on other blazes
(4) California’s Prop 47 leads to rise in shoplifting, thefts, criminal activity across state
(5) NASA Tracks Diablo Winds Powering Massive Kincade Wildfire in California
