Patio Man and the Sprawl People was one of those touchstone essays that very much changed the way I thought about America. In the early 2000s when I made my money as an independent contractor flying around to major cities doing IT consulting for major corporations, I had a very good opportunity to see the truth of what he was saying. But before that, in a seven year stretch of living in LA, Brooklyn, Boston and Atlanta, the particular draw of the Sunbelt gave me the itch as well.
None of my LLMs can accurately remind me of the author whose book ‘Money’ helped me to understand that most people’s financial ambitions can be satisfied with a 20-25% bump in annual income, but that idea and the idea of quintiles made a big impression on my some time ago (between 1991 and 2003). I was always about raising the bridge, not lowering the river. I never really considered the idea of relocating to a place with less competition, lower taxes or cheaper real estate.
Ultimately, from a Stoic point of view, I sense some foolishness in the opinionmaking and overconfidence of elites. I mock the Ivy Cabal. The less elites work in the sunshine, the more isolated they become. The only way to think outside of this box is to understand something about social control. IE compare whichever meritocracy with fixed protocols and relatively stable enforcement with what happens in war. There is much more fog in war than in social control, many more unregulated transactions occur, including those things vaguely described as ‘war crimes’.
So I am considering two other related tangents that reinforce my look.
Such moves universally indict their advocates (and minions) as frail and brittle. I’m not sure what to suggest at this level of consideration.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Stoic Observations to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.