Some social trends have been around for a while, sitting quietly alongside more noticeable shifts in how we live. But these trends can suddenly come to the fore via a statistic that makes us realize they were not sitting so quietly.
The one that struck me recently was the finding by consultants iPropertyManagement, based on U.S. Census Bureau figures, that 32.9 million homeowners in the country live in “secured communities.” Considering that the average number of people in this type of household is about three, this adds up to nearly 100 million Americans having some type of physical or security service barrier separating them from their wider residential area.
In parallel, there is an increasing recourse by wealthy individuals and affluent communities to privately contract formerly “public” services. A stark example is the enlisting of private firefighting companies by some rich individuals to protect their homes during the recent Los Angeles fires.
Why are these two things happening? The answer is rather depressing.
The Doom Loop of Failing States and the New Feudalism
In so many major cities, there is now rapidly declining confidence in public authorities’ ability to provide adequate taxpayer-funded services in areas like security, firefighting, waste collection, education, and healthcare. Consequently, people — or at least those with the means to do so — are increasingly retreating to private enclaves where those services are provided through commercial operators and contractors, all coordinated through a central non-governmental authority.
The key driving factor of this trend is concern over safety: an understandable reaction to the all-too-real problems of theft, robbery, drug trafficking, vandalism, sexual assault, and gang violence plaguing major cities and even many towns. But a contributing motivation is the desire for exclusivity and greater community cohesion. This has been on the rise in reaction to the increasing phenomenon of homeless encampments and the heavy influx of migrants into major urban areas.
The growing impotence of public governing bodies has given rise to a new societal landscape, one in which money is the ultimate arbiter of happiness and security.
The result is a societal drift towards one aspect of what some observers, including historian Victor Davis Hanson, have called “The New Feudalism.” Gated communities offer, in a way, that sense of protection and peer social connection once typical of medieval walled cities presided over by a local nobleman guaranteeing peace and stability in exchange for fealty and a share of his subjects’ harvests. Today’s equivalent of that nobleman is a combination of real estate companies, property management companies, and the all-powerful Homeowners’ Associations.
Similarly, major corporations are assuming a greater role in organizing and even running the communities in which their operations, their employees, and those employees’ families are concentrated. In so doing, they’re in reality constituting self-contained corporate duchies redolent of medieval city-states.
Examples include Google with its proposed (and now approved) 7,000-home North Bayshore and 2,000-home Middlefield Park developments in Mountain View, California, and Facebook owner Meta’s now-approved plans for its 1,700-home Willow Village project near its Menlo Park headquarters, also in California. In Florida, entertainment giants Disney and Universal plan to build 1,400 housing units and 1,000 apartments, respectively, near their Orlando theme parks. All of these developments will be, to all effects, corporate mini-cities, complete with hotels, shops, restaurants, parks, and leisure facilities.
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These trends didn’t come from nowhere: they’re the result of a general realization that many of the politicians we elect to administer the common good are, for the most part, no longer capable of doing so. That failure is mirrored by frequent failure of the logic of democracy itself: in big cities like LA, San Francisco, Chicago, Baltimore, New York, Paris, and London, a majority of the public (or to be more precise, a majority of those who bother to cast their ballots) continues to vote for left-wing parties and elect — and all too often re-elect — “progressive” mayors who have proven administratively disastrous time and time again.
Money is becoming the only working system of social organization
The growing impotence of public governing bodies has given rise to a new societal landscape, one in which money is the ultimate arbiter of happiness and security. And in that landscape, the moneyed class will inevitably seek refuge in enclaves offering convenient access to all the civilizational advantages money can buy, from private schools and private police to members-only sports and social clubs and state-of-the-art healthcare clinics. Also inevitable, in these circumstances, is the desire to be insulated from those members of the urban underclass who tend to make those large cities what they have become.
Deepening The Divide
This physical separation dynamic is contributing to a deepening class divide, the likes of which has perhaps not been seen since the early Middle Ages.
The self-confinement of the wealthier classes in safe, exclusive, and functioning asset-owner enclaves has profound implications for democracy and social cohesion. As those with the means to do so retreat into their protected redoubts, their engagement with broader society diminishes. They have little incentive to invest in public goods (we see this in the deteriorating infrastructure all around us) or support policies that benefit the wider population. Federal and state governments try to counterbalance this by spending more than ever before on all manner of public programs, to little or no effect.
It’s not really about capitalism
Lest this be misperceived as an anti-capitalist rant, it’s important to reiterate the fundamental underlying factor in all of this. In too many places, across too many domains, the promise of the modern state — to ensure safety, essential services, a cohesive sense of community, and equality of opportunity for its citizens — appears increasingly broken. Whether this is due to incompetence, corruption, or is the result of a broader phenomenon of cultural and societal decay for which government has no solution, the recourse of those who can afford it — to circle their wagons into self-sufficient private communities — is understandable.
The private alternatives to central government will continue to extend into society as long as the electorate does not start using its power at the ballot box to elect only those politicians and officials with proven ability to provide efficient, effective, and reliable essential services.
With regards to the present, if government and the courts do not hold the current generations of adults to high standards of behavior through firm but fair application of the law, the proven “broken windows” approach to public order, a pragmatic and constructive approach to the issues of drug abuse and mental illness leading to homelessness, and getting to grips with high levels of both legal and illegal immigration, then those who can afford it will continue to flee to private sanctuaries insulated from the seamier sides of city and urban area living.The recent passage of the Laken Riley Act as the first legislative win by the new Trump administration, enabling ICE to arrest and deport illegal aliens with criminal records, is clearly a big step in the right direction.
And to take a longer-term view, unless public education is fundamentally reformed to efficiently and effectively shape the young into truly literate, numerate, responsible, civic-minded and productive citizens, future generations will continue to be trapped in the current vicious circle of crime and a permanent, alienated underclass fuelling, in turn, societal fragmentation, public asset neglect, and the retreat of those who can afford it into privatized spaces.
A course correction is possible, but it’s entirely up to voters
While the New Feudalism may seem inevitable, history reminds us that societies are capable of transformation. The feudal systems, the castles and city-states of the medieval era, gave way to modern nations through revolutions, reforms, economic progress, the generalized spread of education, and the emergence of democratic governance that carried out its contract with citizens.
The question now is whether we collectively have the will to correct course, or whether we will allow ourselves to be divided once again between those who take shelter within the city walls at night, and those who remain outside of them.
Image: Jondu11
