Privatised cities, racism, and class war

[bootleg42]

A great report from AlJazeeraEnglish: (http://www.youtube.com/user/AlJazeeraEnglish)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOI9yrKGAV4 <-----part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbrnUltGBIs&feature=related <-----part 2

Fucking spoiled racist upper class white people!!!!!

[jake williams]

AJE is awesome and Avi Lewis is one of the most exciting people in this country, not that he's here much lately.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

I can't watch YouTube vids, can anyone summarise them?

[jake williams]

A ritzy white-flight Atlanta suburb has seceded from the city, and privatized virtually its entire government. Administration and limited "services" like road work are all run by contracted private companies. Their argument for "seceding" is that their hard-earned tax dollars were going to fund greedy (black) people in the city, and instead they wanted to give their money instead to professionals in office buildings, (many of whom probably work downtown Atlanta, or even in New York, but that's another story), and get some good "profit incentive" into their road maintenance.

[BraneMatter]

There are plenty of "gated communities" with their own private government administration, police, contracted services, etc. in Florida, and, I suspect, in lots of other places as well.

[Lynx]

There are several advantages to creating geographical enclaves based on income level. Hence gated communities, (sub)urban sprawl, posh neighbourhoods...

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Ah, gated communities. In the olden days, we called them the lords' estates. :glare:

I hope the locals chuck their rubbish over the walls and into the gardens of those rich fuckers!

[An archist]

I'm afraid that this is a small glimpse of the future.

[Sendo]

I see nothing wrong with this...

...except for the fact that they get rich from the labor of people to whom they won't "give" their taxes.

Feudalism, eh?

Something I never liked about some communist thought is that capitalist at any stage is more "progressive" than feudalism. While certain capitalist ventures are useful, the ownership system is no better, in some ways worse, than feudal systems of ownership.

Tangent alert: (I'd rather have the tools to farm and be taxed heavily, than wholly dependent on external providers at the workplace and at the supermarket, if I was poor, malnourished, and lived in a smoggy city like LA. Some primitivist leanings? Well yeah, I'd rather live on an ancient organic farm than live in a sewer waiting for a welfare check. Things aren't as bad as the tenements of a century ago, but we're reapproaching it very quickly)

I've noticed differences between the ancient, the feudal, and the capitalist systems. But at the later stages all of them overlap. A People's History of Rome shows how Rome parallels the problems of modern capitalist cities. Degenerate capitalism seems much like feudalism. Tolls, privatized roads, elites and workers separated more and more sharply, diseases, desperate crime, deadly security forces. All oppressive systems eventually approach these levels of absurdity. Chinese governments that were on their way out, be it the dynasties or Jiang Kai-shek, had such lavish waste and blatant corruption, cronyism, neglect of public works (like dikes).