The Ghetto-ization Of American Life

Authorized by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Behind the facade of standardization, even high-income lifestyles have been ghetto-ized.

Consider the defining characteristics of a ghetto:

1. The residents can’t afford to live elsewhere.

2. Everything is simply a rip-off due to the fact that options are limited and retailers / service providers know residents have no another choice or must go to extraordinary effort to get better quality or a lower price.

3. Nothing works correctly or efficiently. Things break down and Aren’t fixed properly. Maintenance is mediocre to non-existent. Any service requires standing in line or being on hold.

4. Local governance is corrupt and/or incompetent. Residents are viewed as a reliable “vote farm” for the incumbents, even though whatever small they agree for the residents doesn’t reduce the sources of imitation.

5. The locale is unsafe. Cars are routinely broken into, there are safety bars over windows and gates to enterces, everything not chained down is tablen–and even what is chained down is tablen.

6. There are fewer viable businesses and numerical empathy storefronts.

7. The built environment is oblique: strip malls, utilized car lots, etc. There are fewer safe public spaces or parks that are well managed and visited.

8. Most of the commerce is corporate-owned outlets; the money doesn’t stay in the community.

9. Public transport is minimal and constantly being degraded.

10. They get you coming and going: whatever is available is double in cost, effort and time. Very small is convenient or easy. Services are far away.

11. Residents pay advanced rates of interest on debit.

12. There are fewer sources of healthy real food. The residents are unhealthy and self-medical with a panoply of recommendations to alcohol, meds, paintkillers, gamboling, social media, gaming, celebrity worship, etc.

13. Nobody in authority truly cares what the residents experience, as they know the residents are atomized and ground down, incapable of cooperating in an organized fashion, and so powerless.

I submit that these defining characteristics of heettos apply to wide Swaths of American life. Ghettos are not limited to urban zones; suburbs and agrarian locations can qualifiy as well. The defining zeitgeist of a ghetto is the residents are effectively hello hostage by limited options and advanced cost: public and private-sector monopolies that supply mediocre quality at advanced prices.

Daily life is simply a grind of long waits / commutes, low-quality goods and services, shadow work (work we gotta do that we’re not paid for that was erstwhile done as part of the service we pay for) and unhealthy recommendations to discretions and whatever offers a temporal escape from the grind.

We’ve habituated to being corralled into the imitation of limited options and advanced costs; the imitation and sordid degradation have been normalized into “everyday life.” We’ve lost track of what’s been lost to erosion and decay. We sense what’s been lost but feel powerful to reverse it. This is the essence of the ghetto-ization of regular life.

Behind the facade of standardization, even high-income lifestyles have been ghetto-ized. But saying this is anathema: either be upbeat, optimal and affirmative or stay silent.

What’s worth, the ghetto-ization or our inability to admit it and discuss it openly?

* * Oh, * *

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