[riskable]

> The US has shifted to high skill tertiary economy.

I don't think this has anything to do with it. The physical class divides have been around since the beginning of the United States. If anything, it's a symptom of capitalism where those with greater wealth use it to segregate themselves from poorer folks.

In effect, capitalism takes advantage of human nature and as a side effect that same human nature self-segregates based on how "nice" any given area is. You want rich folks to mingle with middle class folks? Make the middle class area the nicest place and don't let the rich completely "take it over" (aka gentrification).

The way the modern world is becoming though we're self-segregating more and more though so I don't think it's realistic to expect any sort of top-down planning or policies to force mingling. Upper middle class people don't even go to the grocery store anymore and thus, don't end up mingling with lower middle class people.

Maybe we should promote more "mixing hobbies" where people physically need to show up and interact with each other? Subsidize board game shops, paintball, indoor rock climbing, and similar? Might help humanity a little bit.

[wincy]

I segregated myself from crime. I segregated my family to keep them safe.

I don’t care if someone is poor, I care that at 2am my neighbor is beating his girlfriend and she’s screaming and I have to go out there to stop it. I care that the neighbor kid is shooting a gun into the air yelling “MOTHER FUCKER” as a car screeches away, when my daughter is playing in the front yard, and the cops say “it was just a .22” and nothing is done. Whelp, I guess a .22 won’t kill my kid, nothing to worry about!

So I moved to the most expensive house I could afford (and honestly couldn’t afford it then, can now after some raises).

To be fair, my current neighbor beats his wife too, but at least he keeps quiet about it and didn’t make a whole scene when he got arrested. The lady down the way sells weed but like, she’s not getting into fist fights with the people she’s dealing to. People know how to behave in a nicer neighborhood, or at least keep their business their business.

It also has nothing to do with race as this neighborhood is more diverse than where I moved from (old neighborhood was basically only black people and white people vs professional immigrants of every stripe from every continent in the new neighborhood).

[yesbut77]

Yes, but consider that people of higher SES do not want to mix with people of middle and low SES.

And part of that is because they are not fun to be around! People of low SES tend to be meaner, more anti-social in their behaviors like littering, not maintaining their environment, more likely to commit crime, less family formation, etc.

Access to well behaved people is not a human right.

[ArekDymalski]

>people of higher SES do not want to mix with people of middle and low SES.

To some extent the opposite is also true, because spending time with people with higher SES might cause a discomfort/decreased self-esteem or simply expose the asshole-side of elites which quite often appears in face of "paupers".

[konschubert]

Let me offer a third point of view:

All social classes benefit when social differences are minimised, like in 70s Sweden.

For the high SES people, this means that they can move freely without worrying about their safety.

Walking home late from a party, biking to work or working from a coffee shop on a busy plaza are pleasures in life that rich people like, too!

The opposite is something like Mexico, where, as a rich person, you are basically forced to stay inside a bunch of confined areas and only move in public inside an armoured car. (Slightly exaggerating, but you get the point)

All social classes have an interest to provide the universal high quality education system that is necessary to achieve this. Some rich people might think that they are better off if the rest of the country is poor. But they are mistaken.

[rangestransform]

relative socioeconomic equality is not a necessary condition of safety, see: singapore

[konschubert]

But Singapore isn’t a free democracy.

[alistairSH]

more likely to commit crime

Crimes that we deem should be enforced maybe. Wealthy white collar people do plenty of recreation drugs (coke, weed, X), commit financial crimes, etc.

[orwin]

I was invited to a Parisian party for 'high SES' people (200€ the entry ticket, it was two month of food at the time for me, but you get champagne with it!). I don't think i've ever seen as much antisocial behavior, even when I worked in a youth camp for abandoned/placed teenagers. I don't understand how prison aren't filled with those people. So much coke, sexual slavery in plain sight, drunk driving... One police descent and you have half the club in prison for a few years. And the person who invited us told us it was quite tame, and not the most expensive place (it was after a student hackathon with different schools participating, he was the MBA grad, we were devs/design type).

[gotoeleven]

Wow you went to a party in paris with sexual slavery and drunk driving in plain sight? Did someone drunk-drive a bus full of sex slaves up to the party and drop them off? What the hell are you talking about?

[orwin]

I meant very young eastern European women who did not speak French and clearly did not have any business there (also not sure if some weren't minors, there was a scandal with that and football players around the same time), and people being clearly drunk who snorted coke to 'get right' and be able to drive home.

[nradov]

In a society with private property and freedom of movement, gentrification can't really be stopped.

[alistairSH]

But you can minimize the circumstances that made gentrification desirable (to those doing the gentrification) in the first place.

That's assuming gentrification isn't desirable. I'd tend to agree in general, but there's definitely some nuance there.

[shadowgovt]

Quite likely true, which means we now have an excellent argument against the libertarian ideal of private property.

In practice, we can put constraints on, for example, the kind of business one can do with one's private property, and the constraints one is under while doing that business (equal service laws, ADA compliance, and you can even cap rents to leave room open for low-revenue business to keep operating).