Esperanza
11mo ago
One problem with suburbs is that they don't generate that much economic/tax revenue to support their infrastructure
That can be solved by raising property taxes. In California, prop 13 makes this difficult, as the old rich people are grandfathered in (or whatever the new term is supposed to be).
Esperanza
11mo ago
Beer has been a symbol for guys as to what kind of person you are. If you drink plain American beer, it is mainly to show that you are a regular American guy. Buying Bud Light is now a symbol that you might consider wearing a dress. Some of the people drank Bud Light to show they are just plain normal, not fancy nor nothin, American guys do not want to signal this. People are not boycotting the beer to punish Anheuser Busch. They are trying to avoid being mocked for the next 50 years or so. Scott had a story about how Eskimos brutally teased people for things that happened decades earlier. Rural folk are like that. Someone who accidentally drank Bud Lite risks being asked about his dresses for the foreseeable future. That kind of joke never grows old if you live somewhere backward enough.
Esperanza
11mo ago
Perhaps they did not want you to notice that Megan Markle, Pamela Anderson, and Sofia Vergara were in the ads. These women still have quite a bit of cachet, so it is embarrassing to be pulping their images. For example, here is a post from one day ago of bikini pictures of Ms. Vergara. The people in the ads are still mainstream stars. Selling products is how stars make their money.
Esperanza
11mo ago
The groups you refer to split in a natural way into: Irish, Italian, French, Polish (Catholic) and German, English, Scottish, Scots-Irish, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish (Protestant). Russians confuse me. There might be some Catholic Germans, but if there are, they know who they are.
A split by ethnic religion would capture the main division, which is between those groups that arrived before the Civil War, and those that arrived after. The latter were poorer and might still be. Hispanic people would join the newcomers if they still are nominally Catholic.
Esperanza
11mo ago
The entire premise of the book is an attempt to explain why people in Papua New Guinea have so little while white people have so much. Do you recall him addressing the argument that you would get if you posed that question here?
Jared Diamond’s journey of discovery began on the island of Papua New Guinea. There, in 1974, a local named Yali asked Diamond a deceptively simple question:
“Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo, but we black people had little cargo of our own?”
Diamond realized that Yali’s question penetrated the heart of a great mystery of human history -- the roots of global inequality.
Diamond knew that the answer had little to do with ingenuity or individual skill. From his own experience in the jungles of New Guinea, he had observed that native hunter-gatherers were just as intelligent as people of European descent -- and far more resourceful.
Diamond just knew that it had nothing to do with "ingenuity or individual skill." He did not have to prove that; he just knew it.
His answer is fabulous, as it presumes that animals and plants can be radically different depending on the continent they are in (hence zebras and horses) but denies that any such difference could exist between people from different continents. A zebra is from Africa, and we can presume that it cannot be domesticated because of its genetics, but genetics only work for plants and animals. We could never countenance such a claim about an African person.
He completely fails to engage with the other side and refuses to even consider the possibility that some countries did well because of individual decisions. It has to be geography that matters, not decisions made by people. Even on this point which he believes because of Marxism, he can not be consistent, as he blames China not dominating the seas on the decision of a single emperor. Basically, he is a hack that refuses to argue.
Esperanza
11mo ago
did someone try breeding taller zebras, and failed even at that?
You can buy zebra semen, and the seller suggests that the stallion has qualities that are worth passing on:
Rarity is my 2004 Grant Zebra Stallion. Rarity has perfect big bold striping and very correct conformation. Rarity has a very rare temperament for a zebra stallion and is quiet with a sweet disposition. These are great qualities to pass onto his foals, making him the perfect stud for hybrid crossing.
They also control who gets to be bred:
Anyone who is interested in breeding both owner and mare must be approved first. I do NOT let just anyone breed to him.
They claim the stallion is particularly tame and that his temperament is hereditary.
This is the reason why we decided to breed with him, to create foals that also have his outstanding temperament. All our mares/jennies that we use for breeding to him have all been carefully chosen. They all have good temperaments and trainable minds.
All the people involved in horses are amazingly focused on the lineage of horses. This passes to zebra breeding, and people really care about which animal breeds with which, as they all believe fervently in selecting for traits.
Esperanza
11mo ago
Aside from your complaint about immigration amnesty, how was Reagan not a right-winger?
Reagan's domestic policies were, courtesy of wikiepdia:
Reduce marginal tax rates on income from labor and capital.
Reduce regulation.
Tighten the money supply to reduce inflation.
Reduce the growth of government spending.
These need to be measured from where the US was in 1980. Marginal tax rates in 1980 were 43% on income over $40k. That could be about $120k now. I would guess that there are people who want to raise taxes that high, but they are no centrists. Income over $20k ($60k) in modern dollars was taxed at 24%.
I don't think tightening the money supply when inflation is at 13% is a right wing idea.
Federal spending under Reagan was about 22% of GDP. This is more then then pre-COVID rate under Trump, but 2.5% less than Biden. In contrast, Obama spent just over 20%.
It is hard to measure regulations.
On foreign policy, Reagan does not seem that right wing, compared to Biden, unless you count being against communism as "right wing."
In hindsight, Reagan looks very centrist. What about him makes you think him more right-wing than Obama? He might have been more right-wing than Nixon (SSI. affirmative action, EPA, clean water act), I suppose. Overall, Nixon looks to the left of Obama on that measure. Obama was very centrist.
Esperanza
11mo ago
Jill Biden has a Ed.D which is a doctorate in education, and enables you to make more money if you are a teacher. It is not a Ph.D. A Ed.D is a practical degree, for people who plan to teach. Most schools pay you more the more education you have, so it makes sense to get the qualification. At Delaware, where she got her degree, you need a portfolio rather than a dissertation, and and Ed.D is part-time for 3-4 years as opposed to a Ph.D. which is full-time for 5 to 6 years.
Esperanza
11mo ago
The oppression was done by loyalists, but the specific atrocities, Balymurphy and Bloody Sunday, were done by the British Army and the Parachute Regiment in particular. Operation Demetrius, when 2000 men were interned, was a British Army operation, so is definitely the fault of Westminster.
Esperanza
10mo ago
Charles C. Tansill
is a revisionist historian, for what it is worth.
In the 1930s, Tansill was a staunch isolationist, arguing that the United States should not participate in World War II.[1] At the same time, he was an advisor to the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.[2] In 1952, Tansill published Back Door to War, a book about the war.[1][6] According to A. S. Winston, Tansill, "blamed Franklin Roosevelt for forcing a peace-minded Hitler into war and used the standard Rudolph Hess line that Hitler wanted only a free hand to deal with Bolshevism in the East."[1] Tansill went on to argue that it was Roosevelt who persuaded Neville Chamberlain to assure Poland that it would be defended by Britain if it was attacked by Germany, which happened in 1939 during the German invasion of Poland.[2] Winston goes on to suggest, "The book became a foundation for revisionist history of World War II."[1]
Barnes is similar, if a little kookier.
In his 1947 pamphlet, "The Struggle Against The Historical Blackout", Barnes claimed that "court historians" suppressed that Hitler was the most "reasonable" leader in the world in 1939, and that France's Premier Édouard Daladier wanted to commit aggression against Germany, aided and abetted by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Edward Raczyński
was later President of Poland in exile and is a reputable figure. "he provided the Allies with one of the earliest and most accurate accounts of the ongoing Holocaust". A statement by him should be believed in this matter.
Łukasiewicz
was a marginal figure who committed suicide in 1951. I find him credible, but much less so than Raczyński. However, Wacław Jędrzejewicz is a completely solid figure, awarded many honors and was a professor at Wellesley.
Tyler Kent, a fascist (in the sense he was a member of a fascist organization, the Right Club), was convicted of spying as he leaked documents to the Germans.
At his trial, Kent also admitted he had taken documents from the US Embassy in Moscow, with the vague notion of someday showing them to US senators who shared his isolationist, antisemitic views.
Wikipedia says:
Isolationist groups in the United States claimed he had been framed and that the trial was an attempted cover-up of an attempt to get the US to join the war. The documents, finally released in 1972, did not support this claim. The papers that Kent had purloined indicated British-American naval co-operation, but they also showed that Roosevelt was not prepared to go further without support from the US Congress or the public.
but this ends with "citation needed" so it is unsourced.
Overall, if the source that says Raczyński vouched for them is accurate, then I believe the documents are accurate. I find the claims of Kent, Tansill, and Barnes unconvincing, as I would expect them to make those claims. I would also place significant weight on Jędrzejewicz, but he was reporting on someone else's beliefs as I read it.
I hate when people mix reliable figures with others that are completely partisan.
Esperanza
10mo ago
any correlation between IQ and life outcomes exists it is mostly due to modern secular society using academics as a means of sorting "winners" from "losers"
Do you think tests like reaction time, or reverse digit span fall into this category? Reaction time is correlated with IQ:
Correlations of simple RT means with AH4 scores were − 0.27, − 0.30 and − 0.32, for age 30, 50 and 69, respectively; and − 0.44, − 0.47 and − 0.53 for 4-choice RT.
0.53 is quite high as these things go.
Reverse Digit Span is 0.45 correlated with WISC-R IQs, according to Jensen.
I agree that tests like WORDSUM (whose correlation with IQ is 0.71) are very culturally loaded and surely are mediated by academics, but I can't see how reaction time, or the backward digit span are similarly affected.
Esperanza
10mo ago
There are other relevant factors in life success, of course.
What would you say are the genetic factors that are relevant? I can think of a bunch of social factors, like being wise enough to choose parents who are rich and live in a free society. The ones that come to my mind are being good-looking, being musical, and being tall. For women, being blonde is a huge win, as are the other obvious things, so long as you don't approximate the Willendorf Venus (and even then?).
There have been great efforts to find other factors that are independent of g, but it seems quite hard to isolate any. Even being good-looking is correlated with having less genetic mutations, and this also weakly correlates with g. In the US:
It shows that physical attractiveness is significantly correlated with general intelligence (r = .126),
Musicality correlates as well.
A remarkable direct correlation between IQ and musical scores in both the control (r≥0.38) and experimental (r≥0.37) groups was observed.
Alas, among non-Hispanic whites, even being blonde correlates with IQ. Brown haired men (104.4) and blonde women (103.2) are on the top of the heap, though blonde women have the smallest standard deviation (12.2) and black haired men (mean IQ 100.1) the largest (15.2).
The conclusions come from a survey of 10,878 white Americans asked about their natural hair colour (Hispanics and African Americans were excluded to eliminate bias). The results showed the average IQ of blonde-haired women was 103.2, 102.7 for brown hair, 101.2 for red hair and 100.5 for black hair.
Esperanza
10mo ago
Some environments reward g a lot more than others. For example, in a food-scarce environment, it might be beneficial to be really small, and people with bigger brains might actually be hurt by the extra caloric needs. This happens in isolated communities, supposedly, and is why Homo floresiensis became small and dumb. In other environments, perhaps size and martial vigor are more useful, harkening back to the old debate between Odyseus and Ajax.
It is only in environments where there are options that intelligence becomes important. If all you can do is scratch a living out of the ground, perhaps g does not matter so much. In contrast, perhaps it matters a lot more for hunters.
Esperanza
10mo ago
they had rich rulers
There is no question, that Mansa Musa, King of Mali, was immensely rich.
impressive art
This is more questionable. Here are some highlights from Met. Which do you consider impressive?
What many African countries have now--a strong man extracting wealth from an oppressed populace
The model African model of a strong man extracting wealth is only possible because of Western (or recently Chinese) trade. The ruler can now exchange what he takes from his people for useful things. Prior to being able to trade with the developed world, there was little reason to oppress the populace as they had nothing (save some daughters) that was particularly worth much to the ruler. It takes a lot of organization and manpower to extract rents from the poor.
Esperanza
10mo ago
Did they do everything but have sex, the Mormon way, or were they actually chaste?
Oral sex was practiced by those in the know, perhaps less than 5%, but the complete lack of sex education meant that most people learned about the mechanics of sex from farmers' kids. Farmers understand a lot about breeding but are focussed almost entirely on cattle in Ireland, and the insights do not transfer quite as easily as you might think.
I would guess that most girls did not understand the basic physics of sex when they graduated high school. I have witnessed people explaining to young grooms what was expected on their wedding night. It is possible that boys were even less adroit, but they at least knew about erections.
The girls were chaste for the most part out of fear. The guys were chaste out of a complete lack of options and strangely, religious reasons. John B. Keane has a play, the Chastitute, written in 1981, that captured the zeitgeist well:
'A Chastitute is a person without holy orders who has never lain down with a woman . . . rustic celibate by force of circumstance.' John Bosco, who 'hasn't the makings of a dacent sin in him', is a chastitute, a bachelor farmer and all he is searching for is a plain decent woman to share his life. He nearly got there a thousand times but nearly never bulled a cow'. This play tells of his many endeavours to find a mate and the end result.
Esperanza
10mo ago
The stated reason for doing it in the first 24 hours is that sometimes the mother is not tested, or the test results are wrong, and administering the vaccine in the first 12 hours protects the baby. The second stated reason is that giving it immediately results in more people finishing the course.
ACIP recommends that all infants receive hepatitis B vaccine at birth, regardless of the infection status of the mother (11). Infants born to HBV-infected mothers require hepatitis B vaccine and hepatitis B immune globulin (HBIG) within 12 hours of birth to protect them from infection. However, because errors or delays in testing, reporting, and documenting maternal HBsAg status can and do occur, administering the first dose of hepatitis B vaccine soon after birth to all infants acts as a safety net, reducing the risk for perinatal transmission when maternal HBsAg status is either unknown or incorrectly documented at delivery. Also, initiating the hepatitis B vaccine series at birth has been shown to increase a child’s likelihood of completing the vaccine series on schedule
No other vaccines are given in the hospital, and many are far more important than hepatitis B for a newborn so the second reason is bunk. If there was a systemic problem in errors and reporting, then maybe they should fix that, rather than inject newborns. Obviously, the infants of women who have not been tested, or whose test results have not come back, or whose test results are lost, could be treated separately.
The real reason is that this vaccine is to protect a small group, not most people, and thus people have to be tricked or coerced into taking it for the benefit of the small group, as for most people, the vaccine is not a benefit. It remains primarily a sexually transmitted disease, so can wait until the usual vaccine schedule.
Older children can become infected through injection drug use or unprotected sex.
I suppose we could vaccinate the kids to prevent Hep B, or, adopt my preferred solution which is to minimize childhood IV drug use and all (not just the unprotected version) childhood sex before age 9 (The age we vaccinate for HPV, but insert whatever age you want here, but as a minimum, something that Julius would probably accept as reasonable).
A good parallel is the HPV vaccine. This does not benefit boys, but there are tenuous claims that it reduces anal cancer. This obviously is only an issue for the small subset of men who have sex with men (and women who have anal sex). However, the medical authorities claim spurious benefits for boys, rather than just being honest and saying that everyone taking it leads to herd immunity, so boys should get it to protect women. Medical ethics does not allow arguments like this, it seems, so instead they claim dubious things.
Furthermore, medical ethics is very much dominated by maximin thinking, protecting the most vulnerable, rather than utilitarian thinking. As a result, they suggest the HPV vaccine for 9 years olds, despite it lasting 5 years. 9-14 is not the window that will reduce the greatest number of infections, but middle (or earlier, as they are 9) schoolers are the most vulnerable, so the medical establishment favors them incorrectly, in my view. Different cultures and ethnicities have earlier and later onset of sexual activities, and age 9 is chosen to reduce cases in certain cultures, while later administration would work better for others.
Overall, the teenagers in the sample had a median age at first sex of 16.9 years. Black males had the lowest observed median (15.0), and Asian American males the highest (18.1); white and Hispanic males, and white and black females, reported similar ages (about 16.5 years).
The same applies to Hep B. It mainly affects MSM and IV drug users, in the US, but these are a vulnerable class, so it is the most important vaccine for the establishment to push - hence the only one that is mandated for newborns. They found a reason - the spurious claim that Hep B tests are sometimes wrong, and use this to push a vaccine that protects their favored group, the most vulnerable.
This kind of dishonesty is why people are dubious about vaccines. A system where boys were told to take HPV to protect their girlfriends, with the small benefit that it might make girls more like to engage in oral sex, will get just as many boys to take it, as lies about how it protects the boy. In fact, the "more oral sex from girls" promise is probably much more effective, save for the group of boys that actually needs it - those who engage in receptive anal sex. The medical establishment is uncomfortable with the idea of duty, and people doing something for the common good, as opposed to treatments that just help themselves.
Esperanza
10mo ago
Alternatively, an actress who refuses the casting couch does not really want the role, and will be trouble on set. The casting couch is a quick and reliable way to see if actresses are biddable. Can you think of a better test to see if an actress is willing to do what the director asks her to?
I wonder what the corresponding task you should set a man is? Perhaps very similar.
Esperanza
10mo ago
Ancient Greek and Rome had perhaps 90% of men engaging in sex with young men. This seems high to me, but I must accept that there have been substantial genetic changes in humanity since that time or 90% of men would engage in homosexual acts if society told them it was normal.
There were extensive incursions of Germanic tribes that did not routinely engage in homosexual sodomy, but gene analysis does not support enough of a change to suggest that the behavioral difference is genetic. At least, that is my understanding.
Ovid was out of step with Roman society, and Juvenal, Martial, Stabo, and Lucian, in suggesting that sex with women was superior. It seems that most Roman men, perhaps almost all, preferred to have sex with teen boys rather than women.
It seems that Roman homosexuality came from Greek influence in the second century BC. I think this strongly suggests that homosexuality can be culturally nurtured. I wonder what the upper limit it. In Ancient Rome and Greece it seemed remarkably high. I wonder if there is a more modern society where more than 50% of men engage in gay sex? Perhaps Arab societies?
I find this weird, but I suppose it is just as strange as realizing that I would be a pious Muslim or enjoy eating fermented herring should I have been born in different circumstances.
Esperanza
10mo ago
This makes the assumption that normal humans treat sex like ordinary financial transactions. This assumption is false.
I don't think Hollywood actors are normal people. Asking the actress for money would not be the same kind of test at all. You need a test that will show that the actress is willing to do whatever it takes. Acting is weird, and people do things in movies that are very out of character, as people like watching strange things. Furthermore, directors think that they know best and want people who will do what they say.
Consider Ms Depp's recent show, The Idol, (which to be honest, I have not watched). My faith in humanity suggests that less than 1% of women would consider acting in that role. Much of modern film is probably indistinguishable from pornography on set at times.
I think that the casting couch is deeply immoral, but I understand why it reliably selects actresses who are desperate and willing to do anything to get and keep a role. There is a difference between understanding how something functions and approving of it.
Esperanza
10mo ago
This brings up the question of whether the homosexual acts of any given man make that man 'gay' or are just men sticking it in holes,
Perhaps I am guilty of having a missing mood, or other people are, but my understanding is that most men in Western society would not enjoy having anal sex with a teen boy. I think gay men are sometimes confused by this, and presume that every one would actually enjoy that, but just have hangups that make them feel guilty about doing it.
I think (some) gay men could better understand this if they compared it to having sex with mature women. I know lots of gay men who would shudder at the thought of that, but might be able to screw a sufficiently thin young girl. Some straight men are not lying about not being turned on, and actually being turned off, by male bodies. That said, the Roman numbers might suggest that this group of straight men is a very small sexual minority.
men sticking it in holes, in particular if he is having sexy times with his wife/wives/concubines in addition to his catamite or whoever.
If you can afford a sex slave, and choose a male one, you might just be a little gay.
Esperanza
10mo ago
I always think of that series when I see people refer to non-men.
John Hopkins University was slammed by critics including “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling for switching up its definition of “lesbian” to instead refer to the group as “non-man attracted to non-men” in order to include non-binary people.
Esperanza
10mo ago
a mouth is just a mouth,
Oral sex used to be rarer and more special than vaginal sex, but along came AIDS, and people's attitudes changed. From 1997
"It is incredible how casual oral sex has become for some adolescents," said Dr. Carol Perry, who was a psychologist for 15 years at Riverdale Country School and Trinity School, two private schools in New York City, and who is now in private practice. "With older people, it was something that usually came further along in a relationship, when two people had been comfortable with each other and intimate for a while. But many of the adolescents see it as safer than intercourse, and not as intimate."
Many of those interviewed -- teen-agers and sex educators alike -- say that the casual acceptance of oral sex comes in good part from the media, especially movies like "Pretty Woman," in which Julia Roberts portrayed a prostitute who would perform oral sex with clients, but would not kiss them, because kissing was too intimate.
For girls, 'Do you spit or do you swallow?' is a typical seventh-grade question.
I think this is a good example of how cultural norms about sex can change. In the early 70s, oral sex was very taboo and rarely mentioned outside an example of cruelty justifying divorce. Twenty years later, it was normalized for middle schoolers (in New York, according to the New York Times, YMMV).
Even the Kama Sutra disapproved of it: "this Auparishtaka is the work of a dog and not of a man, because it is a low practice"
Perhaps gay sex will follow the same path.
Esperanza
10mo ago
Parkinson suggested the following test to reduce the number of candidates for an attractive position:
Let us suppose that the qualities deemed essential are (i) Energy, (2) Courage, (3) Patriotism, (4) Experience, (5 )Popularity, and (6) Eloquence. Now, it will be observed that all these are general-qualities which all possible applicants would believe themselves to possess. The field could readily, of course, be narrowed by stipulating (4) Experience of lion-taming, or (6) Eloquence in Mandarin. But that is not the way in which we want to narrow the field. We do not want to stipulate aquality in a special form; rather, each quality in an exceptional degree. In other words, the successful candidate must be the most energetic,courageous, patriotic, experienced, popular, and eloquent man in thecountry. Only one man can answer to that description and his is the only application we want. The terms of the appointment must thus be phrased so as to exclude everyone else. We should therefore word the advertisement in some such way as follows:
Wanted– Prime Minister of Ruritania. Hours of work: 4 A.M. to 11.59 P.M. Candidates must be prepared to fight three rounds with the current heavyweight champion (regulation gloves to be worn). Candidates will die for their country, by painless means, on reaching the age of retirement (65). They will have to pass an examination in parliamentary procedure and will be liquidated should they fail to obtain 95% marks. They will also be liquidated if they fail to gain 75% votes in a popularity poll held under the Gallup Rules. They will finally be invited to try their eloquence on a Baptist Congress, the object being to induce those present to rock and roll. Those who fail will be liquidated. All candidates should present themselves at the Sporting Club (side entrance) at 11.15 A.M. on the morning of September 19. Gloves will be provided, but they should bring their own rubber-soled shoes, singlet, and shorts.
It is very hard to find a test that will distinguish the people who want the job from the people who really, really want the job. For an actress, the major issues that come up are a willingness to get naked on camera and pretending to engage in quite atypical actions (for some reason, this seems to be the sticking point for most actresses. They object to nude scenes, but not to killing people, defacing works of art, or jaywalking). How can you test if an actress is willing to do this? Some things come to mind but are significantly weirder than the casting couch.
Feminists will doubtless suggest that movies should not have gratuitous nudity. That raises the question as to whether the nudity is gratuitous or not. My guess is that Gwyneth Palthow's performance in Shakespeare in Love would have been received differently if she had worn more clothing, and thus Weinstein got the job done. Julia Roberts, who was supposed to get the role had a policy of keeping her top on. I could be completely wrong about this, but there certainly is a trend for more female nudity after a lull. We are now back to 70s-era levels of nudity in films, and especially in cable channels (or whatever they are called now), and possibly beyond that. Hollywood could be wrong, and perhaps more people would watch movies if there was less nudity, but "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." The same perhaps applies to morals.
Esperanza
10mo ago
it is not necessarily in the interests of the producers of the film.
This is why producers are the ones who run the casting couch, presumably. It is their money on the line, so they make the decision.
As Wikipedia says:
Predominantly male casting directors and film producers use the casting couch to extract sex from aspiring actors in Hollywood, Bollywood,[3][4] Broadway, and other segments of the industry.
Neither [3] nor [4] give any evidence for the claim "Predominantly". If there is a female producer or casting director using the couch, she is flying under the radar.
I am old enough to remember why suburbia was built, as I grew up in a country where it happened later than in the US. People used to live in tenements - entire families in single rooms in large buildings that were either fancy family homes or industrial buildings. These were hideous places to live. The new estates were built, with modest, by American standards, semi-detached (which means two houses share a wall) homes with small gardens. People did hot have cars, of course, but needing to walk a mile to get to things was far better than living in decaying 18th-century buildings (for strange reasons, all buildings stopped in 1800, so almost all the built environment dated from then).
The new estates were great but would tend to go through a rough patch 14 years after they were first built when the children of the first inhabitants became teens (and were bad). Once this patch ended, they turned into lovely places. The houses were built by the corporation, so people got them at a very large discount. The system broke down later, as the number of decent people declined, and the later estates never became acceptable places to live. A bad element arose that made the estates unlivable, drugs were commonplace, and no one in their right mind would want to live there. Strangely, the newer estates have better quality houses than the old ones. As far as I can tell, the corporation gave decent people houses first.
I had held out hope that these estates would turn around, but that is not going to happen unless the new immigrants do it. It may have been the 70s, or it may be that the later residents were worse, or it may be something else, but the glory that was public housing ended and can not return because enough of the people who are being housed are too antisocial to allow the estates to thrive.
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