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The nice neighborhood isn’t just pleasant because the people there are rich, it’s pleasant because pleasant, low time preference, civilized people who have something to lose and adhere to social decorum are more likely to be rich. This is the “bail reform” debate, it turns out that no matter how unfair cash bail seems, people who can afford to raise $10,000 overnight are, broadly speaking, more likely not to commit crimes on bail than those who can’t.
Whenever I go to a restaurant where (rich, high earning, often at least moderately intelligent) clientele are dressed like disgusting slobs, which is almost all of them, the reason for their slovenliness is because of a decline in standards. It’s the same reason Elon Musk wore a t shirt to the Oval Office. These standards don’t depend on a high trust society, they depend on strict enforcement. The permissive society began before mass immigration. In America, 120 years ago, the predominantly white and black population dressed consistently in formal clothes when they went outside (outside of work hours, when they wore workwear, if blue collar) , they dressed up for church etc. You can see this in mundane street photography from the era.
You can actually enforce this stuff, too. You can make people dress well or have them harassed by the police. You can ruin people’s lives for leaving trash outside. You can have people whipped for chewing gum. You can take people’s children away from them if they’re bad at raising them (including bad at disciplining them). This is all possible and people have done it before.
To an extent I agree, but I think it's more useful to think about it in terms of who is being excluded than who is present.
I actually kind of disagree with this. For one thing, I think that in large part it's due to the decline of payment by check and the ubiquity of reliable credit reporting and credit cards. It used to be that when people went out to engage in some transaction, the merchant was often taking a real risk on them. I still remember the days when you would walk into a store and it would be common to see a series of bounced checks taped to the wall. Dressing respectably is a (imperfect) way of signalling that you are a respectable person. Nowadays, a valid credit card / good credit score is more effective.
Another factor is counter-signalling. Guys like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg wear t-shirts as a way of saying "I'm such a big deal that I don't have to wear a suit and tie to impress people."
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That may have been true a quarter or half century ago. Today, it's more of a counter-signaling thing. It's the exact same mechanism -- dressing like crap while sitting courtside is an impossible-to-forge signal of status.
OTOH, I do strongly agree we can go back in on broken windows for antisocial offenses. But hassling people for wearing sweats isn't coming back.
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You ought to look up "countersignaling", which is what they are doing.
No, that’s a bien-pensant take, but there are plenty of ways to countersignal the middle classes (who dress just as badly today) without doing that. Sweatpants are just more comfortable, and a more broadly permissive society standards just declined, that’s why it just so happened to happen at the same time as more permissive divorce, the sexual revolution, declining religiosity etc.
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