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How does this at all possibly follow? The cart is before the horse here. People have bought into these communities because the surrounding communities are already so low-trust enough to force them into protective enclaves.
When was the last time you've heard of people making real decisions based on fiction they've read or seen? Or based on news articles from only one color of the spectrum?
If kids see a cartoon about bullies targeting people with glasses, they're less likely to wear glasses. Adults are nowhere near immune from that kind of false-positive threat modeling. They're just a lot more effective at overreacting. See: post-9/11 reactions to Arabs & Muslims, Japanese internment camps, Pizzagate, parental advisory stickers.
People can and do put the cart before the horse when making decisions on which neighborhoods to move into. It's common, and no amount of 'rational threat analysis' will change that.
Can you elaborate on what "putting the cart before the horse" means specifically, in this context? It seems you're claiming that crime and general social dysfunction isn't that big of a deal, and so organized efforts to exclude these things from one's immediate community are misguided, apparently because they only solve the problem for themselves rather than for everyone. Is that the general idea?
...But then here you seem to be claiming that the people doing this are mistaken about how low-trust and dysfunctional the surrounding communities actually are, that they've been propagandized into a fear response that is not warranted by the situation. Is this also accurate?
...But it seems these two points contradict each other. If the security they obtain is illusory, because it's really not that bad, then why does paying more and restricting oneself to gain this illusory "security" earn "a disgust response from me and others who cannot afford the security you buy." If they don't need the security, then you and the others who can't afford it don't need it either, right?
Straightforwardly, and from direct personal experience as well as observed experience of those close to me, low-trust areas are in fact absolutely awful, and the crime and dysfunction they engender makes living a decent life far, far harder than a reasonable person should or will tolerate. The people who take positive action to exclude such crime and dysfunction from their communities are doing what they can with what they have where they are. Those who cannot enjoy such coordination could, if they wished, get the same effect through the powers of the state; not doing so is a decision that a majority of them have made and continue to make, because they consider the steps necessary unacceptable. I see no reason to consider your disgust toward the people who wall themselves off from such dysfunction legitimate in any way.
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