A Simple Calculation
The quickest way to describe The Big Sort is with a simple calculation. In 1976, about a quarter of the voters lived in a county where either Jimmy Carter or Gerald Ford won by 20 percentage points or more. The number of people living in landslide communities increased steadily over the next seven presidential elections. And by 2004, in another very close vote, nearly half of all voters lived in one of these landslide communities.
Places were becoming more politically homogeneous. You could see it in the data pieced together by statistician Robert Cushing. Counties would tip Republican or Democratic in presidential elections, and then the majorities would grow larger. (Seven out of ten people leaving red counties move to other red counties.) The red and blue state maps were meaningless to how we lived. In ink blue California, for example, 17 counties were growing more Democratic, 30 were becoming more Republican and the parties were getting more competitive in only 11 counties. Sixty percent of the nation's voters today live in communities that haven't changed their presidential party choice since 1988.
The country sorted politically over seven presidential elections -- but that's only a part of what has been a larger social and economic transformation. For example, in 1970, people with college degrees were relatively evenly distributed among the nation's cities. Since, people with BA degrees have clustered. The percentage of adults with BA degrees in Austin jumped from 17 percent in 1970 to 45 percent in 2004. In Cleveland, there was a sluggish increase from 4 percent to 14 percent. So, while Austin boomed, the newspaper in Cleveland wrote about that city's "quiet crisis."
The country sorted every way imaginable. Churches intentionally designed their services for likeminded congregations. (The pastors who decamped to the nation's suburbs in the 1970s recruited megachurch congregations based on what they called the "homogenous unit principle.") In the late 1960s and early '70s, according to Theda Skocpal, "civic life was abruptly and fundamentally reorganized" as broad-based civic groups declined, replaced by organizations based on similar beliefs and interests. The daughters of the good ladies found in the Eastern Star became members of Common Cause. The country generated a Noah's Ark of organizations. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) for conservative state legislators paired with ALICE (the American Legislative Issue Campaign Exchange) for liberals. The National Center for Science Education began in 1981 to defend the teaching of evolution. Its conservative doppelganger was the Discovery Institute, founded nine years later to promote "intelligent design." And why stop at work? You can now book a cruise with writers from The Weekly Standard, or you can bob around the Caribbean with editors from The Nation.
White people abandoned some regions for others. (In the 1990s, 40 percent of US metro regions lost an absolute number of white people. Only 8 percent lost African American population.) Since the '70s, women have begun voting more Democratic. Rural counties have grown Republican; 30 years ago rural America was firmly Democratic. Split ticket voting declined, beginning in the 1970s, as did the number of truly undecided voters. In 1976, voters who went to church once a week weren't particularly Republican or Democrat. Thirty years later.... Tech cities became increasingly Democratic. (Gore and Kerry won the 21 metro regions that produced the most high technology and the most patents per person by more than 5 million votes.) Low-tech metros attracted those who described themselves as conservative and voted Republican.
The sorting was geographic, cultural, religious, economic -- and it had political consequences in presidential elections. Sure, people have always found comfort among others with like interests and beliefs. Birds flock. But over the last three decades the flocks grew both more distinct and more pervasive. Now kids live in "thematic" dorms at college and subdivisions are designed for political points of view -- Christian schools in one part of the development and Montessori in another.
That's the ten-cent summary of the big sort. The question that inevitably follows is whether the sorting is good or bad. For now, why don't we suspend judgment and just consider a few of its effects.
• Regions are growing more economically distant. (I'm from Kentucky. I can see it when I go home.)
•The psychology of homogenous groups increases misunderstanding and partisanship. Groups of likeminded people grow more extreme in the way they are likeminded -- an effect too often evident in my 90 percent Democratic neighborhood daily. Cass Sunstein conducted an experiment in 2005 to see what would happen when neighbors in our politically segregated communities discussed politics. He found that both liberals in Boulder and conservatives in Colorado Springs became both more partisan in their thinking AND more homogeneous after only a two-hour conversation about issues. We don't know, and little understand, fellow citizens who live just a few counties away.
• Legislative districts grow more lopsided as communities tip either Democratic or Republican. Over the past 30 years, the "middle" in Congress has largely disappeared, so that today there is literally no Democrat in Congress more conservative than the most liberal Republican. (And, no, the primary cause of this growing imbalance in congressional districts isn't gerrymandering. Shoot me an email and I'll send you the studies.) Lawmakers aren't cross-pressured at home so they show little inclination to compromise once they reach D.C. (or Sacramento, St. Paul, Salem...). As a result, Congress and an increasing number of state legislatures are stuck on a high center of partisanship.
• What's the point of living around others with like minds if you don't those beliefs to work? That's happening. Odessa (and 24 other Texas cities) established a Bible course in its high school. Portland, Oregon, meanwhile, invests in public transportation. The real action in government is in cities, because that's where stable political majorities are being created.
• The big sort has changed political campaigns. Bush understood in 2004 that communities were growing more homogenous, so he adopted the megachurch method of building his campaign. He had neighbors recruit neighbors. The clueless Kerry spent millions to send hired canvassers into communities where they stood out like goiters and probably did more harm than good. Political campaigns today are about managing behavior as much as devising policy.
Campaigns in this sorted world need to think less about issues and demographics and more about lifestyle and geography. Remember the measurement used at the beginning of this post to show the growth of the big sort - that in 2004 in the Kerry/Bush race, nearly half the voters lived in a county where one candidate or the other won by 20 percentage points or more?
Well, when you calculate the votes in the 2008 Democratic primary, the result's the same. In a contest between two senators with essentially the same political outlook, half the voters live in counties where either Obama or Clinton won by a landslide. And the geography in the '08 Democratic primary looks a lot like that of the 2004 general election. Obama won the Kerry cities. Clinton took the Bush counties.
The same split between ideological opposites from 2004 reappeared between ideological peas in a pod four years later. That's because the fundamental divisions in America today aren't over policy. We don't move to be around neighbors who think the way we do about single payer health care plans. We live where we're comfortable, if we can, and an increasing number of us have that choice. Over the last 30 years, it's been a decision that increasingly aligned with political party.
Comments (40)
The problem is the parties we have and the policies they're advocating, and their failure to execute policies that benefit the American people.
The rest of it is all concern-trolling to me.
In a sane society, the Republican Party wouldn't even exist, so why someone would care that in some places there's lopsided Dem majorities eludes me.
July 21, 2008 11:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Campaigns in this sorted world need to think less about issues and demographics and more about lifestyle and geography."
Well, that's just great. Never mind your healthcare plan, just don't put the wrong kind of cheese on your Philly cheesesteak.
It's a funny time for you to be making this argument since Obama is out to prove that he can compete in communities that people write off as homogenous and red. It's also a funny argument to make after Dean proved that the 50 state strategy can work.
I don't dispute your data, just that your data determines behavior. I think that if you treat people like adults and, yes, focus on themes and policies that you can win a national election. You mention lifestyle -- most people want policies enacted that will let them continue the aspects of their lifestyles that they like and that will give them a shot at better lifestyles in the future. If you don't spook them into thinking that your policies are going to take away things they like in their lifestyles you're probably on safe ground.
July 21, 2008 11:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
I wish I had seen this before I bought a house in a suburb south west of Denver with a church on almost every corner. Until you have lived in an area that is 90% evangelicals you don't realize how bad it can be when they all clump together.
July 21, 2008 11:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ugh, that sounds truly horrible.
July 21, 2008 11:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
And though I'm being a bit snide, I do hope that basic issues of taste are addressed in this discussion. I don't care about living around other Democrats, for example. I care about living around good restaurants, bars, theatres, museums, parks and gyms. I wouldn't not move to a very evangelical city Colorado Springs because there are Christians there. I wouldn't move there because there are probably not a ton of places serving bloody mary brunches on Sunday afternoons because everyone is in freaking church. There are very orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn and New Jersey that I wouldn't want to live in because it would be inconvenient to live there unless you wanted to live an orthodox lifestyle.
I think the political stuff is entirely secondary and that we don't actually seek to live around people like us, we seek to live around what we like, and so do others.
July 21, 2008 12:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with you. It's been a slow slog for me here in the most conservative county in Montana, but with organizations like a new "Artists Alliance" formed by artists who are Republican and Democrat that the whole town shows up to, we get to know each other in a different way. "What's your favorite piece of work here?" "I like that picture of Susan's." "I bought the tango dancers because we like to dance."
"You know I like her, but her husband is kind of a jerk." "Oh he's all right once you ignore him most of the time."
Sometimes a challenge is what makes life worth living. See "Wall-E". The Captain finally says, " I don't want to just survive, I want to live."
Aren't we here lucky that we have the luxury of debating this instead of where to find food and fresh water?
July 21, 2008 12:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
That does sound very cool. Good art does sometimes come out of social struggle. Actually, it most always does. And, yes, you're of course right that we're damned lucky to be having the "where do I want to live?" debate rather than the, "Can we find a place with drinkable water and no cholera?" debate that we sometimes forget is what the majority of people in the world have to deal with.
July 21, 2008 12:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
There's an awful lot of bad art too. And having lived near Chicago and in NYC, I've also learned to leave my snobbiness at the door, but not my taste. I just buy what I like. But I'm gracious to my neighbors who may not be the finest artists in the world, but they aren't out killing things for fun or tearing up the environment, so I encourage their painting. Plus they want to involve young people. That's super.
July 21, 2008 12:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've got to say, I don't know that having a lot of conservative orthodox Jews around would really be a problem. I lived in View Ridge in Seattle for about a year before I realized there were bearded men with coats and hats walking around every Saturday, and then only because somebody asked me what it was like to live in such a dense Jewish population. And I definitely noticed next time I went door-to-door for something.
Cities are good! Your neighbors can't deprive you of basic services when they shun you.
I just felt like I should defend the Boros.
July 21, 2008 11:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just to be clear, I have no objections to friendly bearded men wearing black hats. But you'd find everything closed on Saturday, not a lot of bars or nightlife... it'd be a different lifestyle than the one I'm looking for. Not critcizing the lifestyle at all, just saying it's a matter of taste.
July 22, 2008 12:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Atheists have the same feeling in almost any neighborhood. Welcome to the religiously-challenged minority.
July 21, 2008 2:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Amen to that. Would you like to be an atheist newspaper editor in suburban Dallas?
July 21, 2008 6:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why, bless you brother Soke. And can I get a "halleluia?" (:^}
July 21, 2008 10:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
I moved to Montana in 1992 after being raised near Chicago, schooled in Michigan, 15 years in NYC and 2 years in LA. I brought your book into my local watering hole of a county the size of Rhode Island with only 3500 people in it. I asked everybody at the bar whether they thought it was a good idea to "sort". They all agreed that it was a bad idea.
And that even though I'm in the minority, they love the idea with sparring with their "local liberal buddy".
But then the crowd at the bar and grille is more freedom loving than the evangelical crowd who go into the dining room or over at The Frosty Freeze." I speak about issues non stop and we formed an issue club. It is tiring and I miss the days in NYC when I lived amongst my own kind. But that gave me the courage to make a stand 4 years ago and form the first Democratic Central Committee. You have to stick your neck out.
But then I found that I needed to watch out for the farmer with the hatchet from inside my own party. Once in an organization, I found that they wanted conformity, obedience, and secrecy. The party machine wanted to neutralize any dissent as the players vie for power and status.
Conclusion: Sorting into the new Republican lite Democratic Party has turned out to be as stifling as being back in my church community that I escaped 35 years ago. So now what?
We don't need to sort according to rock climbing latte drinking smarty pantses for Obama. That's just marketing and repackaging of the same old feudalism flim flam. We need to sort back into citizens. Lobbyists have taken our place. And we have got to get back our direct access through public financing.
In the meantime, Krugman is right. Start with all getting behind single payer health care and maybe we can shift this country back to the center.
July 21, 2008 12:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bill Clinton mentioned "The Big Sort" at the Governor's Conference. He said that state governments face three challenges: 1) Inequalities in jobs, education, health, etc. 2). Identity issues which included "managing our differences. Here's where he talked about the sorting of like minded people. and 3) Energy.
So on a local level those should be our focus.
And we should NOT sort on the internet either. We should probably try to mix with our dark side. Isn't that Jungian? To know and understand our shadow? Vive la differences! "We are all of one body, with gifts differing," said St. Paul and this was echoed by Isabel Myers of the Myers/Briggs Type Indicator when she named her first book "Gifts Differing."
Someone said that Freud was the psychologist of the 20th Century and Jung, if we were lucky, would be the psychologist of the 21st century. Freud is about division. Jung is about cooperation.
July 21, 2008 12:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let's at least try to be honest.
Neighborhoods have always consisted of like-minded people. In the '60s social "engineers" tried to change that in the service of goals only they espoused. They failed.
Ta-nehisi Coates is right when he says America doesn't have a race problem, it has a black problem. Whites have never wanted to live around blacks. They still don't. That dynamic is fundamental in understanding much that's happened in the last half century.
For the rest, America is a melting pot, a land of opportunity and social mobility. Masoud Golsorkhi, writing in the Guardian, says almost every family in Teheran has relatives who came to America with nothing a few decades ago and now are rich...or even filthy rich. Many Mexicans can tell the same story.
July 21, 2008 2:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re: Whites have never wanted to live around blacks.
It's a little more complicated than that. Whites will accept Blacks in their neighborhoods in about the proportion they exist in the coutry as a whole: say, around 10%. Especially if those Blacks are wholly assimilated to what economic class the whites are in themselves and do not seem especially Black, culturally. It's as much a sub-culture and class issue as it is race.
July 21, 2008 10:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
So Bush wasn't the dope after all. Guess who was? Hmmm....
July 21, 2008 2:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
..America, for putting Bush in office.
July 21, 2008 4:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Pardon, but it was S. D. O'Connor who put Pres. Bush into office. The majority of the American people voted against him, and the plurality voted for VP Gore.
July 21, 2008 8:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
The American dream and the American melting pot are not one in the same.
The American dream transcends the divisions of ideology, class and race that segregate America. We have learned to live and let live (for the most part) while we all climb the ladder of success. But we no longer see or even aspire to a common culture.
This is more than Black vs. White. This is about lifestyles and values. Empowered by education, income, experience and mobility, we have found and relocated to geographic niches where we feel comfortable. And the odd thing is that these lifestyle choices mean there is less and less cultural and political integration in American society. We share a dream but we live (and let live) in separate pots, so to speak.
Whatever we may long were true of the past, the facts are those presented by Bishop, and the fact is that America is less politically integrated than ever before. As Bishop notes in his book, we now sort ourselves more on the basis of politics than race. America is indeed a land of opportunity, but America is no longer a great melting pot. We'll do business with anybody but we interact mostly with those who think, live and vote exactly like we do.
July 21, 2008 3:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think this is quite right. We don't segregate by politics, we segregate by tastes or by aesthetics and political segregation is just a small part of that.
July 21, 2008 3:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree this is happening, but wasn't 1976 a very strange election? Look at the map (http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/). The familar sectional division that has been with us since before the Civil War seems to have been displaced with an inexplicable east-west divide. I would say 1968 might be better benchmark, but that was an odd election (Wallace, Vietnam). And most of the other pre-2000 elections have been blowouts.
Maybe check from the national average in 1988 (which was actually closer than many people remember... a few points in CA, IL, MO, PA, MD and it would have been a more respectable loss). I.e., how many people lived in places that were between Dukakis +12 and Bush +28?
To sum up, I agree this "sort" is happening, but I think 1976 overstates the geographic homogenity of the country for a lot of reasons -- lack of social issue divisiveness; Watergate; the "solid south" was, for perhaps the only time in history, not so solid; etc.
July 21, 2008 3:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
We have the % of voters living in landslide counties for every election since 1948. In landslide elections, lots of people lived in landslide counties. So lets look at elections where the margin between the two major parties was under 10 points:
1948 35.8%
1960 32.9%
1968 37.2%
1976 26.8%
1988 41.7%
1992 37.7%
1996 42.1%
2000 45.3%
2004 48.3%
Another way to think of this is to see that every close election prior to 1976 had a smaller percentage of landslide voters than every close election after 1976.
But don't get hung up on this one figure, although it's an important one. I listed in the original post a number of trends that began in the 1970s -- decreasing numbers of split tickets; decreasing numbers of undecideds; women voting increasingly D; rural voting increasingly R; tech cities swinging D; low tech cities swinging R; churches growing more politically homogenous. Etc......
July 21, 2008 4:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
An interesting post and a fascinating trend. I'd always thought of political balkanization as an effect of niche media (the internet and so on) and less a geographic reality.
But I'm a little wary (just to muse on this) of the hint that the problem is breeding of "extremism" on both sides: that the real problem is the dynamic of not getting along in and of itself.
The idea that there's an equivalency between all ingroup/outgroup thinking seems to ignore the real issue of whose concrete policies benefit from extremism, and the fact that liberal extremism just isn't (by definition, it strives for consensus and inclusiveness) of the same sort as GOP fundamentalism. I think your example speaks to my point: ""Odessa (and 24 other Texas cities) established a Bible course in its high school. Portland, Oregon, meanwhile, invests in public transportation." At bottom, don't we hear this idea from the allegedly centrist media all the time: its those extremists on the left who are just as bad as those on the right. Sure.
-joe
July 21, 2008 5:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Totally agree with your point about "not getting along."
I didn't pair Portland and Odessa as examples of extremism, however. They are examples of how large majorities allow local governments to act. Nothing more or less.....
As for the play between extremism and sorting, check out Ian McDonald's entry.
July 21, 2008 6:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
After high school outside DC, education in Boston, and 15+ year in LA, I moved to a rural N California town that is solid red. I am black and gay and live with my partner. (The circumstances that brought us here were extremely strange, so don't even ask.)
I have seen the effects of "the sort" first hand. I live them now.
Frankly, the question of whether "the sort" is good or bad may be moot. I think there's a deeper question as to whether the American experiment, which is still shockingly young, can work. Can individuals of different races, backgrounds and beliefs live and work together in something deeper than mutual suspicion and distant civility? Economic and global circumstances have changed dramatically enough to make that a viable question. Note how the rate of sorting increases as the cold war ends and the global economy, and information revolution take hold.
I think the question is: Do we have to rethink our concept of country based upon the fact that we seem to choose to have little to do with one another?
July 21, 2008 5:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, we can!
While a civil religion taught by the schools and the media may be a bit thinner than a traditional religion taught at one's parents' knees, it still provides sufficient commonality for a polity to hold itself together.
July 21, 2008 8:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
I would agree -- IF we had a shared civil religion, or if one were taught. But have you seen the surveys on Americans' knowledge of American history and Constitutional values and traditions? It's pretty bleak. We seem to have little interest in teaching it or preserving it, and we certainly don't seem to be emphasizing it as a defining American characteristic.
July 21, 2008 8:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey! How 'bout a compliment for my extremely witty and sardonic "Yes we can" allusion (about 5,540,000 Google hits).
But seriously -- point taken.
You might add that relying on the government and the media to teach a "civil religion" as I'm suggesting we do, is fraught with dangers (see, Yamato-damashii, Fascism and Nazism, for example).
If, however, we recognize that American civil religion is, at base, an expression of tolerance ("Do not do unto others what you would not wish them to do unto you" or in a more homely vein, "How would you like it if Mary did that to you?") and that this ethic is supported by our traditional religions, maybe we're not so bad off, after all.
July 21, 2008 9:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
@ destor23
It's been a long time since I was young but it's all beginning to come back to me.
We don't all sort in the same way. We don't sort in the same way at all stages of life. Immigrants have different priorities than natives. Young college kids do not have politics as a top priority. Not most of them. Even the political science majors are mostly interested in sex and arrange their lives around it. Only later, when kids and family appear, do political considerations move to the forefront.
July 21, 2008 7:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
But isn't destor23 arguing that "sorting" occurs not as the result of political but rather as the result of aesthetic considerations?
Speak up, destor23!
July 21, 2008 8:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
I would argue that and this is exactly what Walker Smith (who studies these trends for a living) is saying -- that it's not politics, it's lifestyle, aesthetics, ways of life.
Which is why most political discussion about demographics is really missing the point. Nobody thinks of themselves as a single, white, male, 35-45, university degree living in a suburb. One woman told me she was an "ocean oriented person." We're hunters or Christians or sweat lodge purifiers. Marketing people have known this for almost two generations. It takes politicians (and political journalists) a little time to catch up.
The interesting thing in the sort is how politics aligns with these descriptions.
July 21, 2008 8:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, that's what I'm saying.
July 22, 2008 12:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hello Bill, a former reader here.
You have firm hold on some statistics that must mean something. But I think that there might be more than a "sort" going on.
Consider the swing of rural voters to the Gopers. In these landslide counties, other things have happened over the last 30-40 years. Talented and intelligent kids have tended to leave. Local industry has tended to concentrate into one or two areas, or contract. Local eating habits have swung rather massively toward fast food, with a corresponding increase in obesity. In cultural terms, television (including in some areas a very late start for cable TV) has obliterated what used to pass for culture or tradition with a vengeance - so much so that when I polled college students regarding "their traditions" they could only mention Thanksgiving.
The rise of megachurches and "advanced" evangelical worship patterns is consciously directed against a television-inspired world of styles and desires, even as it uses television-inspired techniques to create a counter-culture. This counter-culture has co-opted cultural trends that are shopworn in large cities (old-time music genres like rock), and recycled them through Christian rock, etc. The attempt to make church the hub of social activity throughout the week and at school has turned churches into something like theme parks (Six Flags Over Jesus!). And this is usually accompanied by a fairly frank acquisitional interpretation of Christianity that makes sense of the fact that shopping malls and megachurches are often located along the same highway.
It can hardly be denied that Republican political practice since Nixon has had much more of a "50-state" style (though this may be changing now). Rural communities are bound to the Reps by "important" events (the President dedicates a school), and this bond is intensified by something like a fat grant to the first responders of a rural community through Homeland Security.
I'm not going to go much further in a hard-to-type blog post, but I'll just make a few suggestions about things that might tend to "unsort" people in some areas. For example, a gradual rise in the price of gas to $8/gallon - perhaps over ten years. That would cause a lot of people to move nearer to cities - but it would also cause those who stay in rural areas to diversify their activities, and stop depending on shopping trips of 50 miles or more in SUVs to Wal-Marts in the "nearest" city. In many ways, the development of rural America has been defined for quite some time by what those people could be sold in stores. And much of what was traditionally beloved about rural Americans was slowly poisoned by what they could be induced to buy - essentially cheap foreign products that could not be repaired in America, objects that could not be curated or maintained, that had to be unthriftily thrown away.
The more I look at it, the more the big sort looks like a competition over various kinds of market share. If we think of economics and culture as opposite sides of a teeter-totter, the economic side has weighed a lot more for a long time. Culture is not just whatever we have, looked at culturally. Concentration on economic interests can kill culture outright (just as an overdeveloped culture can allow industry to lapse - something that is supposed to be caused by liberalism, but which has lately occurred under economic conservatives!). The plastic toys that litter the yards of some rural dwellers are not evidence of a changing culture, but of a dead one. And without culture, all groups are at the mercy of economic interests they cannot control. The most resourceful rural activists, in their own communities, have allowed themselves to "sell" twisted versions of religion and patriotism precisely because they feel so outgunned by the attraction of televised culture (which ends up being expressed largely through purchases).
The same analysis would serve as a start for the examination of "suburban culture." Again, a key component would be the way young people use cars to structure their free activities. The increase in gas prices will certainly change what "driving around" used to be. As for urban populations, perhaps they will simply be altered through a process of post-gentrification, in which livable urban spaces are sought and arranged not by the well-off, or even by the poor, but by a once-common influx from both suburban and rural areas.
July 21, 2008 9:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just wondering, is there any discussion of Thomas Schelling in this book. If not you may want to check out the simple experiments he did with sorting. Very slight preferences for one type of neighbor over another can easily result in rather extreme segregation.
July 21, 2008 10:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re: Atheists have the same feeling in almost any neighborhood. Welcome to the religiously-challenged minority.
I can't think of any neighborhood I've lived in during my adult life when I knew much (if anything) about anyone's religious preferrences. One place I lived it was almost three years before I found out that the next door neighbor lady, with whom I talked regularly (we shared a liking for cats and gardening) was a Seventh Day Adventist.
July 21, 2008 10:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
@ JonF311
Until I was long past 50 I didn't know anything about my neighbors' politics or religion. I knew what they did for a living, I knew what they liked to eat, the music they liked, whether or not they had taste, intelligence, wit.
July 21, 2008 11:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Interesting to think of what makes sorting possible...
1) information about where to find like minded people.
2) low transport costs (cheap oil) to get there
3) low transport costs (cheap oil) to visit relatives elsewhere.
4) a booming economy producing attractive jobs that pull some people toward them
Now imagine the world of the future.... it's still easy to know about that liberal or conservative haven... but it could cost you your connection to your parents and friends if you go there because it is too expensive to travel back and forth. Imagine the economy, wounded by oil costs, unable to generate those high paying jobs in major metro centers. Suddenly there is less difference between places, higher penalty for leaving one place for another, less incentive to move...
It all depends what you imagine the post peak oil world will look like. We're not talking MadMax here, just a world where transportation is slower and more expensive, incentives change, children have slightly less reason to move away (sort), slightly higher incentives to stay near their parents (unsorted.)
You could see a unsorting over time...
July 21, 2008 11:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bill,
I'm working my way through the book, as it is germane to a book I'm writing that is, in a sense, about what happens when we raise children in "the big sort". (And I may contact you separately about that soon!)
One thing that is a persistent, nagging question for me so far is the issue of the growing income inequality in the United States. Income inequality has grown dramatically since the Reagan years, yes? In my reading so far I've noticed that you talk about economic migration, and you touch on income inequality on p. 134 in the context of regional economic inequality. But I don't see much attention to the big story of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer -- doesn't that have a foot in the game of the big sort?
Another issue that I've been mulling as I sift through the book is the reification of what "left" and "right" politics mean. There's a sort of assumption of left, right, and "moderate" that doesn't seem sufficiently accounted for in the discussion on p.28 and onwards about the Repub party moving to the right. I guess I don't have a clear question about this, but I thought I'd throw it out there...
Peace,
Yael H.
July 26, 2008 4:48 PM | Reply | Permalink