As IF Times

link Young families pull up stakes for better life.

While at first, articles such as this will provoke lots of knee jerk responses from those who will say “something must be done”, the reality is that in a free society, that would make little sense.  The constant promotion of Vancouver over the past decade or so though the staging of  world class events such as the Olympics has resulted in the benefits we see today.  Vancouver is a world class destination no longer undiscovered by those that have means.  We kept telling people what a wonderful place it was and whaddya know, it’s worked!  Go figure that people would find the stunning scenery, benign climate and amiable population attractive.  Attractive enough to lure people to buy homes here.

As residents are always proud of proclaiming,  Vancouver is a world class city.  That’s the upside.  But now comes the unintended consequences. The downside is that locals may not be able to afford to live in a world class city.  Unless you were fortunate enough to have owned property here from 20 years ago, it’s unlikely that owning a house within the city proper is affordable for most people.  That’s the way  it is.  It’s not likely that in New York City, or Hong Kong, or Honolulu or San Francisco,  young families would be able to get a 2000 sq ft house with a small yard for the dog and kids for $300,000.  In all of those cases, as is in Vancouver, they are victims of their own success.

If it’s that wonderful, guess what, people will pay to be there.  The wave of enthusiastic property purchases have made innumerate locals wealthy beyond their wildest dreams for simply having the good fortune to have owned property.  Some of that money goes back into the local economy through lifestyles and undoubtedly some will get passed on to the children of those fortunate homeowners.  Because of this wealth effect, people don’t blink when paying $4 dollars for a half calf, double mocha with a latte twist at the hundreds of coffee shops in this town.  They don’t hesitate to pay $200 to watch the Canucks play hockey at a stadium where they pay $30 to park and $12 for a beer.  And my favorite, $120 bucks to buy Lululemon yoga pants.  While of course it’s a burden for young families, it does require an evaluation and assessment of expectations.

The fact that we are seeing young people move to more affordable communities is the natural order of things. (If that weren’t the case, everyone would still be huddled around Plymouth Rock in Virginia).  These people  will then build communities and create opportunities in places more affordable. Eventually, they’ll sponsor a hockey team and pay high ticket prices there too.

What should not be encouraged is the ugly populist notion of entitlement.  As it should now be obvious to most sane people, the blanket mentality of entitlement  threatens to smother progress everywhere.  Living in a comfortable society allows us the luxury of heightened expectations for all aspects of our daily lives, but expectations are not rights.   The next time you hear about someone complaining about how high property prices are, ask them if they’d be willing to sell theirs for what they paid for it.  After the laughter dies down, the only sound you’ll hear are crickets.

link News from The Associated Press.

There is an iconic German expression,  author unknown,  which goes, ” stadluft macht frei”, which means “city air makes you free”.  In the day when this was first coined, it meant that to live in the city away from the constraints and prying eyes of a rural community gave one the freedom of anonymity and therefore freedom to do as you wished.   In the city of course, there were many, many people and no one really cared what anyone else was up to.   In theory, this is a fertile environment for novel intellectual thought and so living in the city was supposed to foster intelligent discourse and a civilized society.

In the crucible of a great metropolis like New York, we can observe if this notion still has validity.  According to articles like the one in the link, being free these days means to be willfully indifferent to your social surroundings.  The article cites instances of people carrying on in the subways with all kinds of activity as if they were in their own living rooms, things such as eating, picking noses and inexplicably, clipping toenails.  Not being a resident of New York, I can’t comment on whether or not clipping toenails on the subway is common and acceptable behaviour.  If we see clippers for sale at the kiosks, then we’ll have our answer.  In addition, it’s difficult to imagine enjoying a twirl of spaghetti in the close confines of a subway car filled with the bodily gases of dozens of people. 

It appears that the ‘freedom’ so offered by city air has morphed more into outright anarchy as people’s behaviour has deteriorated to reflect only personal conveniences to the exclusion of the consideration of others.  Presently, in our society, the lines separating what is considered to be individualistic, eccentric and crazy are faint to non-existent.  So much so, that even the most outrageous behaviour rarely raises any eyebrows these days.  So many things are being done for publicity and shock value, that most everything appears routine.   When few things have any shock value, people as a whole become cynical, aloof and disengaged from the rest of their society.  Perhaps it’s no coincidence that we observe so many ‘celebrities’ engage in self indulgent and anti social behaviour.  They are living in a time when virtually anything they do has positive consequences, at least as far as publicity is concerned, which is really what celebrities crave.  It can’t be that hard to find any number of people on any given day in the New York subways that are real life Charlie Sheens. 

If unfettered behaviour is the hallmark of a civilized society, it may be time to be a bit less civilized.  It wouldn’t hurt to put up a few signs in the subway restricting activity that you would otherwise see in the Bronx Zoo.  I’m all for distinguishing  primate species.  At the very least, use deodorant.