The SF Bay Area is the most left-wing region in the world, and not for the reasons you think (cost, compared)

[Avondalist]

Compared to today most civilizations have been more right wing in the past. That's why conservatism, the conservation of the status quo, is to this day a mostly right wing phenomenon.

The primary reason traditional societies were more right wing is because human groups spoke different languages, with a particular language being prevalent in a particular region.

Multi-lingual societies have been rare until recently, and even now they are temporary artifacts of migration. I can confidently say that our species simply prefers only one language to communicate. If people are close enough to need to communicate, they will eventually settle on only one language to do so.

In the past movement and communication across great distances was rare and expensive, so the functional units of society were confined to small geographic regions. Each region had its own language, which created cultural barriers in space between groups, leading to prototypical right wing societies.

What changed recently was dramatic declines in the cost of transportation and communication. This brought many people in contact with each other, and a growing realization that in many ways people are the same around the world. At the same time there was also a realization that people are different around the world, and in fact they are different in similar ways. Thus class consciousness was born, where elites sympathize with elites and masses sympathize with masses.

This is the prototype for left wing society, which is organized by class and not culture.

The SF Bay Area is a gated region. A gated region is like a gated community, except it's an entire region. The SF Bay Area is forcing out lower classes with a high cost of living, leaving only managers and skilled professionals.

I say the SF Bay Area is the most left wing region on earth because it is the place where the right wing arrangement of organizing society by culture has been most thoroughly replaced by the left wing arrangement of organizing society by class. This is the reification of class into the geographical dimension; a single-class region that uses modern communication and transportation technology to mediate class relations geographically.

The SF Bay Area is a melting pot of people from all over the world who are upper-middle class and have graduate degrees. That this global class is choosing to self-segregate in a single region is the furthest extent of left wing transformation of traditional right wing society.

[No_Recess]

There's a difference between class and culture?

[Avondalist]

Originally Posted by No_Recess

There's a difference between class and culture?

Yes, language is the basis for culture. If you can't communicate with someone you probably won't feel as much affinity for them compared to someone you can communicate with, but who is opposed to your interests. The devil you know...

[ThinkingOutsideTheBox]

Law abiding, smart, hard working people of color from all over the world united by being professionals. Engineers abound.

[victimofGM]

Surprised they haven’t raised the flag of the USSR or communist China or Cuba as their own