Live data from Hacker News

Medieval-style fortifications are back in the Sahel

economist.com

81–82 of 82 posts

Re: Medieval-style fortifications are back in the Sahel

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the best way that doesn't get you bogged down in battery charges (for beating a teenager) or manslaughter charges (oops, your barbed wire caused a fatal infection) is social services that help fight poverty and teenage vagrancy (and possibly an accessible iPhone model that takes the edge off of the iPhone jones/envy that your iPhone marketers purposely built).

You might have missed the point. You don’t get battery charges when there isn’t a functioning state with courts, police and prisons. City fortifications are an indication that the functional unit of society has compressed to city scale. It can collapse further to single buildings — castles and further to nomadic warring tribes.

You don't have Apple stores without a functioning state either.

Re: Medieval-style fortifications are back in the Sahel

#82

In many of Latin America big towns and most of border towns, most middle-class houses are tiny versions of fortresses. It is a sign of police incompetence, government collapse and the fact that those places are ruled by gangsters.

The great revelation of Google Street View for me has been that such is more or less the world norm. Neighborhoods of entirely unbarred windows and unfenced lots are scarce on any continent. The tragedy is that so few, at least here in the US, see the liberating value in them.

> Neighborhoods of entirely unbarred windows and unfenced lots are scarce on any continent.

I guess I've been on 4 continents. What are you talking about???

Post reply on HN