Wallpaper

I read that Oscar Wilde was once asked why America was more violent than England and he answered that in England, the wallpaper looks nicer. And like so much of Wilde's writing, it seems flippant but holds a deeper truth.

It's so tidy here. It seems that every lawn is cut and edged, every garden is tended, every fence is mended, every window is unbroken. You just don't see a nice sidewalk in one neighbourhood and no sidewalk in the next. Billboards and telephone poles don't clutter the horizon. Signs are much smaller and more tasteful. Much less real estate is devoted to cars. People's shirts are tucked in. There are fewer adverts on television: you watch The Simpsons and the opening titles run and they jump on the couch together, and then the programme starts and you think, hey, where was the commercial? It seems Americans are much more tolerant of ugliness.

A society can't have total freedom and total equality at the same time. For instance, the freedom to pass wealth on to children gives them an unfair advantage. Ensuring equal healthcare benefits removes the freedom of a competitive healthcare market. America obviously favours freedom. But inequality cultivates physical ugliness (slums and messy lawns) and social ugliness (poverty and violent crime), so I guess that's part of the trade-off.