Stefan Viljoen wrote:
> In South Africa, when you say "gated compound" it usually
> means an expensive, high-security -compound- - one with 12 or even 14 foot
> high walls, barbed wire at the top, seismic sensors in the ground, 24 hour
> armed patrols, an armored, guarded gatepost, very bright security lights,
> etc.

Yeah. I've seen the car alarms that jet burning gasoline out the sides of 
the car, too. :-)

Here, we have a public walkway that goes thru the community, a city-owned 
sidewalk, basically, so we're not even allowed to keep out random strangers. 
When we didn't have a human watching the front entrance, we'd get random 
strangers coming in and using the swimming pool.  Personally, I wasn't too 
bothered by that, except they'd start abusing the property since they don't 
care, letting the kids take a dump in the pool, getting into fights with the 
people who are supposed to be there, etc.

But yeah, it's a real balancing act between effective government and abusive 
government, especially since it's so easy to go from ineffective government 
to corrupt worse-than-nothing government without passing thru the good 
government phase at all.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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