The chaos of California is not the outcome of some mysterious Yankee vs Scots-Irish cultural battle. It’s simply the weather. Bums and drug addicts from all over the country descend upon California because they can comfortably sleep rough and sit around outside all day because it’s not humid, extreme temperatures are rare, and much of the year is rainless. That’s it. Sometimes people look too deeply for answers to social phenomena when geography is the answer.

By the way, geography also explains the culture of the Scots-Irish. This area was the natural limit of Rome’s ability to settle because it was the beginning of open moors that were much harder to control by central authority, so they gave up and built Hadrian’s and Antonine’s walls. It makes sense that once the state finally became strong enough to assert a hold over these areas (shortly after the development of the printing press), they fled to Ireland and then America to continue to enjoy their anarchic lifestyle.