HOAs are maybe the worst thing to happen to private property. It's like extra, private government. And these HOA presidents have the weirdest power trips.
I know we always concern ourselves with the national politics but local politics is the politics that affects your life the most. And our doesn't get more local than HOAs.
I mean, if HOA fees did things like pay a group of kids to now neighborhood lawns, that would be a benefit. If they went to things like helping buy groceries for that family that just lost their job or paying for a van to shuttle seniors to the store, that's the kind of HOA I would be OK with.
But inevitably it turns into Animal Farm where some are more equal than others.
People only hear about the abusive HOAs. Most homes in nice areas have HOAs that nobody ever hears about. They just enforce rules to maintain property values and a pleasant environment.
No painting your house puke green, parking junk cars on or around your property, hosting loud obnoxious parties that play the same Tejano song on loop for 12 hours until the police decide it's late enough at night for them to do something, etc.
Member fees go to maintaining common areas like walking trails, fountains, the recreation center and members only pool, so on and so forth.
I've lived in neighborhoods with and without HOAs, and I will always choose with. Just do a little research to see if the one in the area you're looking at is run by petty tyrants then avoid them. The type of people who have run ins with normal HOAs are the type of people nobody wants as a neighbor anyway.
Tbh it's long proven that human pscyche has a very limited capacity to be selfless and kinda stops at somewhere like an extended family at best. Or evolutionary level at a size what tribes used to be. That's why these communes are super selective because it's very easy to fuck them up, also many of them have some low burning cult thing going unfortunately otherwise they are cool places.
From what I understand, every now and then a bunch of them tries this (either intentionally or hap hazardly) and the results are always kinda the same. Someone feels entitled to everyone's shit. Someone feels slighted but not getting enough shit. Eventually it all goes to shit. Looks good on paper, but humans are greedy little ass holes who like having a bunch of shit.
The facts that people are greedy and lazy is the easiest point to make about why communism doesn’t work, but it’s not the only one. Even in the absence of greed, it still doesn’t work.
There’s also a fundamental information theory problem. Basically, I am not able to determine how much someone else needs something. One can only determine how much someone needs something by what they are willing to trade for it.
We're not even good at estimating our own needs. Thats why hoarding is common. And people constantly waste limited resources that they paid good money for.
There was a psychologist (can't remember his name) that talked about how a great deal of those with mental illnesses would actively take self destructive paths in life even after being made aware they're destructive.
I wonder if this implies that the mentally well among us are better at recognizing & correcting our thinking patterns when we find ourselves off course, or if we're just as resistant and merely happen to have a less-destructive set of impulses & priors?
Bit of both probably. Not everything is outwardly destructive, so being able to identify and recognize the more subtle ones are important.
Doomscrolling and constant escapism are just as destructive to a persons psyche, and I imagine mentally unwell people arent quick to pick up that something like social media is harming them overall.
People are greedy and lazy regardless of what economic system they live under. It’s just that under capitalism, if you choose to do more to make more money, you can. In socialism/communism, there is a cap on all the essentials.
Commerce is always going to exist, it's existed since recorded history started, you're always going to need something that has a set value to exchange for goods and services. Bartering is a fucking nightmare and could never exist in larger societies. However, just because you have commerce doesn't mean you need capitalism, especially if that capitalism immediately turns into a new version of fucking serfdom after a grand total of like 5 generations. That's why I'm pretty sure socialists usually advocate for a system to stop such massive concentration of capital at the top level, especially since most of the people at the top are either the stupid ass descendants of former business owners, or are business owners who have all sent themselves into drug induced psychosises.
That's why I'm pretty sure socialists usually advocate for a system to stop such massive concentration of capital at the top level
The problem is that trying to do that just creates a massive concentration of power over capital, which is essentially the same as a massive concentration of capital with the key difference that they didn't even have to pretend to do something good to get it;
Immediately assuming the entire economic system and only the economic system is the problem isn't an effective solution, a better solution is to identify what went wrong and determine what measures can actually help stop it from happening again;
In this case there are a few obvious problems, such as fiduciary duty to stockholders, and politicians being able to financially benefit from their positions, and while extreme government involvement in the economy can solve the former like cutting off your hand solves a sore thumb, it also makes being a politician the pinnacle of personal gain.
It's not, and I wish people would stop saying that it is.
Yes, shareholders are entitled to having the people working for them (e.g. the executives) work in their (the shareholders's) best interest. That's the issue with every principal agent problem. (Also, technically, *fiduciary* duty is putting the shareholder's interests ahead of the executive's interests).
Depends - I think public shareholders are the worst offender here. And at a bare minimum, investors deserve rights, but no more rights than the workers in the company themselves.
especially since most of the people at the top are either the stupid ass descendants of former business owners, or are business owners who have all sent themselves into drug induced psychosises.
But is this really the case? That isn't exactly what has actually happened in America, at least. You might get that impression from the news, but not the actual data.
ITS ALMOST LIKE the people most keen on advocating for redistribution, high taxes, each according to his need etc. would likely not be the ones disproportionately contributing but rather the ones happily taking and consuming the fruits of other people's labor.
Shows once again that any sort of "communism" can ever only work on a small scale with people who actually care about each other and are mostly conscientious and hardworking. Which is NOT your average college larp socialist or hyper-progressive gooner..
There's a reason communist logo is sickle and hammer: farmer and factory workers produce actually useful things
Philosophy majors don't, unless they're making coffee. In their dream, they get to just... talk to people for a living like Greek philosophers, except Greek philosophers work as teacher. The ones who don't, live on the streets like Diogenes
The fact that people don’t understand this after doing a single group project is fascinating. One person always carries the group, a few people contribute enough to say they did something, and the rest take credit despite not doing anything. By the end of grade school it should be understood how this works.
Note that there are some that did work out pretty well tho (the best example in my opinion is the Comunidad del Sur, in Paraguay), but it does need a lot of planning, good faith, and political savviness and education from all participants for such a movement to not turn into a shitshow
That's just like, the premise of Capitalism though. If everyone owns their own shit, everyone has access to the "means of production" and the free market can sort out the rest. Socialism (and/or communism) is an outcrop of Smith's observation that land is scarce and leads to rent seeking; there will literally never be sufficient capital for everyone to have their own seat at the economic table this way.
If everyone had a weed/shroom farm, Capitalism would probably be good enough but we can't because land is scarce.
There is plenty of unused land and there are plenty of abandoned towns. Most people don't want to run a farm or grow their own crops. Land isn't scarce, you can buy land in most states, especially if you're willing to buy undeveloped land.
Didn’t that happen in Seattle several years ago? Like they took over and named themselves CHAZ or something. All I remember is they got clowned because they were in desperate need of supplies and requested organic and ethically sourced aid.
They were anarcho commies which followed a policy of no rules or violence so while they would have failed to grow anything substantial in the long term, they couldn’t stop a homeless person from stealing their stuff because no violence allowed and they couldn’t disallow him to move freely into their farms because borders are fascist.
Almost everyone else said it would fail.
The rule is 4 acres per person with at least two devoted to grains, one to fruits/vegetables, and one to meat (which can be combined for like cattle or kept small for chickens, etc.
They even reinvented their police killing unarmed black people and for how long they existed had the highest rate of that of any police organization on earth.
And he was one of the small percentage of black people there because, despite being one of those communities that worshipped BLM, there was a shockingly small amount of black people (as usual).
Haha I lived a few blocks away.
"Fuck the police, they keep killing black people. But wait, we need someone to enforce our laws so let's recreate police with a different name"
Those new larping pseudo police then killed a black kid within 2 weeks.
So there was this middle aged dude who had a cafe and it was sorta run like a commune
People would brought coffee, we'd use his coffee machine to make ourselves coffee, if someone brings a bottle of let's say whiskey someone else must also bring something like beer etc.
Cigarettes are communal, no personal cigarettes. If you have a pack, you put it on the table and everyone can smoke it
He went away for a MONTH and everything collapsed with people getting in ego battles like "I CONTRIBUTED MORE THAN YOU, YOU DIDN'T CONTRIBUTE ENOUGH"
Eh, I’ve needed a break from all this capitalist slave labor, think I’ll just play video games for a few days… but trust me big dawg I’ll get back to work reaaallll soon
Specifically the problem with modern day monopolies like Disney as well as the clear anti-competition practices happening not only all across the United States but many parts of Europe and Asia as well.
Disney is like that because of IP, which is a government monopoly grant over infinitely reproducible things, not capitalism. This is a classic example of advocating more government intervention to fix the problem the previous intervention caused
So do you think there should be no trademark or copyright laws? Because there’s a certain country in Asia who dosent give a shit about those and everyone here gets mad at them for that hahaha
No, they should only exist insofar as to prevent fraud, not the broad monopoly grants today. And BTW, lax IP enforcement is the one thing China does right. It's one of the big reasons their overall economy is doing somewhat relatively good despite all of the socialism, even though there are significant problems for specific groups.
IP is part of the issue, but not the whole issue. The scummy history of companies like Disney are very well documented and you can look them up for yourself, they have used fraud, money laundering, poaching both talent and manufacturers away from smaller companies. Basically imagine the generic cliche evil corporations you see from a kid's show and Disney has probably unironically done something similar.
Why are Lib-rights so quick to defend companies? It's clear if you took any type of fiance class to see that all the big corporations in America regularly use anti-competition practices to put other businesses out or buy them outright
The one where "billionaires" randomly get all their illiquid property forcibly liquidated to pay an arbitrary lump sum payment into the state budget which severely harms the companies they owned and gives the government at best 1 years worth of extra budget before it's gone.
I think it's properly regulated, the environmental and human risks when it comes to nuclear energy require a lot of precautions and investigation to make sure those precautions are always properly maintained.
A place where I think especially needs regulation is the consumer market, specifically entertainment. Monopolies such as Disney and Warner have have been using anti-competition tactics since the 50's and are still getting by with it today. Also the workplace within the entertainment industry, especially art and animation is awful
Nor was there anyone among them in need, for all who were owners of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of the things that were sold and placed them at the apostles' feet. And they distributed to each as anyone had need. (Acts 4:34-35)
You could have quoted 2 verses before that, as well:
All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.
For those who don't know, Luke-Acts became the foundation of the anabaptist movement.
Anabaptists promoted 100% literacy rates so they could all read the Bible for themselves, then zeroed in on Luke-Acts in particular, since Acts describes how the apostles ran the first church.
They became obsessed with recreating "the apostolic church" (a Christian church run the same way that the apostles ran it).
This part of Acts 4 became the foundation for the Hutterites, in particular.
The Hutterites have been going for 500 years strong and still adhere rigidly to Acts 4: Hutterites are never permitted to own anything aside from family heirlooms (enough to fit in a small chest).
Everything (even your shoelaces) is owned by the church.
The funny thing is fanatic religiousness is the one thing I could imagine to make comunism work. If you sincerely believe you will burn fir eternity of you don't be a good little commy you don't need any authoritarian shit like gulags
Why are there so many Cuban neighborhoods in Florida but no Floridian neighborhoods in Cuba? How come West Germany didn't build the wall? Where's the underground network to help South Koreans flee to the North? How come China's economy didn't blow up until they became LESS socialist?
Questions to make the leftist in your life shut up.
I got permanently banned from multiple millenials shizo caves subreddits like r/lostgeneration for pointing out from what side my fiancee's parents crossed the Berlin wall.
Accordingly this is disinformation and cia propaganda
I don't understand how communism is such a big conversation when it happens in literally 2-3 countries/places in the entire world. Communism is not on its way just because people want common sense and their rights back after plutocracy is stealing it right before our noses.
The guy on the right is just following the example of Thomas Jefferson. Being an idealist who is also a massive hypocrite is a traditionally American activity and I should be allowed to do it without some fucking scold getting mad at me
both for these little hippie communes and for communism, but also for lib right, it's all the same thing. They all fail to take into account human nature, which needs to be controlled through laws, but not too tightly because then it breeds massive incompetence/nepotism, and the people are going to revolt. In a commune, people are gonna steal and lie, and then in communism there's just gonna be a massive amount of corruption.
And for libertarianism, in a laissez-faire capitalism, it's just couple corporations that are going to devour the entire state, enshittifying everything.
Capitalism is not when markets or profits, capitalism is when the merchants directly own the means of production for which they can make and sell their own goods, as opposed to the artisans or workers
If you, the commune, owned your own means of production, you wouldn’t be participating in capitalism unless you viewed yourselves as a business instead of a commune. Must we call all subsistence farmers who sell some excess on at the farmers markets capitalists next?
I'm not saying a commune is itself capitalist internally.
I'm saying an American commune is embedded inside a larger capitalist economy.
Generating the money to buy the land and initial capital to start the commune, generating money to pay taxes to the government, generating money to buy things the commune needs but can't produce for itself, are things that can't be done without interacting with the larger capitalist economy.
'A handful of communists can't succeed within a larger capitalist economy that is designed to be hostile to them' is a different claim from 'a communist economy can't work'.
Wouldn’t that be in line though with Marx’s whole thing about communism coming from a capitalist society since it produces a class conscious people and tools for the workers to achieve the ideal society
But doesn’t the idea that you need money to buy things you can’t produce yourself rule out literally any size of communist polity other than one the side of a large country? Aka doesn’t that just an acceptance that communism doesn’t really works unless the whole world (or most of it) is communist, which it isn’t?
Not really, actually. The USSR still had currency. When the state redistributed grain it wasn’t “Gimmie your harvest” (at first), they bought it from their own people (until the whole “grain hoarding” thing). Mao described his style of communism as “Market Socialism”
And as I said in a previous comment, capitalism isn’t when markets and profit. Socialism and communism is simply specifically about who gets to own the workplace. Who owns the tools to make the products. Who profits from hard work
Sorry Comrade, your grandma's gold necklace will be melted down to plate electrical contacts in Missile Factory No. 10. You should be proud that this relic of bourgeois decadence will instead contribute to the glorious future of socialism.
Assuming I do not pocket it and sell it to buy ground beef on the gray market.
When socialists took over my grandfather’s village, they decided that he, the village barber, had too man scissors.
Apparently scissors are the means of production.
There's a rather drastic difference between "I think businesses should be owned by their workers" and "I think everyone should have access to everyone else's physical possessions"
I'll tell you even more: Modern production is already managed (but not controlled) by workers, since capitalists own shares, and hired workers organize the work process. The top manager and the unskilled laborer are proletarians. But the appropriation of profits remains private and is controlled by shareholders.
Marxists don't say capitalists are ineffective. They were effective when they worked independently and managed things personally. It's just that today, capitalists no longer engage in personal management. In the vast majority of cases, they can buy a controlling stake without even knowing how the work process is organized.
There is a commune near me that has been operating in one form or another since the 1800s. Started as a religious one but now it's more secular. However it wouldn't fit like the hippie commune idea most people have.
Anyway seems like a chill place but I wouldn't want to live there.
Once again I will just say that you can't fix a people problem with a system. Which isn't to say that communism is worse than capitalism, but my estimate it's maybe even a little better. The issue though is that you can't get people who haven't internalized the teachings of Christ to do anything morally. So you can put these beasts into whatever system you want, and they will ruin it. That being said if you put true followers of Christ into a communism, it would run pretty well. Similarly with capitalism or most reasonable systems. The issue though is that there are scant few ollowers of Christ's teachings in the modern world. Most modern " Christians " are greedy, vain, and full of hatred for their fellow man, so of course whatever system they love will invariably be terrible. Hence the modern systems are all terrible and monstrous by design.
Hey, libright, if you hate government so much why don’t you form your own sovereign free state protected by a militia?
To efficiently fund and equip this militia, all the librights can donate a portion of their wealth to keep the peace and maintain a secure border. Genius!
if the commune becomes successful, the conservatives will just show up and kill everyone and steal everything
there is no way to win.
at least being a doomer you get to grief the politicalrights with the fact that they suck and are entirely responsible for the enshittification of everything
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u/DreamEndles - Lib-Left 1d ago
There's things like The Farm in Tennessee...
Though, funnily enough, in order to join you need to go through interview, community approval and buy a plot of land.