If you were to be so bold as to point out to a socialist that "collectivism" has a poor historical record, you are likely to get the response "That was then. This is now. Its different now" or "It hasn't been tried here".
Those are testable assertions.
Home Owners Associations
Home Owners Associations have don't have outright abolition of private property. They still let you pay the full mortgage payment AND HOA fees to boot.
However, they often severely curtail what I think of as private property rights. Want to plant a fruit tree in your front yard? Gotta get permission. Want to mow your own lawn? Gotta get permission. Want to opt out of the cost of the decorative, new street lamps? Ain't gonna happen.
There are few social constructs more hated than HOAs. If you hate living in an HOA then you are going to loath socialism.
The Florida Condominium Crisis
The 12 story Champlain Towers South building in Surfside, Florida partially collapsed in June of 2021 and 98 people died.
Investigations into the structural failure revealed that the primary cause was corrosion of the steel rebar in the concrete that had been exacerbated by leakage from the swimming pool. The corrosion caused the diameter of the rebar to increase which shattered the concrete it was embedded in.
Investigation of similar structures in Florida revealed that the problem was systemic and all condominiums with above-ground swimming pools showed similar degradation to the reinforced concrete pillars supporting the building. They are all ticking time-bombs.
Remediation is extremely expensive (vacate underground parking, jack up building, demo rotten concrete and rusted structural steel, replace with new). The condominium assessment for the "fix" will likely exceed the market value of the unit.
Owners stopped making payments and allowing the properties revert back to the banks they had borrowed the mortgage from. The multi-unit, beachfront condo market in Florida is in free-fall.
Socialism (socially owned property) has a poor record of maintenance of long-term assets. Look at Venezuela's oil infrastructure...it was in total free-fall under and Maduro.
Snip Venezuela was historically among the wealthiest economies in South America, particularly from the 1950s to 1980s.[19] With the turn of the 21st century, the Venezuelan economy has been in a state of total collapse since 2013.
ReplyDeleteYet, it's ALWAYS Different THIS time....
I fear for my grandchildren's future.
Socialists always claim that this time will be different, and always run out of other people's money. Every socialist government in the UK has always left office with higher unemployment, poorer financial outcomes and higher debt than when they took office.
ReplyDeleteThe tragedy of the current UK situation is that the intervening period of so-called "conservative" government between the Blair/Brown and current Starmer administrations is that they were anything but conservative, so that Starmer has started his cycle of destruction from an already dire point (but he's still hell-bent on full throttle socialist destruction).
If you think socialism works, you never shared an apartment with 6 or so other people.
ReplyDeleteCollectivism has - at least historically - often been implemented by theorists who do not have to experience the dire outcome of their policies. (Perhaps inherent in this historical note is the idea if political science/theory should be anything more than theory rather than the practice of implementing theory: it occurs to me that - like most social sciences - it is people observing and commenting on things they have not experienced or implementing solutions on a grand scale that they have not tested in the equivalent of the lab.)
ReplyDeleteWe had a pretty benign HOA in New Home for most things, although they were pretty adamant about addition of small structures (sheds, etc.) without approval.
Socialism is based on everybody else giving up something... while those in power keep what they have and take the money (and run).
ReplyDelete