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by chrisseaton 1846 days ago
> Otherwise this feels seriously off - just being able to add new rules that people must adhere to whether they agree or not.

Have you heard of 'democracy'?

When your government writes a new law by majority do you have to adhere to it whether you agree or not?
1 comments
Nursie 1846 days ago
Democracy is not a contract with a homeowners organisation. HOAs are not government.
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chrisseaton 1846 days ago
> Democracy is not a contract with a homeowners organisation.

It's the same mechanism. The only difference is you agree to be bound by the rules of the HOA - contract rather than common law. The HOA is a direct democracy. It can vote to change the rules - you can give your input as a vote, but you're bound by the majority. It's the same system.

> HOAs are not government.

They're a form of local government.

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igetspam 1846 days ago
This. They have the strength of law up to the point where they conflict with local laws and they are rarely optional. I moved to a property whose restrictions expired 20 years ago and only one home owner wants an HOA. The rest of us just ignore his letters. The land is unrestricted, we have mineral rightS and when the neighbor's cows got out and pooped in my lawn, we laughed about.
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Nursie 1846 days ago
> The HOA is a direct democracy. It can vote to change the rules - you can give your input as a vote, but you're bound by the majority. It's the same system.

Then that sounds terrible.

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chrisseaton 1846 days ago
How else should people govern themselves?
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Nursie 1846 days ago
Not at the neighbourhood level?

Sure, democracy that works by majority (or majority party) or whatever makes sense for actual government. But my street is not a government, and devolving the sort of power to change rules and impose fines, liens or whatever on my house to the rest of the folks in the street, without even requiring unanimous agreement on the rules by all the property owners, is just nuts.

I would never put myself at the mercy of whoever I happen to live on a street with like that. I'm glad these things are rare to non-existent in the UK.

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mikem170 1846 days ago
I don't think that democracy is not synonymous with a 51% majority. There's super-majorities, consensus, and unanimous votes.

A lot of people who strongly believe in democracy (real democracy) don't believe that 51% of the people should be allowed to impose their views on the other 49%. That can lead to big problems. They would say to keep talking, negotiating, and compromising, and that it you can't reach consensus then the proposal should not be passed.

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pas 1846 days ago
Well, indeed it seems almost impossible to get a good "rules of democracy", but if the majority wants something and they don't get it, that's the tyranny of the minority, that kind of defeats the purpose of democracy. (It's easy to say that passing new motions/resolutions/laws require consensus, but if the current system benefits a minority that can block the new laws ... you have a problem.)

Obviously, on the other hand if 50% + 1 can do whatever just happens to be on their mind, that seems like a very-very bad (or good, if you are the more evil-er sibling to Satan) recipe for disaster.

...

And here were are. Extreme polarization, fight for survival, everything is up for grabs (voting rights, citizenship/deportation, budget, supreme court seats, filibuster).

Justice is hard. (Rawls' Theory of Justice proposes that what's fair is just, and it defines that as a reflective equilibrium ... which seems a pretty elegant solution - especially if you have spent too much time in abstract math classes.)

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