Zoning & the Fourth Reich (Part 3)
by James Stivers of the McCroskey Territorial Agrarian Society
copyright, 2024
For Part 2
Codes for a Captured Market
Karl Marx was said to have gloated at the news that the Americans were enfranchising non-property owners. Until the middle of the 19th Century, questions pertaining to property taxes could only be decided by voters who were property owners. With the right to vote given to non-property owners, Marx felt that it was effectively the abolition of property: it being the first plank of the Communist Manifesto.
It was doubtful that Americans consciously intended this to be the case, but as is often true of epochs in history, sometimes the consequences of a new legal doctrine takes generations to play out.
In the case of property rights, it is foundational to society. When God commanded the Israelites, “Thou shalt not steal,” it necessarily presupposed the definition of property. It is impossible to “steal” something if it cannot be demonstrated to belong to someone else. Thus, allowing non-property owners the right to vote on questions pertaining to the taxation of property, it has resulted in “organized plunder” under the color of law. As Fredrick Bastiat is known to have said in his 19th Century classic, The Law,
The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law becomes the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself [is] guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish!
The consequences are playing out now throughout the full strata of American society. “Organized plunder” under the guise of government action is being replicated in the brazen “bands of robbers” now plundering our grocery markets and department stores: “monkey see, monkey do.”
So diminished is the respect of property rights, that we are witnessing the fulfillment of Thomas Macaulay’s prediction from the 19th Century – the English philosopher who in response to a boatsful American, said:
Your country will be laid waste by barbarians in the 20th Century.
So, now, here we are.
Whatever might be the platitudes associated with Marxist doctrine, as it has played out in history, it served for nothing else than to create a captured market wherever it has gone.
That is why the wealthy tycoons of Wall Street provided both financial, logistical and material support for Lenin and his Bolsheviks. They salivated over the vast wilderness that was Russia and the opportunity to colonize it. But the Russian aristocracy, corrupt as it was, stood in the way.
These wealthy elite did not want land reform to benefit the peasants, they wanted it as a means of transition to the state – with the state being run, in true fascist form, as a union of economic power with the power of the civil authority.
Zoning in the United States has served the same purpose.
The goal of zoning and the building codes is not public safety, but increased tax revenues. If every landowner is required to use his property to build expensive homes, then the tax assessor can appraise it at a higher value and consequently impose a higher tax assessment.
The comfort and safety of said structures need not be materially different if they are built with 2×6’s with 24 inch stud centers, as opposed to 2×4’s with 16 inch centers, or whether the insulation has an R-24 or an R-32 value. The difference is the contrived marketability. For what structures will bankers lend? Bankers not only lend to build homes, but they also lend to the companies which manufacture building materials. If a manufacturer has borrowed $1 billion to make rolls of insulation of R-32 value, it cannot make its payments if the merchandise languishes in a warehouse. What better way to move product than to “update” the codes and require that builders use it instead of the rolls of R-24?
This kind of manipulation is happening all of the time and in fact an argument can be made that the quest for a captured market is the ONLY reason for the codes.
Cookie-cutter, tract-housing construction makes such companies a lot of money. It should be no wonder that the property owner – who builds on his land to suit his preferences and tastes – should be vilified as “incompetent” and a “hazard” to public safety.
As for durability, most construction materials have a 20-year shelf-life before new materials and new methods must be employed which require an updated code. On this score, Europe is ahead from its centuries-long reliance on indigenous building materials.
After the forests gave-out, builders used the soil around them to bake bricks and other masonry products to build with stone. Thus, the construction of homes and buildings which constituted estates which could be passed-down to heirs through the centuries became standard fare. This custom is nearly impossible in the United States which does not allow a true culture to emerge. Instead, it has become the home of transient peasants.
The Tourism Trap
(to be continued)
Return to Part 2