I understand it if someone is doing it in view of other people, causing an eyesore, but if you have to go to such lengths to see what they're doing, then whom exactly are they harming with what they're doing on their own property?
In a city I can't even leave a garbage bin in front of my garage. Rural, I could burn it in my front yard
Big country is big, isn't homogeneous.
The county government does little and our property taxes reflect that.
I can and have burned very large piles in my yard, but we're not savages. I have to notify the local volunteer fire department first, or they're libel to show up, and not happily.
There's a high fire risk in this area and smoke watchers will report it, and the VFD gets dispatched. They don't respond individually.
We left because over the last 15 years the decay of uniform public law enforcement has essentially led to "norms" being enforced by the local landowning elites. And they have certain characteristics that make them highly identifiable. IOW, if you look like them, you get all the space you have said you prefer. If not, well, there's not a lot to limit the potential downsides.
This has also led to a large increase in trash behavior out on the public lands. Lots of new wildcat trails/double track for instance. For us it got pretty uncomfortable a few times in the last 5-6 years. We began to post the shotguns in a highly visible place in the camp, or in the truck. That definitely helped.
Like New York? The above commenter said law enforcement advised them to get guns which is what I've experienced growing up rural; tyrannical power mongers who are as you said, the sole power, try to take people's guns away.
https://www.quora.com/Who-originally-said-To-my-friends-ever...
In the history of the world, there has never been a law enforcement institution that enforced the rules equally to itself. The same is true of every power structure e.g. governance; financial elites; ...
Dictators don’t strike me as generally inclined to recommend having the capacity for self defense. I think you are just trying to come up with the worst possible interpretation of intention.
Americans also feel more taxed, again, at every level above.
Ironically, I think the more centralised power is, the more uniformly its managed, the more free one feels under it -- since there arent as many competing interests to worry about
Quite a sweeping generalization considering we're talking about a headline of a single, unusual case.
Where I'm at, the city doesn't even care if you put up a fence blocking sight triangles at an intersection, much less what you do with your property that they can't see.
The obsession with reminding us how flawed and comedic our checks and balances are, how little accountability there is. how “but at least you can talk about it” will be used to invalidate the issue by people indoctrinated by our compromisestitution
Literally on an article documenting the state being checked. A corollary to those who choose security over freedom deserving neither is those who choose nihilism over truth and activism are choosing a weak form of mental security.
I don't know how much this applies to that comment, but "the Land of the Free" is actually full of Calvinist predestination.
"A bad thing happened to someone so they must have deserved it. I'll never have a town surveilling my yard from the sky searching for any excuse to fine me."
Zoning and the use of police powers generally seem to have almost no limits.
It’s almost always just related to standards of appearance. Landscaping, building modifications, having junk laying around, etc.
But garbage pickup was as far as I know managed by the county.
My HOA does. It mows lawns and removes snow. That's almost it: the rules are largely about not storing explosives in your house, which is apparently a thing in Wyoming.
Let me tell you about mine. Apart from snow removal and mowing the common lands, we handle curbside trash collection, repairs to water mains, flushing hydrants, maintaining streetlights (and paying for the electricity to light them), capital projects to manage stormwater, paving, sewer maintenance, installing fiber, forest management, etc. We also negotiate group rates for utilities like gas and electricity. A recent major project is replacing the pumps in our sewer lift station to the tune of $17k (an expense we budgeted for, thankfully). So yeah, apart from things like education and emergency services, we are basically a 19 house municipality.
Failing to adhere to HOA rules (which may not be readily apparent) results in fines and conflict with a group that's empowered to make decisions about your property. When homeowners have these decisions taken away and are forced to shell out, it becomes a financial and psychological strain that prompts people who would otherwise be enjoying the property to leave (or to not purchase it in the first place).
My neighborhood has an HOA. I'm not allowed to use a grill on my deck. I can't just leave piles of trash in my yard. I can't install a garbage disposal unit in my sink. There are rules and the kind I would have really rolled my eyes at when I was younger.
But these rules, the HOA, they are required by state and federal law: https://www.hopb.co/new-hampshire
Condos are "common interest living spaces", if someone's house caught fire it can spread to the others. If the septic tank gets screwed up we all need to contribute to get that fixed. There are certain liabilities involved here that require some kind of legal entity to adjudicate, this is the role our HOA fills.
While I don't have the numbers, I speculate that the majority of HOAs in the United States were likely created for similar reasons. Fundamentally an HOA is kind of like the residential version of a workers cooperative, they enable high density housing where everyone gets to have equity. Living under an HOA will always be better than living under a landlord, yet I feel few make this connection, especially when considering who is more likely to discriminate.
The important part about a downward spiral is to not continue it. This is doubly true in a context where the parent post is using questionable rhetorical tricks.
Where?
They don't choose to live there, they have to because a lot/almost all of new developments is done under HOA rules and you gotta live somewhere.
With many people who push the boundaries, one thing often leads to another, which leads to more costly measures of getting violators back into compliance.
Yes, often the first violation doesn't seem too big, but those violations are often indications of more to come.
HOA mentality is cult like or a mini police state and the comment here is a perfect example of that. Nothing happening in that HOA is that important, and ultimately does not matter. In other parts of the world people are dying of hunger and being slaughtered, in America there are tent cities, and people in HOA are so isolated and safe that they take to freaking out about Betty 2 streets down not getting approval before putting a sign in her front yard. Spend your lives worried about more important shit, both HOA and zoning (who will roll up on properties snapping pictures too), because the things you are losing your minds over are things that do not matter. At all.
It seems like you folks have never read zoning bylaws which a municipalities use to say what can and can't be done in certain areas. Believe it or not, city planning is incredibly important to ensure that a town can efficiently tax its inhabitants to fund the services that have become an expectation of normal life.
If you don't like your zoning laws, you should get involved in local politics and try to change the things you don't like.
In fact Long Lake Township has a 238 page document that lays this out.
https://longlaketownship.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Zoni...
And your recommending that the solution is to become an expert in a 238 book, which is larger than some of the worlds most infamous novels, then, spend the rest of your life doing the recommended "If you don't like your zoning laws, you should get involved in local politics and try to change the things you don't like." fighting for years to get any attention on your issue, mostly being ignored because they already talk shit about you in the entire zoning department (I used to date a woman who worked zoning and they have nicknames for people, call them trashy, etc), then maybe one day, years down the road, you might get some compromised version of what you wanted, that still doesn't allow you to do as you wish on your property so long as it's legal and out of sight, and you've wasted a bunch of your life's free time, spent most of it frustrated, and ultimately don't get what you want and just say fuck it and go back to doing what you want and saying screw the zoning rules anyway.
The "if you don't like it, get involved and change it from the inside" solution doesn't work well in individual issues (or large issues honestly), and shouldn't be needed in cases like this anyway.
HOA is a whole different ballgame, not the same as zoning.
It’s weird this is a story about the USA and not somewhere I’d expect it more like Russia.
You're saying this on an article documenting how this is likely illegal.