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I’m Struggling with Personal Freedom Today
The Libertarian in me is struggling to stay consistent in my desire for personal freedoms, especially where personal property is concerned. Mustangman and I put our house on the market a couple days ago — we’re moving to Dayton, OH in a few weeks. The Portland market can only be described one way: hot! Most houses listed below $400,000 are under contract within a week, and we have been hoping for a fast sale.
This weekend, we packed up the kitties and took a trip up to Yakima to see Ryan M and his family while our realtor did open houses and a ton of showings. Everyone loved our house with one glaring exception. Here’s where we take a step back.
When you stand in the street looking at our house, to the right is a well-kept house and yard. To the left, you might as well be looking at a junkyard/auto repair shop. We never talk to this neighbor, who I not-so-affectionately refer to as “the grease monkey,” but he’s always out in his driveway “fixing” one of the three rusted-out 1960s Chevy trucks parked in his driveway and the street. In the back of the truck parked on the street is a load of roofing shingles waiting to be taken to the dump from where he replaced his roof … almost a year ago. There’s an old exercise bike in the front yard, along with several tires and an axle.
The backyard is so much worse. If you are ever in need of bags of concrete, water heaters, car parts, kitchen sinks, or marijuana, his backyard is the place to go. As you might imagine, the idea of living next to a trash heap is less than appealing to potential buyers. More than one person has said the next door neighbor was a barrier to them putting in an offer, and I am left desperately yearning for something I normally abhor — HOAs.
My general regard for HOAs is low; they many times end up being run by community busybodies seeking to create their little fiefdom by means of CC&Rs. I’ve seen ridiculous outcomes from battles fought in the month HOA meetings, resulting in huge fines being paid and lawsuits over the pruning of trees. But right now I would gladly proclaim, “My kingdom for an HOA!” While we live in a heavily populated area, we are part of an unincorporated town, so we are under the county’s jurisdiction. As such, there is little we can do to make the neighbor pick up his yard, which is affecting our home value.
I have always thought that people should be able to do with their property as they see fit. But what if the things you see fit are in bad taste? What if your lifestyle brings down the property value of those around you? At this point, are not his personal freedoms to live like a slob harming me? Should I have the right to require he conform to community standards of upkeep?
I’m conflicted about this, y’all. But more than that, I just really want to go over there and tell him, “Act like an adult, put your damn toys away, and go get a job!”
Published in General
In this case, “we all” was exclusive to us on Ricochet. I do think most people appreciate beauty, but they may disagree on what they find beautiful.
All private arbitration is backed by the full force of government authority.
Yes, my preference would be for courts to simply rubber stamp the private arbitration outcome. It’s true that last resort enforcement would fall on the government, but I don’t want courts deciding that the result reached by agreed upon arbitration was “unfair” or something.
Almost goes without saying. It’s the same reason why in some neighborhoods in NYC are very picked up and in other neighborhoods people are readily seen throwing their trash on the sidewalk. Some people just do not value cleanliness.
When I got my drivers license, I noticed the birthdate was wrong – the data input
monkeyperson mixed up a couple of digits (even though I triple-checked that all the info was right, AND they had my birth certificate in hand). No big deal, I thought. But that seems to be the one thing that can’t be changed. Name, weight, gender (it’s CA) – no problem. But birthday?So far the only one that has noticed was the campus ID person when I first entered my last university.
Huh?
He’s just throwing out insults to get a rise out of you Fred.
I’d rather give him the benefit of the doubt. (As we should all extend to one another.)
I am nothing if not an eternal optimist. Someday I’ll get through to him. In the meantime I’ll keep trying to patiently explain things to him.
By the way, I’m excited that you’re moving to Ohio! We should get together sometime!
You guys should do an Ohio meetup.
We’re coming in town April 20-24. I had reached out to @skipsul about doing a little meet up that weekend.
But he’s not wrong… freedom may not be scary to people, but it is certainly more work and it does require more creative problem solving. Government authority is safe and easy (at least in theory). It is very difficult to manage freedom.
Good news! We accepted an offer tonight (above asking too), and are now under contract. It’s so nice to not have to keep the place aggressively spotless anymore. We’ve been eating out so as to not get a call in the middle of cooking dinner that someone wants to show the house in 15 minutes. Now we can get back to some normalcy.
Huzzah Lebanese food.
Your libertarianism survives!
This is a really difficult conflict, I just can’t see a way of solving it… I know! Let’s get a bunch of guys with guns to throw people in cages if everyone else doesn’t conform to my prefered result!
Do you have Code Enforcement locally? Give them a call.
I know all that. I lived it, and yes I appreciate respect for private property rights. However, the city could have immediately said something to the affect of, “Raw sewage on the ground is a safety hazard to the community. The water is being shut-off today. You have 30 days to repair the sewer line and have it inspected. If it is not complete in 30 days we will condemn the property and the sheriff will move out the tenants”.
It took 2 years to fix a safety issue.
Would it be acceptable for a drunk to drive on the streets for 2 years while we go through a long complicated legal process? No we arrest them and get them off the road immediately.
It shouldn’t be easy to take away someone’s right to freedom and lock them up, but when they do things that endanger other people we do it all the time.
Keep Portland Weird. Just say that the neighbor is a free spirit. He’s living his truth.
Late to the party here, and maybe it’s been discussed, but did the guy live there when you moved in?
Sounds like he did and you guys bought it, which means some other sucker will too.
Now if he moved in after, that sucks and you just have to go on a super passive aggressive campaign to get him to move. Or move yourself, which you are doing.
Personally HOAs make me a bit nauseous and I’m currently in one. The idea that I can’t do what I want with my property infuriates me. I’d honestly rather have grease monkey next door than the super uniform boring same three homes repeated in a massive neighborhood. I am married, however, and my lovely bride couldn’t agree with me less on this point, so there you have it.
I pushed pretty hard to live in a trailer community, but she wouldn’t have it.
Hopefully in a few years we’ll move further out of town and then she and I will both be satisfied, her not wanting neighbors and me able to let my grass turn brown in August without getting a snarky note in the mail.
Edit: Congratulations on the sale. Have fun in Ohio?
“Elbow room! Cried Daniel Boone.”
Now I feel I can be a little more snarky – I think the full libertarian answer to “I don’t like what this piece of property looks like” is to buy that piece of property. If he’s initially not in a mood to sell, you have to keep raising the price until his price is found.
Read: I get to go back to being a slob!
(p.s. my phone bit the dust, but Kieran says Thank You!) :)
That’s the nice thing about libertarianism: there isn’t just one answer for problems.
Actually a pretty good thing to consider.
As I mentioned earlier, Mrs. Tabby had our prior house painted blue with a burgundy front door and burgundy window trim. We always told ourselves that our freedom to paint the house the colors we wanted was also the freedom that allowed our next door neighbor to avoid painting their house at all for decades, and to keep a non-running car in the driveway. Our situation with the neighbor never got to the level that some of you have described, so I may not have the proper frame of mind (they were actually very nice to us, though they were sometimes very unkind to each other). Me having the freedom to do my thing means someone else having the freedom to do his thing.
At this stage in our lives we are prepared to give up some of that freedom in exchange for a tidy neighborhood governed by an HOA. But we will be checking their restrictions to ensure we don’t get into one in which we can’t even fly an American flag on the front of our house.
This is my fear of an HOA. When I was working hard with my neighbors to get a meth house shut down, I had a big sign hung on my front fence stating: You Sell and I tell. It got ripped down a few times but I kept putting it back.
Thanks for admitting that all enforcement are always men with guns.
And yet, I am told I fear freedom because I worry that someone will build something next to my home that is not fit for residential.
If people are willing to set up a meth lab next to me when it is illegal to do so, what on earth makes libertarians think that sort of thing won’t happen if it is legal to do so?
I am going to start using Meth Lab instead of strip club, because that gives me a 2-fer: I can make fun of libertarian fantasies on lack of zoning and legalization of hard cord drugs.
Thanks Kay
Yeah, sorry I kinda dropped the ball on that – the last few weeks have been very very busy for me.
That assumes he will sell. A stubborn person out to grief others might never sell.
That the problem with Libertariansim: It fails to account for totally irrational people. It also appears to be set up to give maximum freedom to people to be annoying jerks.
Be enough of a jerk and you are doing “harm”, but that does not appear to include things like shifting the water so it crosses my land, or opening a club next door to play loud music all hours of the night. (Had happened to people).