Marx’s basic premise is that socio-economic statuses for different groups, the proletariat and the bourgeois ruling classes are defined by their relationship to private property and the means of production. Marx believed as many long-haired, dirty, grimy, tree hugging hippies believe to this very day that by eradicating this relationship of property that peace on earth will finally be realized. It’s an excessively naive view of the world, and has failed time and time again due to the fact that such a society always requires administrators, and those administrators always attempt to rule through dictatorship. In the case of the Palmera Apartments in Mason, the apartment dweller, (the non-owners) gain enormous voting power because of their sheer numbers. The bureaucrats of Mason City government get to impose fees on the developer of the apartment and keep a leash on their control of their own property so to best serve the apartment dwellers. These fees pay their administrative costs, but also keep the developer from gaining too much personal power.
Governments in general all have a tendency toward socialism, because they function as a collective, not as individuals responsible for their own thoughts and action. The blob mentality of no property ownership, no ownership of ideas, or even of personal relationships are destroying the human race, and it can all be hung presently on the gutter bum, Karl Marx and his legions of leeching intellectuals. In The United States the government sued Microsoft for having a monopoly, to gain control of a company becoming too big and powerful. Today, that company is only a fraction of what it once was. And now Facebook has been artificially propped up by government so that it can tear it down again and take away from people the freedom enjoyed there. Facebook as I’m writing this is being attacked by government to level the playing field for others, and to gain control of the business. The behavior is more reminiscent of communism than capitalism, because the administrators of our economy are tampering with the ownership of assets in order to facilitate who does what according to their abilities, and who needs what according to their needs. Those determinations are made by the “collective,” by the mobs of the masses and it is sheer evil. Evil because the mob can determine what someone else does with their property. In the case of the Palmera Apartments the building code administrators and local school will decide the costs of the project. Up front the code people do. But after the apartments are built, the schools can increase their cost by raising taxes at the will of the mob. The owner will then have to decide to absorb the cost increase of the taxes, or raise their rental rates, which might push out the apartment dwellers because the apartments will then become too expensive. The intent of the mob is that by using communism, the apartment owner is forced to surrender their profits, their means of production, to the “collective. Rich Hoffman.
