Communal Living vs. Private Living

Communal Living vs. Private Living

As the new president of the Board of Governors of my homeowners association I see some individual behaviors that help me realize why communism and communes have always lagged behind private property societies.

We have old wooden tilt up garage doors. Some doors have a little dry rot that needs repairing. Instead of repairing the dry rot some members have said they want to replace the old wooden doors with new steel roll up sectional doors. The association is responsible for the doors. The owner is responsible for the operating system connected to the door. There are many excuses given for replacing the current doors but it boils down to a lot of people have not serviced the systems that operate their garage doors, thus their door openings are not proper and they want the association to just buy new roll up doors which come with new and lubricated springs. Many people have on their own lubricated their opening systems and replaced their springs to make sure they can open the door in the event of an electrical power failure.

Those people who maintained their systems did so at their expense. This is a private expense and does not go on the records of the association. If the association pays for the service it is a public expense and is not as efficient because the association has to pay a manager to solicit bids. The public expenses also reduce our reserve account which reduces the value of our property. The bottom line is that some members of the association will try to exploit the community property.

Exploitation of community property is shown in water uses of apartment and condo dwellers compared to single family residents with individual meters. In a water conservation program in one nearby city that raised its rates they saw a reduction of 14% water usage by single family homes that had to pay for the water individually. In comparison, condos and apartment dwellers only reduced their water consumption by 3%.

 

If the President of the Association Board of Governors can find a way to save the association $5000 the President will only save himself $69 because the savings is divided by the 72 condo units.    Thus the president will not invest as much time to save $69 as he would to save $5000.    This is another reason communisim has always been less efficient than private property.

Individually private property has only been used by humans for a short time. Most of human history had communal ownership of land. Those societies that created private property prospered more than the communal societies.

Charles Tolleson