I like that you have the guts to challenge the powers that be. To be honest,
however, I am having a hard time getting behind your complaint about the
zoning regs where you chose to build your house. I like the building codes. It
gives me the confidence that if I move into a previously owned home there is
some predictability that it will accommodate my needs. I don't think you can
build a case (for the typical citizen) on this, for championing a revolution.
Thankee for that measure of support. Any support at all is rare around here at the moment!
It's not simply the building codes, though that's part of it. It's the accretion of tens or hundreds of thousands of pages of law and regulation. Have you ever, for example, looked at the Federal Register? All those proposed regulations, virtually every one of the either requiring that you do something you otherwise might choose not to do, or that you refrain from doing something that you otherwise might want to do. Either forced obesience, or denial of freedom. Any single one of them might be justifiable on its own (though it's hard for me to see any way it was legitimate for the federal government to declare the 3 x 8 foot patch of grass that grows in a low point on our five acres that is soggy during the winter--because we haven't kept open the drainage ditches that the owners of the land fifty years ago dug--a wetland subject to federal regulation). But as we all know, enough straws break a camel's back.
As to the building regulations and your protection, why isn't it YOUR responsibility to have the home you want to buy inspected to see whether you want to buy it? If you were willing to accept personal responsibility for your decision to buy the home, you wouldn't need the government to be involved at all. So in some ways we are responsible for our own loss of freedoms -- we prefer to have Uncle take responsibility for us rather than having to be responsible ourselves. |
