alt Hacker NewsI have a house in Costa Rica where there a lot of expats living in communities need to self organize because zoning and permit laws are slow, bureaucratic, and basically unenforced.
I cannot tell you how insanely inefficient and impossible it is to get 40 different families who all live on the same street to unanimously agree on something like a communal security system or a communal garbage can where all participants all fairly contribute and consume those services. And this is all done on a WhatsApp group over txt messages where nuance gets lost.
People complain about governments being slow, but until you experience the alternative (I have) you will simply never understand why its the lesser of two evils.
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Isn't the alternative to government being slow government being fast? It's just that it can be fast by disregarding democracy, which is bad.
You actually have a slow government and are complaining about it. You have not experienced any alternative to slow government.
> impossible it is to get 40 different families who all live on the same street to unanimously agree on something
There's your problem. You are requiring unanimous agreement? Republics (et al.) were invented for a reason.
The issue I’ve seen with these lowest levels of governance is pettiness. Why did so and so get a break and not me five years ago? I don’t like plants why do we need a watering system? I’m allergic to mosquito foggers, can people just stay in at night, etc., etc.
This sounds really efficient actually compared to the alternative in many developed countries where new houses simply do not get built at all after spending a lot of money on admin fees for nothing.
"Nuance gets lost" well with centralized politics, the whole damn point gets lost.
> People complain about governments being slow, but until you experience the alternative (I have) you will simply never understand why its the lesser of two evils.
A point that comes up over and over again when discussing HOA's. See the recent submission:
You still have "democracy"/governance there in your neighborhood in Costa Rica.
> People complain about governments being slow
You're literally describing a government
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So you are trying to DIY a government but with no prior experience? Sounds like a nightmare.