{"id":605,"date":"2018-09-02T17:37:47","date_gmt":"2018-09-03T00:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/?page_id=605"},"modified":"2025-07-20T16:04:22","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T23:04:22","slug":"disco-bay-1992","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/disco-bay-1992\/","title":{"rendered":"Disco Bay (1992)"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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I lived instead in a place like this<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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I wrote the next piece, which I titled, \u201cWhy I Don\u2019t Live in Disco Bay,\u201d while living in Hong Kong. (Disco Bay refers to the Discovery Bay development on Lantau Island.) Here I take issue with the libertarian idea that because private property is necessary for a free society, maximum freedom comes when all property is privately owned. When I wrote this, I was under Asiaweek\u2019s thumb not to freelance, so I wrote it under the pseudonym R.K. Lamb. (\u201cLam\u201d is my surname in Chinese.) It appeared in the May 1992 issue of Liberty.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Years ago, I used to live in a mobile-home park in Everett, Washington. It was a \u201cproprietary community,\u2019\u2019 an example of the theory advocated by many libertarians. A private developer had built it. He owned the land, and he set the rules.<\/span><\/p>

Even the streets were private. But the speed limit was 10 m.p.h. \u2014 too slow, I thought. As a mere tenant, I had no vote in the matter. The owner also banned children. If a couple had a baby, they had to move out within one year.<\/span><\/p>

As a practical matter, moving out usually meant selling the home. When I decided to sell, I found that there was only one sales agent: the park manager. Legally he couldn\u2019t enforce his monopoly, though he would have if the law allowed it. In practice he insisted on a 7 percent commission, and got it.<\/span><\/p>

He also objected to my plants. The entrance to my front door was a tunnel under a broadleaf lilac tree and a vine maple. \u201cThese\u2019ll have to go,\u2019\u2019 he said distastefully. He was ready to come around with his backhoe and rip the trees out himself, and bill me a hundred bucks. I had nothing to say about it. He owned the land, and could have ordered me to dig up the trees any time.<\/span><\/p>

The manager\u2019s place had no trees \u2014 just a flat lawn and three trimmed camellias shoved up against his sheet-metal siding. Well, he was the manager, and he set the esthetic standards in his park. Plastic ducks and ceramic leprechauns were OK, but not vine maples. Too disorderly.<\/span><\/p>

It was a relief to get back to the public streets. Nobody told me what to plant or dig up. For a couple of lazy years, I harvested the back lawn with a Weed Eater once a summer, when the grass dried out and got to be a fire hazard. In the mobile-home park they would\u2019ve sent a boy to do it and billed me at the end of the month.<\/span><\/p>

In the city where I live now they don\u2019t have mobile-home parks, but across the harbor is a proprietary community called Disco Bay, reachable only by motor launch. In Disco Bay, the only vehicles you\u2019re allowed to have are golf carts. The development company has a monopoly on the sale of these carts, and behaves just the way theaters do when they set the prices on popcorn. The developer also has a monopoly on the ferry service. Every time it raises fares the newspapers in town are full of complaints. Residents have staged demonstrations \u2014 though at Disco Bay itself, I believe, they have no legal right to do so. It\u2019s all private property.<\/span><\/p>

Libertarians are all in favor of private property, and a (near?) absolute right of the owner to set the rules. They are also in favor of such things as freedom of speech, of assembly, demonstrations and picketing. But in a private-property world, in what place are these to be exercised? Where do you see them now: on public streets? or in proprietary shopping malls?<\/span>
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Employers are also proprietary communities. Libertarians can be counted on to oppose mandatory urine tests of, say, state university professors. But if a privately owned lumber company orders drug tests of its sawmill workers, what then? It\u2019s not a hypothetical case. Some companies now insist on testing for nicotine to cut down on their health-care costs. This is private sector \u2014 if you don\u2019t like it, quit and work somewhere else. Completely libertarian.<\/span><\/p>

You want all education to be private? So the private schools say: \u201cAny student who comes here has to have his urine tested once a week.\u2019\u2019 As a parent, I might like that a lot.<\/span><\/p>

The fellow from Stanford University, caterwauling in your July 1991 issue that he\u2019d been fired, doesn\u2019t seem to get this. He\u2019d publicly proclaimed that illegal drugs (MDA) were swell, and he was recommending them to his students; he had taunted the federal drug czar personally; and in effect, he had dared the university to fire him. So they did.<\/span><\/p>

What does this guy expect? By proprietary-community rules, Stanford can set any standard it wants. In a libertarian society it could insist on the right to search any lecturer\u2019s backpack \u2014 or his toilet bowl \u2014 as a condition for employment. In a private-property world, Stanford is just another employer \u2014 and wouldn\u2019t your employer fire you if you went around telling clients to eat illegal drugs? Mine would. In a private-property world, any employee who insists on \u201cacademic freedom\u201d against the management can damn well find another university to work for \u2014 or start his own. Only the university \u2014 the property owner \u2014 has academic freedom.<\/span><\/p>

Libertarians are quick to denounce public-sector officials, but if it\u2019s a for-profit corporation squeezing them, they accept it. I know a guy who\u2019s dead-set against government ID cards in his wallet, but spends more than 40 hours a week with a Boeing photo-ID pinned to his shirt. I know another who\u2019d never tolerate the government forbidding him to write, but has promised a private employer not to write articles like this one.<\/span><\/p>

So what do you want: A world where you can do mostly as you like? Or one in which today\u2019s public property is carved up into islands of private property, and the landlords have an unlimited right to set the rules? You\u2019ll get more rules, not fewer. The process won\u2019t be democratic. I didn\u2019t have any leverage against that mobile-park manager. My friend in Disco Bay is waiting months for his overpriced golf cart.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a9 1992 Bruce Ramsey<\/em><\/span><\/p>

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0<\/span>Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw replied to the editor that if I didn\u2019t like the private owner\u2019s rules, I<\/span><\/i>\u2008<\/span><\/i>should move. To get away from building codes in California, they had moved to Tonopah, Nevada. \u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I lived instead in a place like this I wrote the next piece, which I titled, \u201cWhy I Don\u2019t Live in Disco Bay,\u201d while living in Hong Kong. (Disco Bay refers to the Discovery Bay development on Lantau Island.) Here I take issue with the libertarian idea that because private property is necessary for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-605","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1527,"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/605\/revisions\/1527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}