He just wanted to park his truck next to his house.
The relevant part from Chapter 3 of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism" (can’t give you a page, as a "page" really doesn’t work on "Kindle on iPad"):
The central planners, of course, have no incentive to admit that their powers to act rationally are limited. When THE PLAN fails – as the THE PLAN ultimately must fail, being based on faulty and inadequate information – the planners invariably attempt to force society to conform to their plan, rather than reform their plan to conform to society. In truth, they cannot reform their plans to conform to society’s actual needs, because they do not know what those needs are and have no way of finding out.
The book is actually talking about how socialism has to fail – central planners who try to plan an entire economy can never succeed; there are just too many actors (too many variations of producers, consumers, products, needs, and wants) to legitimately decide how much and where stuff should be and at what price. Only the free marketplace, based on price with millions (billions) of people actively participating in that market can correctly identify imbalances in that marketplace and automatically (given some amount of time) correct itself.
OK, it’s a dump truck. A big dump truck. But all he wants to do is park it. Empty. Next to his house. It’s color even matches the house (hard to see, though, as it gets parked way back). He actually did that, for a year and a half with no complaints from his neighbors.
Another way that central planner types can work their machinations is in zoning – the system by which land owners are permitted to use their private property. Think of it as "the land and building economy"; what can be done where? Can you live there? Can you have a business there? What kinds of businesses? Type of home? Got a few extra cars? People in and out visiting? What if they are customers, or clients? Sorry, your house can only be so tall and only so close to your neighbor. Or to the wetlands. Sorry, what you want to do with land you have paid for can’t be done there….
Then he had to reregister it. Brand new truck. Paperwork. Uh-Oh.
Absolutely, zoning is regulating an economy of space…
Read more