Tag: Milgram experiment

HOA Gestapo tactics — the slippery slope steepens

In California there is the report of a midnight raid on HOA members to forcibly evict them. The Courthouse News Series reports (The Foreclosure From Hell) that

“Nine condo residents claim Taser-toting private security guards burst into their homes at 3 a.m. and assaulted them, forcing them into the street in their underwear, in a foreclosure the residents had never been informed of.” 

The security organization for the HOA and the HOA are being sued.  The complaint alleges, among other things, that

“During this approximate two-hour ordeal, the armed men threatened arrest and incarceration, menaced the plaintiffs with weapons, engaged in intimidation, positioning themselves immediately in front of and/or behind the plaintiffs, glaring at them menacingly and invading the plaintiffs’ space.” 

The plaintiffs seek damages for trespass, extortion, assault and battery, false imprisonment, invasion of privacy, conversion and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

In the highly public Travon murder case in Florida questions of HOA negligence are being raised.   In Arizona, for the 5th year, a bill that  re-asserts that public streets within HOA subdivision territories are regulated by the local government and not the HOA was again defeated.   In Illinois, however, the court did put a stop to HOA security people stopping and detaining people on the roads.

The question before us is:  what are the factors, the causes that lead HOA boards to act in such an uppity, defiant manner against their members and the public, as if they were indeed independent principalities?  The simple answer is,  because they can!  Is it the culture within the HOA that is too similar to the experimental conditions of the Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments? (See Why do people harm others in HOAs?)

Is it the public policy that the HOA must survive at the expense of individual rights and freedoms, with members’ losing the privileges and immunities guaranteed to all citizens?  Is it the pro-HOA laws that do not hold the HOA accountable to the state, that presumes that the HOA can do no wrong?  There are no penalties against HOA law-breakers, but there are plenty of state supported penalties that make HOA attorneys rich and force hardship and the loss of one’s home for trivial fines.

With this sentiment, this bias in our culture and society, HOAs have no restraint on running amuck, and on intentionally running amuck as witnessed here with the Gestapo raid.   I wrote about this dangerous slippery slope path in The public policy of the states with respect to HOAs.  In Legislative protection of HOAs: replacing US organic law with HOA organic law I wrote about the disappearance of the social contract and a return to a state of nature, to anarchy.

It is not too difficult to realize that this country has been on a regressive, slippery slope path to a governmental system very much like the rejected Articles of Confederation of some 225 years . . . . And it appears, with the rhetoric abounding here and elsewhere on other constitutional issues, we are rejecting the social contract and returning to a state of nature.

 Yes, each day, little by little, more and more such acts that were once unthinkable occur as this country speed us along the slippery slope to disaster.  I’m waiting for the knock on the door.  I have my papers ready. 

Should the Trayson family sue the HOA?

The Orlando Sentinel reported today that the Trayvon family lawyer, Benjamin Crump, has no intention at this time to sue the HOA. The importance of filing a lawsuit is paramount and is needed for justice.

The history of HOA governance has been the apathy of HOA members that allows boards to do as they please, and boards to allow HOA attorneys to, in reality, run the HOA along with the managers. HOAs have gotten away with no accountability under state protective laws, and by the obedience and acquiescence to board authority and pressures by passive members.

Suing the HOA would also serve as a wakeup call to this indifference to life and suffering  that can have severe consequences, in addition to raising ethical and moral questions for our society. That good intentions still must be measured against courses of action that have foreseeable consequences of serious harm to others.

An explanation for this apathy and groupthink by HOA members can be found in HOAs where members band together in support of their boards, “right or wrong,” was offered in Why do people harm others in HOAs?, which is based on the Milgram and Stanford Prison Experiments. I’ve informed homeowners of the areas of potential liability by HOAs and the impact on the membership in What is an HOA’s duty of care liability to its members and to all others?

However, the position by Mr. Crump not to pursue the HOA lawsuit at this time is understandable. The first concern is for justice and the arrest and trial of the killer, then an action against the failures of the Sanford police, and then get some $$$ from a wrongful death suit against the HOA to help pay the bills.

Why do people harm others in HOAs?

The following is my conclusion in Why people do harm to others in the HOA subculture.

Looking Toward the Future

In the Milgram and Stanford Prison Experiments researchers explored what evil men can and will do to others 1) under repeated pressure from authority figures to follow the rules, and 2) in an environment where one is expected to act in accordance to the  roles of the community.  The researchers found that basically good people will indeed do harm, even do severe harm, to others.  The conditions and factors present in these experiments exist within the HOA community, and the harm being done to others in these HOAs is well documented in the media and in the courts.

 The authoritarian insistence on enforcing complete obedience to the CC&RS, as repeatedly impressed on HOA boards by their attorneys, is well documented. The compliance by the directors and officers with these pressures for enforcement is well documented.   The blind obedience, apathy, and passivity  to authority by HOA members – the “prisoners” — who sign and agree to provisions blatantly detrimental to their interests, is well documented.  The adoption of the roles demanded of them by the system  and by the situation —  state laws and the court opinions, the adhesion CC&Rs and governing documents, and the lack of effective recourse — is well documented.  

The numerous “educational” seminars taught  by the attorneys and managers, many of which are sponsored by state and local governments,  serve not to fully inform but to indoctrinate the members into roles of obedience  and passivity, is well documented.  Good people doing bad things or remaining silent in the midst of wrongful acts and actions by the HOA is well documented.

State governments, the legislatures,  cannot allow HOAs to continue to  run amuck and to  freely violate the laws and their contractual obligations without legitimate and necessary constraints holding them accountable for the harm that they do to others.  Stop the “free rides.”  

Do not be conned by the HOA special interests unsubstantiated fear mongering about the demise of HOAs, and their  “only 5% are bad”, so we don’t need any restrictions.  Property crimes over the past 5 years averaged 3.3% yet we have laws.  Murder and rape rates are so miniscule compared to 5% (roughly 5 in 100, 000, or .00005), yet we have laws against these crimes.   If HOAs are indeed the next best thing to Mom’s apple pie, then they will survive.  If not, then it was the factor that “we got a good thing going here,” in terms of anything goes, that was the driving force behind all the clamor.  Fear not, people will continue to buy homes that are truly their private property.

But, to let the people in HOAs  continue to do harm to others and do nothing as  a matter of public policy is shameful.

Read the full paper here.

Before the HOA Syndrome there was The Milgram Experiment

The Milgram Obedience Experiment, The Perils of Obedience, By Kendra Cherry, About.com Guide

Why did so many of the participants in this experiment perform a seemingly sadistic act on the instruction of an authority figure? According to Milgram, there are a number of situational factors that can explain such high levels of obedience:

  • The physical presence of an authority figure dramatically increased compliance.
  • The fact that the study was sponsored by a trusted and authoritative academic institution led many participants to believe that the experiment must be safe.
  • The selection of teacher and learner status seemed random. [no vengeance factor]
  • Participants assumed that the experimenter was a competent expert.
  • The shocks were said to be painful, not dangerous.

Milgram wrote, “Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority” (Milgram, 1974).

Milgram’s experiment has become a classic in psychology, demonstrating the dangers of obedience.

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The Milgram Experiment of 1961 was conducted to answer another question regarding the rise of Hitler and the Nazis (They Thought They Were Free, Milton Mayer, 1955). Milgram had “teachers”, authority figures, inflict electric shock on”students” who gave the wrong answers. The students, part of the experiment, did not receive any shocks but responded in greater and greater degrees of mock pain. The teachers were acting on instructions of the experimenter, the “authority” figure.

The experimenter issued a series of commands to prod the participant along:

  1. “Please continue.”
  2. “The experiment requires that you continue.”
  3. “It is absolutely essential that you continue.”
  4. “You have no other choice, you must go on.”

In other words, the experimenters wanted top know, “If a person in a position of authority ordered you to deliver a 400-volt electrical shock to another person, would you follow orders?”

“When Milgram posed this question to a group of Yale University students, it was predicted that no more than 3 out of 100 participants would deliver the maximum shock. In reality, 65% of the participants in Milgram’s study delivered the maximum shocks.”

Jump to today and the New America of HOA-Lands. Translate the experimenter as the HOA attorney or dictatorial HOA president or manager; the students as the homeowners; and the teachers as the go along board, ACC and the non-dictator presidents. These “go alongs” act on the “advice”, instructions or urgings of the above  authority figures,  the  “experimenters.”

It is important for advocates to know that, “Later experiments conducted by Milgram indicated that the presence of rebellious peers dramatically reduced obedience levels. When other people refused to go along with the experimenters orders, 36 out of 40 participants refused to deliver the maximum shocks.”

That’s a resounding,

STAND UP AND FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHTS! SPEAK OUT! CREATE REFORM GROUPS!