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PaperclipPerfector
4d ago
(text post)
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The only thing I can think of here is to serve the house with info on the delinquent taxes before foreclosing. If that were done, I would have no sympathy whatsoever for the sons (Dennis certainly).
They got served! They know that taxes are a thing! And they did nothing at all about it. For ten years. Did they think they were just getting away with it?
I get that paperwork sucks. What was the alternative? That people can just avoid paying taxes because they’re too lazy or ignorant to do it? To increase taxes on everyone else to assign a case manager and counsel them very social justicely? To send the landlord’s bailiff around to collect taxes with a bullwhip to handle the delinquent serfs?
The court obviously did the right thing to maintain a functioning society based on existing laws. But it's easy for me to imagine an IQ ~80 person getting sucked into this shitty situation without any intentional malice on their part. IQ 80 corresponds to about 10% of the population. If we can't get a system that is "easy" for these people to navigate, then literally millions of Americans are doomed to a shitty life full of the Man ruining their shit.
In a perfect society, I think that the cops / county clerk / local priest / bartender would have pestered Dennis multiple times in person at their house / church / pub until this got resolved amicably. This pestering would have ultimately saved tax payers tons of money in legal fees as well.
So, just to be clear, you are arguing that ~10% of the population is incapable of performing basic duties towards society and needs to be managed as effective wards of the state with permanent case managers? I know that what you suggested is more of a “my brother’s keeper” model, but everything is atomized now and social mobility is too high, the responsible members of society have successfully escaped their former peers and live in a different suburb. So if they’re coming back, they’re coming as agents of the government, which is trying to collect or control, because that’s what governments do.
I’m not saying this like your solution is unheard of. To a certain extent it’s what we do already, and I guess we hold property owners to a higher standard. But these laws aren’t especially new. Property taxes aren’t new either. People managed before. And how can you really expect someone who can’t manage to regularly pay taxes, to figure out what’s going on in the single most important letter of their life, to attend to all the other maintenance required in owning a house?
(FWIW I don’t read these individuals as too dumb to understand letters, I read them as somewhat lazy and inclined to drag their heels or expect that they’re getting away with things. Very educated people, like college students, can fall into these habits too. I have friends in academia who tell me of students who drag their heels, don’t go through the documents given them, and then panic after the deadlines that they can’t get into the classes they need. This feels like the same pattern: no response to warnings, no response to the official point of no return, but only when their failures become tangible and they can no longer pretend that their inaction has cost them nothing do they try to take action, by complaining that they were never given a fair chance in the first place. And then they go through the right venues, and then they show passion and sophistication, and all those formal barriers are no obstacles to their abilities, and they are oh so very aggrieved. But why not before? Because the issue wasn’t IQ or what have you, it was good practices, and especially the wisdom that wasting time and putting things off and delaying has real costs that add up. As long as nothing tangible is lost, they can lie to themselves that everything is fine, so it’s that moment of losing something real, the sale of the house, that spurs action and also drives these guys berserk because they must confront the fact that they were irresponsible this whole time, and that in particular is too much to bear. So while they are hiring a lawyer and arguing minutiae and appealing to higher courts, their primary argument, or at least sentiment, is that what they were previously asked to do was just too hard, that nobody can reasonably achieve it. And they don’t notice the dissonance. But I do, and I judge them for it.)
You've correctly pointed out a very real failure mode of our modern atomized lifestyle, and highlighted that many people do in fact fail because of their own ineptitude. I agree with all of that but also think it sucks for Dennis that he failed in this way and that it sucks for all of the other people who also fail in this way. Maybe I have too much sympathy for people who suck at modern life.
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That's what happened in this case. A "pre-foreclosure notice" was sent by both regular mail and certified mail in July 2021, and then the actual foreclosure complaint was served in person in November 2021.
Sorry, I meant before that. Like, yearly automated mail: you’re not paying taxes. If even that was sent, what else could you do but nanny state or feudal bailiff the guy?
Idk about his jurisdiction, but they generally do that? I get a yearly letter even though mine are paid, with my balance and any proposed changes to the tax regime.
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