THE GROWTH PONZI SCHEME, AUF DEUTSCH.

Instapundit contributor Sarah Hoyt recommends "The Erosion of my Home Town."  The author sells it as "The circular business model that is socialism," although it's also understood as the use of public money to run the Suburban Experiment, only in Germany.

Today, during our weekly calls, my father said the village has big plans. Big construction plans. Ever since I was a kid, the population had already doubled. With that came many new houses built. Gone are a lot of the surrounding fields replaced by one-family houses. The village has sprawled out. No longer tugged away. But a bigger spot on the map.

My father said the local soccer fields including the club house and the only restaurant left are being torn down; the private owner of this property whose family had owned the land since 200 years ago had sold the land to the government. The community plan is to replace the old houses with a new school building. The old school building will also be torn down. I asked why? And then he said this:

“The old buildings are no longer up to code and it would be too expensive to renovate. New buildings are needed.”

And then he added that there are so many regulations these days. They said the construction would start in 2028. But he then pointed out that the supermarket that was torn down in 2020 to be replaced has taken forever to get all the permits in place that it is still not complete and even further away from being open. So many permits are needed. He is questioning if the timing would actually be realistic. Everything is indeed very bureaucratic in Germany.

Regulations. Regulations. Regulations.

So much construction in my little village. The school is moving to where the local soccer fields are currently located. The school land is then going to be used to build new buildings to allow for more people to stay longer — the new housing will be senior living; likely the assisted kind. New soccer fields with fitness and sport house need to be built; somewhere South of the village where we currently have the free range cow and chicken farms. (Side note: you can actually go there and buy your eggs, dairy products, and bread from a farm stand on an honorary basis by putting your money in a box. The best products you will ever eat.) And then also a building for refugees is in the plan. Also “needed”.

Sigh.

So far, $3.5M was spent by the local government to acquire all the lands; purchased from local residents, farmers, and business owners. The construction company hired in all cases? Is an affiliate of the local government — 100% owned by the “community” — founded in 2020. Not joking.

So… We now have a government setting increasingly stricter regulations and requirements that force communities and residents to upgrade their housing to the newest codes. All community projects are being executed by a governmental owned construction company. More and more private property is converted into governmental projects and buildings. Senior homes and refugee housing will remain in the hand of the government. Additionally refugee housing allows to draw from more taxpayer funded resources via subsidies because “charity”.

It feels all like a circular reference. Money flows from taxpayer in a very orchestrated way into the pockets of politicians and charity organizations. A sneaky way of promising betterment for the residents of the community but in the long run just getting more land and buildings under government control.

Yes, and all those newly-built schools and housing projects and for all I know improved streets and water mains turn into future liabilities.  "The amount of money a city can possibly raise from its development pattern is less than what it costs to sustain that pattern. The difference is made up with gimmicks, debt, interfund transfers, and bailouts."  So, too, will it be with this North German Dorf.

Every mile of road, every pipe in the ground, every pump or sewer or sidewalk—these are all promises. They’re not just infrastructure. They’re obligations. Residents pay their taxes with the reasonable expectation that the city will maintain all the infrastructure it has built—keep the roads drivable, the pipes functioning, the parks open and safe. But over and over again, I’ve found that few cities have even a rough estimate of how big those promises actually are, let alone a plan to fulfill them.

Cities are required to track their tangible capital assets. That means documenting (or calculating) the cost of everything they’ve built—the roads, pipes, water treatment facilities, parks, city buildings, and so on. And they’re also supposed to estimate how much life is left in each of those assets. In theory, this gives you a sense of the city's long-term obligations.

Accountants treat these assets like they depreciate in a straight line—25 years for a road, let’s say—and calculate a “book value” based on how much of that life is left. But that’s not how infrastructure works. Some things fall apart faster than expected. Some assets are never properly maintained. Others were never built to a durable standard in the first place. And so the real cost of maintenance and replacement—the actual burden cities face—is never reflected in these numbers.

My sense is that this kind of analysis, while the best available to us, still significantly overestimates a city's capacity to meet its infrastructure maintenance obligations. The assumptions baked into the accounting—about lifespan, about build quality, about upkeep—are overly optimistic.

The current Burgomeister gets to smile at the ground-breaking or the ribbon-cutting; citizens not yet born will be on the hook for the next round of infrastructure pork.