I N V E S T
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d e v e l O P
it impacts residential estates, because this trend is growing, with
little evidence to suggest that things are likely to get any better
in the foreseeable future.
So, what are the implications for residential estates? More
importantly, as residential estates increasingly replicate the de
facto function of municipalities, what does this mean for the
owners, residents, managers, directors and trustees?
The first aspect to consider is that the current trend in municipal
failure is in fact empirical evidence of state failure. States don’t
suddenly fail. They fail incrementally, as subsystems within
that state fail. But here is where it gets interesting, because as
one subsystem fails, society typically responds to create an
alternative. When the postal services failed, people simply
switched to courier services. When the SAPS failed, people
simply employed private security companies to protect
their assets and loved ones. When the SABC failed, people
increasingly migrated across to pay-to-view cable networks.
When SAA failed, other airlines grew to meet the demand. When
municipalities fail us, we move into residential estates where
privately funded service providers replicate those services.
All these adjustments by society mask the underlying pathology
that the state is failing, and so we continue our daily business
oblivious to the real issue – state failure. This happens suddenly
when the collective responses by society are unable to provide
alternatives, typically when the tax base collapses, leaving the
state unable to sustain itself financially. This is where we are
today.
Logically, therefore, we need to consider that, unless the ship gets
turned around, state failure is the end destination. This means
that the trend towards residential estate living will continue
and probably accelerate, but the implication is that an island of
tranquillity floating on a turbulent sea of growing social discontent
will eventually be unsustainable. This is a sobering thought.