Communism fails on two counts. One, it is the most oppressive political system devised. More so than any tyrannical dictator because communism has a belief system keeping the people in line. Kings tend to be benevolent because of the possibility of a populist uprising. Not so in communism where support is from the people. This was amply demonstrated with the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and China's great leap forward with Chairman Mao. Killing non-believers is certainly an effective way to maintain control of those who don't accept the party line.
The second reason communism fails is that it is not economically sound. That is because the people will not work as hard for others as they will for themselves, although in self-contained systems prisoners can always be made to work. But when communism has to be competitive in a free market world economy, it will fail every time because the oppressed have no incentive to work beyond a subsistence level.
A parallel can be drawn between communism and Redevelopment as we know it under state law. Redevelopment is oppressive to the people and is not economically sound. What happens under Redevelopment is that eminent domain, the giant club of government, is used to take private property from one person and give it to another private party. This is the antithesis of what America is all about. It is done under the guise of revitalizing an area for the good of the people when in fact, it only relocates the blight to a different area.
The people who have had their land taken from them usually cannot get their business restarted and are forced into retirement. The emotional toll of having your property or business, all you have worked for, forcibly taken away from you by your "representative government" and given at a greatly reduced price to another supposedly equal individual is a destroyer of incentive and people, just like communism is.
The second reason why Redevelopment does not work in the long run is that it is not economically sound. It uses future property tax income to pay off the bonds that were used to buy the land being given to another private party or privately held entity. This money is public money that should go to schools, police and firemen, and other essential services.
This scheme of special interests creates an economic house of cards. The Los Angeles Times has reported that the Los Angeles City Redevelopment Agency has finally run out of gas. Their Bunker Hill Project has reached their $750 million tax increment cap, so they cannot start any new projects to get more tax increment money to pay off old bonds. This is the classic Ponzi scheme of having to get new money to pay off old money. Of Los Angeles' 31 project areas, only 11 create a profit which will not cover the money-losing remaining 20. L.A.'s total Redevelopment indebtedness is $1.5 billion.
Long Beach's Redevelopment has one real money maker in the West Side Industrial Project Area, enabling them to siphon off tens of millions of dollars over the years, most of it funneled through the Harbor Commission, to prop up their unprofitable subsidized projects. The 1997 State Controller's Report stated Long Beach's total indebtedness was $522 million with only $8 million in available revenues to service the debt. 1.6 percent is not enough.
The City of Cerritos likes to brag that they have $150 million in the bank. The problem is that by 1997 they had $367 million in Redevelopment debt with revenue of $21 million. A much better ratio, but that level of bond indebtedness is not likely to be paid off and the state will ultimately have to come in and bail out these cities. So we will all get to pay again on a state level, because as an economic model, Redevelopment is not sound and is doomed to fail.
While Redevelopment may not be called an evil empire, it is evil in the way it destroys people, bankrupts cities and corrupts our democratic process. This is the same pattern as communism.