HOA's

I sit here looking out my window at the vacant lot that will soon be a another cookie cutter HOA neighborhood. I can't stop thinking how un-American the whole idea of a HOA is. Not only do you give up your freedoms, but your paying someone to take them from you. What is wrong with the country now? Why would we allow this? How can it be legal? It's bad enough that these cookie cutter neighborhoods are so cheaply built and every third house is the exact same floor plan. No yard, just cram as many houses into the area as humanly possible. Another sad turn our country is taking for nothing more then some green colored paper.