1) The conspiracy theory is that intentionally pointless HOAs were pushed by small government folks as a way to make people skeptical of tax-for-service organizations.

2) The HOAs point isn’t to regulate the 99% of people who would otherwise maintain their house. It’s for the 1% of people that wouldn’t and in order to avoid housing discrimination charges, you have to regulate everyone equally.

This is representative of the core conflict of American politics that makes it so confusing to outsiders - ideologically, the people in power (often delusionally) identify with Europe, but in practice, they desire power dynamics similar to oligopolies seen in the developing world.

Not to go too far with the metaphor, but if America never established race-based slavery (and instead, racial minorities were primarily the small number of remaining Native Americans), I bet we'd have a similar political system to Australia (where overtly exclusionary practices are more frowned upon).