Banned is maybe too far, but why should we as a country allow people to have petty power over meaningless things their neighbors do? Could we ban HOAs from being included in house sales, and every time it's sold the new owners have to opt in?
For the most part, I'm wondering about this in the context of single family homes since for homes like condos, you could make the case that HOAs are useful for shared things like roofs and whatnot. Maybe limit mandatory HOA involvement to things like what's truly necessary and shared and not how tall your grass is?
My neighborhood's HOA has been pretty chill the few years I've lived here. The fees pay for the pool, landscaping, walking path maintenance, etc. Maybe I'd feel different if one of my neighbors was finding and reporting a bunch of violations, but so far it seems like the HOA has been good for my neighborhood. I'm sure other places get out of hand, but it's not always the nightmare people make it out to be online.