And they are used to dictates the purchase and consumption habits of society to the subjective liking of the planner....
As far as a building code is concerned, if a builder wants to build a house...build an apartment building....a restaurant or an office building or a factory or an arena, she gets to...north side of the city she gets to...sell it to the Koch brothers she gets to. The state telling her that regardless of what sort of building she wants and what purpose her buyer will use it for, she has to put in four-inch-thick insulation, does not mean the state owns her building supplies. You might as well claim the state owns your car even though it takes you where you want to go and not where the state wants you to go, because the state makes you maintain working taillights.
That the state allows some of the rights of ownership to "her" is not the issue. It remains that the state dictates, via building and planning codes (and other regulatory processes), if she will be allowed to build and use a building in the place and manner of her choosing (if at all).. It may be her land, but she is only given limited rights of use depending on purpose, size, location, and neighbor approval. The state may zone it for specific uses (or non uses) whatever reason it chooses: from high density multi-unit to agriculture and/or "open space".
When its use is approved, it is only certain caveats and hefty fees paid to the local governments and the local state sanctioned utility monopolies.
I am sure you are aware of City General Plans, numerous zoning categories limiting development, urban limit lines, maximum building footprints, proximity to lot lines, height limits, parking requirements, restrictions on 2nd dwelling units, environmental impact studies, etc. Some communities even require hiring a soils engineer, structural engineer, licensed architect etc. for the simplest of construction.
Yes, not only does the state dictate IT also removes the rights of ownership at will, without just compensation. In the socialist regulatory state, the only "right" you might have is to a piece of paper to a block of land wherein its rights of use has been effectively removed.
You might get a rhetorical advantage by labeling other things you oppose "socialism" when you're talking to a Tea Party audience, but that isn't your audience here. So I don't see what good you can accomplish for your cause by trying to cheapen the term. It just makes you look like a careless thinker.
At one time I would have agreed with you. But for better or ill, terms change (or "cheapen"). Just Google "what is the meaning of socialism" and you will see a variety of formal and informal meanings. For example, the first meaning supplied by google is "a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned
or regulated by the community as a whole.
But that's a weasel definition.
Every community regulates the means of production, distribution, and exchange. Some heavily, some lightly; but all of them do it. People propose definitions like that one so they'll have an unfalsifiability engine they can use to classify whatever they feel like as socialism.
It not a weasel definition, its the broadest definition among many other more specific meanings. Until recently I reserved the word for Marxist socialism, the sense used in totalitarian economic systems of the left. However, I now use it more broadly for two reasons: a) it seems to be commonly used in that manner and b) it conveys my belief that the difference between the left rulers of California (etc.) and Venezuela is not in kind, but degree. Their moral premise's justifying state dictates is identical.
(PS you might also note that many forum defenders of Nordic systems also call them a form of socialism. In other words, the terms meaning has become more generic and less specific to merely "owning the means of production".)
And how many of the forum defenders of Nordic systems who also call them a form of socialism have you ever seen express any disagreement with collective ownership of the means of production? Socialists call Nordic systems "socialism" because Nordic systems are popularly approved of. Giving them the same name helps get some of that approval to rub off on collective ownership of the means of production in the minds of much of the public. Socialists are perpetrating an equivocation fallacy and deriving considerable traction from it in the marketplace of ideas. When you help them cheapen the term you're playing into their hands.
Granted, calling Nordic systems socialism tends to make a false equivalency. The primary differences between formal Marxist socialism, Fabian socialism, democratic socialism, American left socialism, and barefoot socialism is in who holds formal title to the means of production and the use of regulation (rather than formal state ownership) as the mechanisms for takings, and the use of taxes and wage laws for redistribution.
But we are bounded by common usage, so the best that can be done is to use the generic word when applied to a general similarity; and to use specifics (e.g. Marxist socialism or Democratic Socialism or the Social Justice-Welfare state) when those differences matter.
When it comes to California, those differences are usually irrelevant.