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Comment by jen729w | Hacker News Reader

> A chalked tire was ephemeral. I doubt that whatever replaces it will be.

My girlfriend tells me of a homeless guy that used to roam the streets of Bondi, Australia – as in the famous beach – rubbing the chalk off the tyres. This guy never said a word, just shuffled about rubbing off chalk. Suffice to say he was a local hero.

Now he’s gonna have to learn how to DROP TABLE.

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It was a thing all over Sydney throughout the 90s. We used to do it too (and I'm pretty sure I saw the guy your girlfriend is referring to, or another like him). We'd skate down at Bondi and throughout the city and if we saw the inspector chalking a street, we'd come down later and wipe them off. Same as topping up parking meters. If you found money on the ground you'd just stick it in the next expired parking meter you saw. No one liked having coins rattling around in your pocket while skating.

The emotion/motivation behind this seems kind of peculiar to me. Sure, it's a nice thing for the person who is parked, but not for the person who isn't parked, at any given moment. Would it be a worthwhile good deed to find people who have just been to an ATM and give them some more money?

I don't go around ranting about inequality much in general; I'm just bemused by the implication that increasing it is obviously good karma.

na, it's more anti-authority us v. them than it is "how can I be most effective at helping others". cops can sometimes be a pain to skaters, and cops can sometimes be a pain to illegally parked cars. The less times the cops win, the better.

Yup pretty much this. Any benefit to the car owners was purely a happy coincidence. I'd say the homeless guy mentioned above (and know for a fact others who did it in the same area/era) were doing it for the same reason.

I remember seeing a homeless guy feeding a large amount of bread to pigeons on the sidewalk, if you get my drift.

I thought it was amusing, but I didn't park on the street.

Ideally the authorities are working to achieve efficient use of parking space and funding for local government. I suspect such "anti-authority" protestors are not really informed enough to make a reasonable guess as to whether their interventions will be a net benefit. As is, to me, it just seems like people messing with the system because they can't compare the abstract benefits of increased parking efficiency, to the more obvious costs of someone experiencing the displeasure of a parking ticket.

If you treat the populace as a closed system, and the government as an external actor, then these actions increase total utility by preventing larger losses to the external actor.

"closed system...external actor"

Hmm...a _closed_ system sort of implies there are no external actors doesn't it?

Your statement appears superficially dispassionate and hypothetical, but I don't think it makes any sense unless it is unpacked as a lot of normative statements that would be very controversial if explicitly stated.

Please default to trust. Just because you didn't understand my statement doesn't mean it's nonsense. I'll try again.

Everything depends on how you frame it. When making decisions, you can maximize utility for just yourself, or perhaps for friends and family, or maybe for everyone in your small town. How you choose to frame who you care about will determine the decisions you make. If you include "the government" in this frame of reference, there is no overall change in net utility when a ticket is given. Someone pays a large sum of money (negative utility) and it goes into government coffers (positive utility).

People who put change in meters likely do not include "the government" in their system of utility. In that frame of reference, a ticket being written is a net decrease in utility because the positive utility of government revenue doesn't matter.

My point is, actions that seem irrational to you may actually be understood as rational when viewed from a different frame of reference.

"People who put change in meters likely do not include "the government" in their system of utility. In that frame of reference, a ticket being written is a net decrease in utility because the positive utility of government revenue doesn't matter."

I think I get what you are saying...for instance, arresting a serial killer would be a net decrease in utility, because the positive utility enjoyed by government workers being paid to prosecute, etc. doesn't matter when you don't consider the government as part of your logical system.

Are you sure you are using an orthodox style of reasoning?

If the "closed ayatem" is the serial killer, then yes, of course. And many criminals do indeed think the system is stacked against them and is unfair, because they haven't internalized that their wrongdoings impact other people.

I'm not using orthodox reasoning. I'm just explaining a perspective you don't seem to understand. And you don't have to agree with it to understand.

The statement makes perfect sense. A closed system does not mean there cannot be an external actor. Your statement however, is intentionally superficially dispassionate.

The idea that "external actors" by definition cause losses to a system no matter what they do makes no sense to me. If Darth Vader gives me a cookie, there is no contradiction between the cookie having utility and him being Darth Vader.

A little civil disobedience is good for the soul

> ...roam the streets of Bondi, Australia

This ruling applies to the US, not Australia.

It was a highly relevant but non-local anecdote - who cares where it is? I happened to find it a cute random act of kindness (or rebellion).

Not cute or kind for people who want a fair shot at parking like everyone else and can't because people are abusing the system for their own selfish reasons, enabled by someone rubbing the chalk off.

I agree, which is why I put the "or rebellion" bit, at the same time, it's not like the people parking are paying someone to go around rubbing chalk off so I can't say they're "abusing the system" as they have no expectation of getting away with it.

Regardless, it's story a friend of a friend told somebody, who knows how true

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