Florida couple wins the right to plant veggies in front yard
npr.org
npr.org
Also, when I was a kid in southern California, my parents used to dry laundry on a clothes line, outside. We were lucky to have a big backyard so you would imagine not many neighbors would complain.
We got a letter from the neighborhood saying the laundry was unsightly.
This is strange to me to this day. First, air dryed laundry smells and feels amazing. Second, you're saving a ton of energy by not using an electric or gas dryer.
But the sight of some towels and bed sheets on a clothes line makes people really upset....
People with means had mechanical clothes dryers; poorer people didn't. (Clothes washers achieved much greater market penetration and did so significantly before clothes dryers.)
Even going back to before home laundry machines, to what is today an older person's grandparents' era, in big cities the low-cost option was to have your laundry returned to you wet, and you dried and folded it yourself. People with more money, naturally, got theirs returned dry and folded.
Scratch the surface of any obnoxious neighborhood rule and you'll find some sort of class-consciousness or economic insecurity behind it. People don't want to see laundry because it reminds them of poor people, or they're afraid it will make the neighborhood look poorer than it is. I'm not saying that's a good opinion to hold, but I think that's why it's a weirdly sensitive issue.
In another generation when it's firmly an ecological/"green" thing to line-dry your clothes, and not a sign that you can't afford to do it any other way, there probably won't be any opposition. Then it's not a social class signifier, it's just an individual oddity.
I hadn't though to extrapolate that position to other topics!
I was surprised to learn that some food we nowdays consider expensive was very low-class back then, and viceversa, as availability and costumes changed over time. Salmon being one of the examples.
I recommend that series of videos if you like this kind of stuff.
My ex's family if I can tell were immediately descended from impoverished sharecroppers. Grandma picked tobacco when she was a little girl. Her family when they had money ate badly cooked steak a couple of times a week. Definitely a class thing. My family being pretty much solidly middle class and from California that sort of thing just wasn't.
This is just one of many reasons that it seems it will be difficult to get people in developing countries to forego the western lifestyle for the sake of the environment.
It's hard to get humans to save their immediate self, if it requires foregoing a class symbol, talk less of something as relatively esoteric as the weather.
But other things like washing dishes by hand. Owning an old car while being middle class. In general everything "laborious" while being in the middle/upper class or living by.
It's driven by a turtles-all-the-way-down thing where we're afraid that some future potential buyer of our houses or or neighbors houses will be turned off if they see those things, not necessarily because they care about them per se, but because they either see them as signaling a neighborhood in decline (so, a bad investment) or they're afraid other buyers will see it that way in the future (when they want to sell). As you may notice it's possible to end up in this weird state even when most people don't actually give a damn if you put up a clothes line, but at the same time a lot of them will support restrictions on your doing so, for the above Iocane-powder-scene reasoning.
This all applies in newer neighborhoods, and by newer I mean built after 1985 or so, certainly since 1995. HOAs[1], which are a kind of private hyper-local quasi-governmental thing, are ubiquitous now. Developer buys a big chunk of farmland, runs some squiggly roads through it, builds a bunch of houses (or has them built by other people and companies to whom they sell the lots), maybe a pool and a park (HOA maintained, not city, those are dying with the rise of HOAs—why would I want to pay into a city parks and pools system when I also pay, separately, for the ones provided by my HOA, which are the ones I use the most anyway?), perhaps a golf club and kinda bargain-basement country club thingy if it's a ritzy neighborhood, then sets up an HOA with a bunch of rules that will cover all the houses and their owners, acting effectively as dictator of it until some percentage of the lots are inhabited by owners (HOA members) at which point they take over, to some degree or another.
Further, the HOAs tend to delegate a bunch of stuff to management companies—I mean, even the kinds of busybodies who usually run the HOAs don't have time to do everything. There are fortunes built in those companies—there's real money going around. All this is funded by annual fees charged to the homeowners. Failure to pay will result in liens against your house (can't sell it without paying them off) and even foreclosure, as in the HOA will take your house because you didn't pay your $500/yr or whatever.
Condo associations are similar but with elevators and such to maintain, too, and no lawns to worry about. HOA's basically a condo association for detached housing.
Florida actually has a law for that too - which disallows HOAs from banning them.
https://sc01.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1JbgNSFXXXXX6apXXq6xXFXXXU/202...
Sure clothes create dust, but the majority is created because during regular wearing and/or packing. (The dryer tumbles the clothes, whereas indoors it barely moves.)
Plus, banning clothes lines would ruin one of our most sacred traditions (possibly NSFW) : https://duckduckgo.com/?q=goon+of+fortune&ia=images&iax=imag...
I feel the same way too; Clothes dried in sunlight always seem fresher and crispier (if it makes sense).
How can this be so triggering in the US.
The U.S. laws and norms that enforce cut lawns are crazy to us. They are biological wastelands.
That's the point. The whole idiotic point of grassy yards was that only rich people in feudal Europe could afford them historically because they were such an utter waste. The planners of these great nations thought what a great idea, what if everyone could be rich like that... yes we'll make everyone waste land so they can pretend that they are rich... while the banks own most of it.
For anyone who thinks that this is a conspiracy theory: https://www.planetnatural.com/organic-lawn-care-101/history/
I mean, other than single-family residences and lawns being simply common in the U.S., that's nothing especially unusual.
If you want to read about hedge trimming legislation in the UK:
https://www.husqvarna.com/uk/lawn-garden/when-working/usage/...
[0] http://m.startribune.com/program-pays-minnesota-homeowners-t...
It just takes a bit of foresight and planning!
So what's left besides a hunger for regimentation, uniformity, control? What's the best available argument for stopping people from growing veg in the front yard?
It might attract more pests. It might be a pain for the bureaucrats to have to distinguish between gardens and overgrown jungles, so easier to ban the lot. Nefarious activity could be hidden in the foliage.
I guess there's always a plausible excuse for central control.
If these kinds of rules are enforceable under any legal structure, people like them, and the people who don't like them still buy property encumbered by them, they will persist.
I'm on the border of where my area turns more rural. There are a couple of properties with horses just outside my single street subdivision where I have ~1 1/2 acres. I can have chickens but I can't eat them. Can't have any other foul or livestock without at least twice as much land and a bunch of other restrictions, and I wouldn't be allowed to eat them, either. There's actually _no_ land zoned for general agricultural purposes in my county. None at all. In theory we have a zoning classification for a small farm / ranch type property that allows a smaller than 3ac lot and fewer restrictions on setbacks but I can't find any actual properties with that zoning in the county GIS.
I am allowed to shoot a gun in my back yard tho. Just not at any of the delicious wild animals that pass thru.
It makes sense that we want to regulate how much water each person is allowed to extract.
--> This is an actual problem in India. The govt made electricity FREE on farm lands. So, now people with farmland dug borewell, pump out water and sell them in tankers in the city, where many apartments don't have municipal water connection. Water is cheaper for apartments where there is low ground water, as cost of electicity consumption for farmers is nil.
How could they check that you don't eat your own chicken ?
Didn't they mean that you can't sell the meat ?
In Florida I have a friend with a 5ac farm. He can send his pigs and goats to a USDA-approved facility for slaughter when someone wants to buy them for meat, sell them as live animals, or slaughter them himself for personal consumption. Sells the honey his bees produce. Can grow plants and sell their edible parts.
What recently brought code enforcement to his door was growing plants in pots to sell as plants -- that's running a nursery, which isn't allowed in his zoning and would come with a slew of requirements if it were.
Zoning talk on HN tends to be about density and off-street parking and recently ADUs with the CA legislation encouraging them... But once zoning starts in an area it tends to grow until it touches upon _everything._
(I also have an ADU [not in CA] that would not be legal to build under current zoning [it was at the time], and my purchase of the property included tenants in the ADU which is not technically legal [no idea if it was when they signed their lease])
In my country if neighbours don't make your property unlivable by emitting smells or noises or being source of insect ifestation and obey the laws they can do whatever they want and nobody cares how it affects price you could get for your house or land if you decided to sell it.
On the downside, some of my neighbors have not watered their lawns in a long time and the weeds creep from their yards into everyone else’s. But most homes keep things tidy (which does not always mean grass).
But every single newer home I’ve looked at all came with an HOA and a ton of rules to abide by. Number of trees, number of bushes, all are specified. No cars outside, trash cans can only be left out between certain times. Grass must be cut to a height range.
If someone tried to take that away from me, I'd simply move the whole thing to another place.
I am yet to see a human being whose lives weren't radically improved by engaging in the fruits of their own well kept garden.
Nobody complains, and if anything, such gardens are often complimented (often enviously by those of us on the shady side of the street). People here like the look a well tended space.
I'm sure there's some ordinance on the books disallowing it - like most US cities - but nobody would report it anyway, and the city (Oakland CA) has bigger problems to worry about.
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, under US military control, every year, millions of acres of Opium are planted, harvested, processed, packaged and shipped, suplying over 90% of the worlds' Heroin. [0]
What a world.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_production_in_Afghanista...
Everything else is left up to the middle governments - states and municipalities.
Though the federal government has increased its scope massively since the early days of the country, and in some cases via sketchy interpretations of the Constitution...
A right can not be given it can only be taken. A government can take them away and the people can take them back.
Most others are very much granted or reserved by law, contract, or custom.
Is it not? Or are they interchangeable?
Certain authorities take a different view:
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcrip...
Yes, they are synonyms, or alternate spellings.
I'd say it's arguable whether we are (or should be) moving towards making your position, the first one, true.
But it seems clear that in the natural state of human beings there were no rights (e.g. certainly no complex idea of property), so we are at the vert least transitioning _to_ your position _from_ the latter.
I make no judgment of value, just pointing out you are at best "partially", or "not yet fully", correct.
Point in case, travel a few thousand kilometers in any direction and most likely everyone you meet will disagree on what are your rights - not the least because there you'll be a foreigner. Do you really have inaliable rights as a fact of nature when there's not a single shred of structure to support them?
Even more strikingly clear - were there rights before peoples? Were there human rights before humans? Was there a right to live before life? Rights as an intrinsic part of the natural is impossible in this view.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
If that is “extreme libertarian” then count me in. The United States was literally founded on this concept. It’s extreme to think of rights any differently, at least if you are an American. ”Extreme” is the idea that rights are gifts from government or from the benevolence of a sovereign. The view of rights as being unalienable is distinctly American; Englishman Thomas Hobbes expounded on this and thusly planted the seeds of the American idea. Such seeds didn’t take root in England at the time as citizens there were subjects of a king, but it was Hobbes that set the wheels of freedom in motion.
Extreme? I suppose it depends on one’s perspective. At the time Hobbes was extreme, but then, as Americans, we might think of any idea contrary to liberty as a extreme.
That's quite a claim.
> Englishman Thomas Hobbes expounded on this and thusly planted the seeds of the American idea.
John Locke is the usual go-to figure, no?
> Such seeds didn’t take root in England at the time
Are you sure?
“17th-century English philosopher John Locke discussed natural rights in his work, identifying them as being "life, liberty, and estate (property)", and argued that such fundamental rights could not be surrendered in the social contract. In Britain in 1689, the English Bill of Rights and the Scottish Claim of Right each made illegal a range of oppressive governmental actions.[18] Two major revolutions occurred during the 18th century, in the United States (1776) and in France (1789), leading to the United States Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen respectively, both of which articulated certain human rights. Additionally, the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776 encoded into law a number of fundamental civil rights and civil freedoms.”
It’s not that complicated. Might makes right. If an organism has the power to do something, then it can do it. Everything is subject to the forces of their environment. For humans, the societies that created somewhat formal systems of power management seem to have thrived and out survived those societies (or lack of societies) that didn’t.
An the people (you live nearby) can take them away if they deem you unsightly ... unless goverment first takes away their right to take away your rights. Which governments usually do in sane countries.
In the absence of top down rules, local level 'office politics' thrives making life worse for everybody.
“Voltaire said about God that ‘there is no God, but don’t tell that to my servant, lest he murder me at night’. Hammurabi would have said the same about his principle of hierarchy, and Thomas Jefferson about human rights. Homo sapiens has no natural rights, just as spiders, hyenas and chimpanzees have no natural rights. But don’t tell that to our servants, lest they murder us at night.” ― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
The Federalists argued that the Bill of Rights was redundant and unnecessary. The Anti-federalists were more skeptical of human nature, and the ratification of the constitution by several states was contingent on the first congress adding a bill of roghts via amendment.
George Mason, rep of 1st congressional district of Virginia to the first congress, was what we would call the “floor manager” of the bill. It was stonewalled by opponents, and eventually the bill had to be broken into a package of 12 amendments. 11 passed the house and were sent to the states for ratification. 10 were ratified rather quickly and are what we know as the BoR. The 11th was certified as ratified sometime in the 1970’s, I believe.
It's gonna take the kind of courage and patience exemplified by Hermine Ricketts and Tom Carroll to grow in the ways we need to grow to survive and evolve as a species.
We need to remember who we are.
I think you should always be encouraged to share your point of view, whether I agree or not (in this case I do), and only get downvoted if you're just flat out spreading misinformation. I often upvote opinions I don't agree to on the basis that they make their case in a valid way.
As much as I would love to downvote some Facebook posts, I think they did well at allowing only positive reinforcement. If you don't care, you just don't interact. If someone managed to find a solution to destructive comments everywhere, that would be awesome.
I expect they feel that they are on a crusade of righteousness of some sort.
When I'm 100% correct about something [1] and I get downvoted, it only strengthens my resolve and solidifies my belief. :)
[1]Which is most of the time
Or that you’re being a jerk.
The HN guidance on commentary is clearly a large part of why HN hasn’t devolved into Slashdot, and the generally on-point and respectful discussions invite really interesting and knowledgeable people to hang around, from whom we all benefit.
I’ll admit that I’ve occasionally scratched my head over downvotes I’ve received. But while there may well be some that apply votes contrary to the guidelines, in most cases - if I honestly review what I’ve written - I’ve phrased my comment in a way that’s not conducive to productive discourse.
Sometimes that's the case. However, I've seen ample legitimate discussion following the guidelines & conducive to further discussion, being downvoted because the downvoter obviously disagrees with the post. It tends to occur on "controversial issues" when not enough "weasel words" & "neutrality modifiers" are being used.
After a while, one realizes the futility of chasing "karma". That being clear & forceful, according to one's ethics, in expression is far more rewarding.
Votes receive no guidance and most people don't vote for the quality and accuracy of the comment, they do it based on how that comment fits with their personal opinion. I've seen civilized and purely objective comments being seriously downvoted, especially on polarizing topics.
Many go beyond just this and after you have one unpopular comment you realize all of your comments that day just received the same exact number of downvotes at the same approximate time.
So I wouldn't really call it 50/50 between "sacred cow turned burger" and "being a jerk" downvotes but it sure is too close to trust the voting system blindly. I will read even the greyed out comments.
most people [vote] based on how that comment fits with their personal opinion
Isn't that what the voting system is for then? When I see someone has already written what I was going to say, I upvote them instead of writing a "me too" comment. My other upvotes are reserved for posts that spark my curiosity, or grey comments where I think the downvotes were undeserved.
I almost never upvote comments I disagree with, unless (as above) they bring something new to the table. Downvotes I try to reserve for obnoxious or trollish comments only, but I admit there may be occasions where some man's troll is another man's freedom fighter.
Well, there was kuro5hin! I think Slashdot didn't devolve, but perhaps fell off a cliff when it was sold; a strong correlation with Sourceforge. Acquisitions of communities are hard.
I want to express my appreciation for this comment, but I don't know what will make you happier, an upvote or a downvote?
We are quite a bunch of people who start reading the comment threads from below!
Comments can be [dead] for many reasons, including software (which doesn't get everything right) or the account being banned (which doesn't mean that every post is bad—indeed, some users start posting good comments only once we've banned them). So there are plenty of good comments that need to be rescued, which is why we introduced vouching in the first place. It works well when users use it.
Thanks.
We're always happy to restore privileges if people give us reason to believe that they've had a change of heart and want to use HN as intended in the future.
With it having been there a while, I can't think of any specific comments one way or another, but was and have always intended to use it to rescue (typically) a comment making a good point to the discussion, or the question I'd be interested in an answer to as well.
So I can't imagine how I crossed whatever line. I generally agree wth the tone of moderation here, and degree of leeway usually given. I think my comment history would bear out in tone and style that I'm using as intended, and I don't recall ever having had a mod pick up any of my comments. :p I disagree with the odd rare one - this is hard to generalise without going away to dig for examples - usually where it seems to get a slap on the wrist for a reasonable, or historically accurate point within the flow of a discussion where the complaint of nationalistic or whatever seems a bit of a stretch.
Case in point, the guy posting links that seemed to be reliably going on every climate related topic - I'd have said nowt for one or two, but had seen enough, like on every related post I'd read in a couple of days, that I thought it would have been missed by mods and worth a mention. Others trigger much sooner than I.
Make of that as you will. :)
There can also be words that some people find offensive. Not everybody agrees on the words that qualify.
Decades on the net has been an interesting education that some, for some reason especially American, don't recognise sarcasm without the helpful /s. I learnt to pull my punches online on that score years ago. On the [vouch] front I'm not hugely bothered as it doesn't really detract from using HN, more surprised as I don't generally trigger moderator interest anywhere I've been since BBS days.
I'm sure dang will respond in due course as to whether I rate forgiveness or not.
Edit: I should add that I would think it highly unlikely I'd have resurrected comments heavy with sarcasm, I've been well aware for years it doesn't fly around here.
Sarcasm and snark rarely improve the quality and direction of a discussion, which is why at least snark is explicitly mentioned in the guidelines. Whether or not one recognizes something as sarcasm is orthogonal to whether a comment overall appropriate and constructive for the forum, and the latter is an overriding concern.
> "Be kind. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
The opposite can also happen, particularly when somebody has a belief system very different from your own. You might wrongly assume that the comment is sarcasm, when in fact it is thoughtful and substantive.
It's honestly confusing that you're telling us this at all.
That's of course not to say that it's widely known, many details of HN are not well-documented, only mentioned occasionally.
EDIT: just checked a few dead links. It seems I do have the ability to vouch. I'll try to use it responsibly!
EDIT: If you have too many scrawny kids on your lawn, get out the hose or get a new lawn. Also, GROW YOUR OWN!
This seems to be a very American problem.
Maybe it's the deep conviction that they are operating as part of a fair system (thanks to it having hijacked the name "Democracy") that legitimizes American regulators in their overreach ?
It's a "99% of my financial value is in my house" problem. Once you have that, everybody starts making laws around that.
If housing wasn't so much of people's net worth (a la Japan), these issues would be less severe.
Any alternate wealth stores you can think of?
The infamous 25' shark through the roof[1] got to stay, despite the local council trying to get rid of it for years. Shark is still there 30 odd years later. The government's final appeal judgement is, surprisingly, perfect and beautiful.
[1] https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/17549881.bill-heine-the-st...
Most places that have regulations -- at the town or HOA level -- discourage you from doing anything in the front yard besides landscaping. Eg, a shed in a front yard will be forbidden.
Usually the restrictions will be more safety based for back and to some extent side yards. It's sort of a "do whatever you want but don't make us look at it" mindset.
It will cause the most problems if you build the house far back on the lot (since then you end up with a lot of unusable front yard and a tiny back yard), if your back yard is unusably shaded, if your trying to maximize the use of your small lot to the limits, or if you don't pay attention to the rules and either buy a house without knowing them or do a lot of work that has to be undone.
With the stupid reasoning of subjective aesthetic no less. It is almost as stupid as circumcising babies because it 'looks better'.
So many problems can be traced back to the stupid ideal of suburban homes with meticulous lawn neighbourhood.
I live in a 24 flat complex, we have meetings at least every year, there's a law governing these HOA things. And if the community decides they want to paint the walls black, then the walls will be black. (Because a simple majority is enough for that.) And so on.
I know nothing about this particular case, and usually courts are pretty reasonable about these, so I guess this was a rather egregious edge case of community self-governance, but on the other hand it's not a bad thing that people can form communities and have some ground rules (bylaws). Sects are bad, monopolies are bad too, and there is a nice little Goldilocks zone, a balanced mix of rules that empower every individual at the same time, and so on. (Hence circumcising without consent is bad.) These are always trade offs, but when it comes to housing, usually people don't want to live in communities that they don't fit into anyway. (Of course again, bigotry is bad, racial/ideological/financial segregation is bad.)
Also it happens in US because they afford it. Once they can't afford it anymore, everybody will agree that it's OK to plant a garden.
Please don't include bait like this in your comments. It triggers avalanches of offtopicness. (It's also not true—people share their feelings on HN all the time, and are welcome to, as long as the comments are substantive. The only kind of feeling-sharing that isn't cool is ragey venting with no information.)
Remember that courts don't give rights, they only protect them.
The state legislature passed a bill overriding local ordinances to protect vegetable gardens specifically.