i cant tell if this is satire or if you actually agree with it
People always say "oh well if your neighbor did X you'd want zoning too". I've lived in those kinds of places and I mind the end-game of escalating lower class trashiness a lot less than I mind the endgame of upper middle class conformity. Bring on the fireworks, the ATVs, the loud music in languages I don't even speak and the drunken arguments.
I agree zoning is the wrong way to address this. What's needed is a responsive police force that will address noise complaints. Unfortunately police in areas where these things tend to be a problem have more important things to attend to most of the time.
it seems like people should be buying better harnesses
that's life
That said, his point is totally valid. When you say "affordable" most upper middle class people hear "poor people".
Just wanted to point out that Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel is a character from The Simpsons who satirizes the type of person that people generally refer to as "hillbilly".
When I grew up, we lived in an unincorporated area with minimal noise and other ordinances. A new neighbor moves in next store and basically spends 20-40 hours a week shooting at a bell and fixed targets from 7AM-?. They would use everything from .22s ("ding, ding, ..., ding") to various pistols, AK-47/SKS rifles, to hunting rifles daily. After church on Sunday most summers consisted of watermelon demolition via shotgun. My mom worked nights, and it made her life miserable.
Fast forward to my recent past. I live in a city, in a mixed neighborhood of 1-4 family houses. Some asshole decides to illegally convert his 2-family flat into a 10 unit SRO. So now we're stuck with people who are willing to live in that kind of situation (ie. mostly drug addicts and drunks) hanging around yucking it up all night. We were only able to shut it down when the slumlord guy decided to illegally convert the front porches into two more units, and when cited by the code officer chose to assault him.
I get the pushback to zoning, but it exists because of substantial minority of the population are assholes. My dad ran subsidized housing programs for years and built personal relationships with many of the stakeholders that I got to be a small part of -- the narrative on HN is that poor people are fighting zoning, the reality is that poor people are often the biggest advocates for it, but are denied due process. Nobody wants to live around slumlord apartments, or have industrial activity in their backyard -- but the most vulnerable people have the worst ability to secure representation and demand attention.