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Comment by Grakel | Hacker News Reader

If we should ban anything, it's leaf blowers. Buy yourself a rake.

gasoline leaf blowers are banned in Los Angeles, for 20 years now... they still use them everywhere

also, i gotta say, they encourage a certain type of careless laziness. my landlord sends these guys every week, and they just walk around blowing up a lot of dust, and while a certain amount blows in the intended direction, a bunch more stuff blows to the sides. nobody particularly cares what they're doing.

Do you have these where you live?

https://townsquare.media/site/71/files/2013/05/whirlybirds.j...

They fall all over my drive and are too thin and small to be collected by the tines of a rake.

In my experience, maple keys are actually quite easy to clean off of driveways and sidewalks with a broom :)

Push brooms with thick bristles work particularly well. Of course, you're out of luck if they're wet, but that's pretty universal.

In a strange twist, I have a rake and use it when I need to manage leaves. I use the leaf blower to blow grass clippings off the drive and walkway after cutting the lawn. And luckily, these electric blowers are both a bit less powerful and a lot less loud than those raucous gas models.

Meh. They’re only bad in urban areas. There are plenty of other loud tools/toys people use in rural places and it doesn’t really matter because everyone is so far apart.

Why has society gotten so authoritarian lately? Arbitrary things shouldn't just be banned in free countries.

He should have specified GAS leaf blowers - they are very polluting. But it doesn't have to be that way.

Yeah. Electric leaf blowers have existed for decades and coincidentally don’t have wasteful two stroke engines that largely serve as gasoline atomizers.

Tragedy of the commons. The expectation of freedom was that people will, in their pursuit of happiness, look out for their fellow citizen by being free in the most socially beneficial way feasible. Unfortunately because we aren’t a high-trust society anymore, that expectation is broken. With this basic level of responsibility violated, so too will evaporate the freedom.

There have been a number of high-profile demonstrations lately that people cannot be trusted.

Why shouldn't we ban something, if its harm can be rigorously shown and yet people persist in using it? What does this lofty commitment to "freedom" actually buy?

> There have been a number of high-profile demonstrations lately that people cannot be trusted.

People in the government, or somewhere else? Trusted to do what you want them to, or?

> Why shouldn't we ban something, if its harm can be rigorously shown and yet people persist in using it?

Automobiles fit that bill. The problem is that the (well meaning) authoritarians believe that their equation for the cost and value of everything is the one true gold standard that society must set its clock and run by.

> What does this lofty commitment to "freedom" actually buy?

Lots of things. For you specifically, the freedom to isolate yourself at home, the freedom to wear a mask in public, and the freedom to decide to get vaccinated and make other decisions about your personal medical treatments.

You didn't think without freedom that you'll still get to do what you want and the only change is that others will also be made to do what you want, right?

> There have been a number of high-profile demonstrations lately that people cannot be trusted.

Presumably including you?

> Why shouldn't we ban something

Because the people doing the banning can't be trusted.

> if its harm can be rigorously shown and yet people persist in using it

That's a contradiction - if the harm is so obvious, people wouldn't do it. If they do do it, then clearly they don't agree with you that there is harm.

Which means, don't ban it, since your POV is not superior to theirs.

> if the harm is so obvious, people wouldn't do it.

That's quite an assumption. I assume you've not met many cigarette smokers?

I have, and they believe the tradeoff (health for enjoyment) is worth it to them.

I think they are idiots, but they don't. And my opinion is not superior to theirs.

Your right to smoke a cigarette ends where it becomes second hand smoke that would enter my lungs.

I used to think the same thing, that we're moving to people wanting to regulate evrything. But after watching/reading about a bunch of modern history, looking at the past century it's always been like this, it's just a combination of decades of regulation compounding as well as old regulation being taken for granted.

https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/leaf-blowe...

I have an electric leaf blower, it works great. Not as powerful as gas, but it works for my needs, and far better than a rake (you try raking among shrug stems, or flower beds).

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