Comment by epivosism | Hacker News Reader

Comment by epivosism | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

It would be a useful way to balance the costs vs benefits. If the gov't would put a price on it, I could violate the law here but compensate 100x as much elsewhere.

My town has a law where if a tree is over 10" in diameter, there's a fine of 5k if you cut it down. But actually, it's worse, because if they find out you plan to do this, or did it intentionally, they can continue to fine you arbitrarily and force you to re-plant a tree!

So you may own some land and have approval to build human habitation on it... but the tree prevents you, and you simply cannot do it via any legal means.

Otoh if I could... pay the town 5k, and also permanent preserve say 100 trees elsewhere... I could use my own land. I love trees as much as the next one, but it's just a huge risk to allow them to grow on my land cause once they pass that threshold, I irrevocably lose control of land I've paid for and continue to pay a lot of tax on.

It's also funny that if your enemy owns land, and you "help" his trees grow that thick without him knowing, property he planned to use as say an ultimate frisbee field will be permanently unusable for him, with no way out (except begging the city council, etc. and other behavior which is indistinguishable from bribery (money or psychologically))

My city also has a similar law for trees and I think it is the wrong approach. I think it incentivizes people not to grow trees since you might not be able to take them out later if needed. Instead we should have some sort of property tax discount per large tree or something.

Similarly, if you discover some endangered species on your property, current law encourages you to bulldoze it immediately before anyone else finds out.

Similar if your building has features that might get it designated as historically significant.

Indeed. Best to destroy old buildings and pave over natural ecosystems, just in case. This is the way of perverse incentives.

Oh, and when building new buildings, make them as unremarkable and boring as possible, so they won't become historic in the future. Why take the chance? Indeed, make them ugly so the government might decide to pay you to get rid of them.

That's exactly what Hawaii does. You can deduct $3000 from your taxes per exceptional tree. https://taxfoundation.org/blog/exceptional-tree-deduction/

What happens if the tree dies on its own?

Depends on if they find the circumstances... suspicious.

I am not sure how much surveillance they do - in reality for large lots this restriction may not hold, since trees can disappear at night, be chipped up, etc. But for people in the suburbs, to cut one you need to get a crew in, and there are probably reporting requirements. Also the neighbors love to get involved.

But I do wonder if a tree imperceptibly had branches die, be removed, and then just gradually shrunk over time?

A lot of these laws don't cause much harm in a pre-surveillance world. But once there are full cameras on everything, seeing how they apply at 100% enforcement can be scary. But by that point there are defenders for each one, so they hardly change.

The way people do it is to hammer in a nail that poisons the tree.

The tree dies, and needs to be cut down because it's dangerous to leave standing

A copper nail, specifically (drill a hole first).

Some jurisdiction will make you replace the tree in that case, just to avoid this sort of mechanism.

Yeah but the tree only has to be that diameter at final size. You can plant a dozen tiny trees too close then let them stunt or choke each other out

Some jurisdictions seem to be attempting to counter this sort of thing, and an aspect is: if you can't do it properly, we will, and send you the bill at our chosen rates. And we are going to check.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com