Freedom to Roam | Hacker News Reader

Freedom to Roam

en.wikipedia.org

24 pointsgitinit43 comments

I remember when I first learned about it while planning a hiking trip to Sweden. The idea that you can wander through forests, across fields, and along rivers without worrying about trespassing was quite liberating. I ended up exploring some stunning landscapes that I wouldn't have discovered otherwise. I wish more places adopted this approach, it would make outdoor activities more accessible for everyone.

I'm from Norway. In Sweden it's so important it's part of their constitution. In Norway it's so important it was one of (the?) last parts of Norwegian law to be codified - it was considered so self evident courts took it into account despite Norway not using a common law system.

Very different approaches, but both coming from the feeling you quickly get that you can not be truly free if you're surrounded by fenced off land once you're used to it.

The other effect is that there is - ironically in a country with extremely high government ownership of other things - less pressure in the government to own land.

We don't need national parks (we still have some) to make land accessible to the public, because it all is.

We need that freedom. I would also say that we also need education on how to use that freedom, how to not leave a mess behind, how to preserve those places for others.

Many Americans believe they have the freedom to kill trespassers. This seems fundamentally incompatible with that.

It is. It requires an attitude that restrictive property rights takes liberty away from the public, and so must be balanced to minimize the restrictions they impose to be legitimate at all.

As a European I prefer the way we do things here, but I do envy the amount of publicly owned land in the US where citizens do have freedom to roam. e.g. National Parks, BLM & Forrest service land. We have less space, most land already owned by a private citizen since Feudal times.

Well, with freedom to roam it'd largely not matter if it's privately owned. With reasonable sensible rules you get the best of two worlds: You "only" need to take special measures for land that should be left unspoiled.

I used to walk through privately owned forests on the way to and from school and sometime go off walkthrough them with friends as a kid without once having to think about who the owner was, because it was irrelevant.

I like this idea theoretically but I wouldn’t want a random person camping on my 20 acres.

Why?

My guess is because OP, like the rest of us Americans, are taught to avoid thinking too deeply about how "freedom" and "property" tend to collide in very uncomfortable ways, but pine for both.

Freedom collides with a lot of other rights. For example you are not free to murder people.

An example from Sweden. A commercial company organised a camping trip where one of the stops where on a persons garden. So they pretty much had different campers there everyday. Should a commercial company really be allowed to "rent" out your garden to campers?

Freedom to roam does not need to be freedom to enter people's garden. At least in Norway, the law requires you to stay a minimum distance from dwellings, and has a variety of requirements to ensure you're not a nuisance.

There are many possible tradeoffs there other than specifically the Norwegian or Swedish variants to allow most activities unhindered without affecting landowners much.

> Freedom to roam does not need to be freedom to enter people's garden. At least in Norway, the law requires you to stay a minimum distance from dwellings, and has a variety of requirements to ensure you're not a nuisance.

Sweden has similar restrictions.

Yea. That is my point. It is a great freedom but there needs to be a balance.

Do you only support laws if there exist no downsides no matter how small? Has there ever been any such law?

That said, if we don’t companies engaging in those kinds of practices, it seems more practical to ban those practices than to remove all rights to access entirely.

My point is more that it has to be a freedom that is limited and not absolute.

The freedom to roam in Sweden and Norway is already limited and not absolute. No one supporting such freedoms had been arguing the freedom should be unlimited. You never needed to make this point because it was obvious to everyone in the conversation.

Because in practice people don't clean up after themselves, especially in public places.

In practice people are pretty good at it when you create a culture where it is ingrained. Not sure about Sweden, but in Norway how to handle the freedom to roam is taught from primary school on, and while the camping is legal, not tidying up isn't.

The majority do clean up, but of course this goes unnoticed.

In my case, I live near the border and such use 'just roaming lmao' would become perfect cover for drug traffickers, gangs, sex trafficking and all kind of bad stuff I don't want to be liable for when people coming stomping on my property. In US your property can even be seized if such persons are using it.

It would also be very expensive for me if someone hurt themselves and then sued me since they are on my property.

So if the law were changed to remove said liability, you would support a freedom to roam in the US?

I would compromise if they offer me in trade ability to shoot trespassers/"roamers" who are criminal traffickers.

So you want to be judge, jury, and executioner. Doesn't sound like a compromise to me. In Norway, where I grew up anyone shooting at someone taking advantage of the ability to roam would be rightly subject to a massive manhunt.

Your asking for me to relinquish some of my private property rights. Obviously I want something in trade, it's not gonna be unilateral charity so traffickers can be judge jury and executioner against my children who roam my property.

>Norway, where I grew up anyone shooting at someone

In Arizona you can shoot these people with ak47, thankfully and get charges dropped after a deadlocked jury. As recently happened.

I'm pretty happy with Norway doing their Norway thing and Arizona doing how we handle it here. Not interested in making the US Norway.

I’m confused why you think this would put you at increased risk. You are allowed to defend yourself against threats today. Why do you think that would change?

Though you are also speaking as if people camping on your land away from your dwelling are necessarily threatening. If that is something you believe, you might want to reflect and ask yourself why.

If you don't understand why, I'm going to guess you haven't spent much time in remote US/Mexico border regions far from ports of entry.

To me, you come across as one of the greater risks to people's safety in your area.

I'm asking you to stop denying the public freedoms in return for getting the same freedom yourself.

Nobody is asking you to allow others to do violence against you. But that you want to be free to deprive others of life and liberty on the basis of guesses strikes as a brutally authoritarian attitude.

I'm fine with keeping private property rights so there's no guessing and trespassing is hardline crossing that fence. It was merely an offer as a potential trade since you wanted something for free that involved guessing who is a roamer. Obviously property owners aren't trading away interests unless you're ponying up something sweeten the deal.

I see your attitude as essentially robbing the public of liberty, and I don't get why the US public puts up with being stripped of freedom that way. One of the reasons I am happy I don't live somewhere so oppressive. Though the UK is only marginally better (Scotland much more so than England and Wales) and has been quite the adjustment from Norway compared to the attitude of wanting it to be ok to kill people it's amazing.

I see all liberty as stemming from private property rights. Thus the freedom to roam can only take away your liberty, not add to it.

We’re talking people walking across or camping on your land and in both cases staying away from any residences where people actually live. How would you even know someone is trafficking?

Hmm might want to reword it as reasonably believe, then let the jury figure it as they did with the rancher with an AK who recently walked.

Only if they can shoot at you too if they reasonably believe you're a threat to their safety. Which it sounds like you'd be likely to be.

Deal. Not like they cared about law anyway, so it'll change nothing. They're already looking at life for the kind of armed trafficking they're already doing.

Sounds like you live in a third world war zone. Why do you stay if it is that bad?

Dumb laws made it prohibitively expensive to build most places, then idiotic monetary policy of the fed caused price explosions particularly during the COVID era. Then all the real estate got locked up in near 0% mortgages people will never give up locking my family out of a home almost anywhere

In short, I got priced out most everywhere and had to go where land is cheap and I was allowed to DIY a shack. Strong property rights and practically unrestricted gun laws here though mean there is at least some protection despite basically no law enforcement.

I understand your reaction a bit better in that case. We probably still won't agree, but I get the frustration of being priced out of better places.

I don’t want unexpected people on my property. I shoot guns sometimes and can now safely assume there is not going to be anyone on my property that can get injured. My kid wanders around the woods we have by herself, I don’t want the possibility of some random person lurking on the property. I don’t want someone coming on to my property and potentially doing illegal drugs that I may or may not liable for. If I had to exaggerate the danger, you could have someone show up for a day, set up a tent, cook meth on your property and then leave knowing full well that if law enforcement shows up they could just run away.

I’m going to get downvoted for this but Europe is relatively community minded and frankly a little naive. The US is hardcore when it comes to individualism and will frankly exploit everything up to the very edge of the law. You would have tours of private lands set up within the week especially if you have anything interesting on there. My last point is that Europe is a relatively small place so there isn’t a lot of land to roam but the US isn’t like that. There is plenty of public land to roam so we don’t really need this law.

Poop cairns.

The population in Norway and Sweden is different from the US and other countries in a way that means it wouldn't work.

Put succinctly I would simply say that there are fewer degenerates. One bus or subway journey in NY and one in Stockholm is enough to see that.

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