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Florida couple wins the right to plant veggies in front yard
- lasryaric 7y agoWhy do you care about having tasteless vegetables when you can buy a cheeseburger at McDonald for $1.99 at every highway exit in the country? These people are so stupid...
- dang 7y agoPlease don't break the site guidelines like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- jdietrich 7y agoLand of the free, home of bizarrely authoritarian local ordinances.
- the_pwner224 7y agoThe freedom is that the federal government has only a limited set of rights. The people also are given a set of unalienable rights through constitutional amendments (the Bill of Rights and so on). 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...
- opwieurposiu 7y agoThe people are not "given" rights. Your rights are natural and they exist apriori, regardless of what any government or agent of the state may say. A right can not be given it can only be taken. A government can take them away and the people can take them back.
- dredmorbius 7y agoThere is a limited set of natural, or unalienable, rights. Some guys wrote A Thing about that twelve score and three years back. Most others are very much granted or reserved by law, contract, or custom.
- igravious 7y agoI thought inalienable to be the accepted form: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=inalienable%2C+unalienable https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=inalienable%2C... Is it not? Or are they interchangeable?
- dredmorbius 7y agoThat's my own preferred formulation. Certain authorities take a different view: https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcrip... Yes, they are synonyms, or alternate spellings. https://grammarist.com/usage/inalienable-unalienable/ https://grammarist.com/usage/inalienable-unalienable/
- gota 7y agoThat's a view that seem common among extreme libertarians. An opposing view is that no person has any rights other than those that _other people_ agree they have. That latter view is more common among extreme communitarians, that _all_ rights are "given". 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.
- dbcurtis 7y agoSorry, you have it backwards. The people have rights, and the rights are presumed to pre-exist the US constitution. The government has powers delegated to it by the people via the constitution. 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.
- ivelostn 7y agoThese kinds of local ordinances are the same reason my partner and I don’t just rip up our entire front lawn and replace it with native wildflowers and vegetables. Our backyard has walking paths of cut grass and is otherwise vegetable plot and flower prairies. The U.S. laws and norms that enforce cut lawns are crazy to us. They are biological wastelands.
- devoply 7y ago> 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/ https://www.planetnatural.com/organic-lawn-care-101/history/
- pjc50 7y agoThat's not really what the linked article is arguing; while we could blame Capability Brown, a lawn is just a pasture that's been tidied. In the UK you can usually keep one just by mowing and ambient rainfall. No, the problem was copying that in a very different climate - and then Leavittown, which forced lawns on people with restrictive covenants.
- rags2riches 7y agoAn actual pasture will have a much greater diversity in species than your typical lawn.
- paulddraper 7y ago> U.S. laws and norms 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/hedge-trimming-legislation/ https://www.husqvarna.com/uk/lawn-garden/when-working/usage/...
- Proven 7y agoThey have always had the right (to use their property the way they see fit, as long as it didn't damage other people's property), but local government was violating their exercise of that right. Remember that courts don't give rights, they only protect them.
- favorited 7y agoIf you read the article, you'd see that the appeals courts ruled against them - ruling that the couple did not have that right. The state legislature passed a bill overriding local ordinances to protect vegetable gardens specifically.
- hirundo 7y agoA lot of people think they have the right to micromanage your home and garden in order to maintain their own property values. That doesn't seem to be the case here though. I'd think few would object to living next to this beautiful garden. 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.
- lutorm 7y agoSome people just enjoy telling other people what to do.
- ngngngng 7y agoI think it's wrong to tell someone what they can do with land they own. If you want to decide what's done on land, buy it. This would also work as a solution to NIMBYism.
- nerdponx 7y agoYou wouldn't want someone to run a foundry or a slaughterhouse in a residential neighborhood, unless you can work out some kind of tax (aka a fine) that could compensate for the externalities of noise, unsightliness, etc.
- rags2riches 7y agoI've read the zoning in Japan mostly deals with nuisance levels. Stay within them and you are free to redevelop and repurpose to a large degree.
- closeparen 7y agoYou can think of a municipal government as a group of people who decided to do that. They could used a co-op or LLC or whatever instead; it would change the paperwork but not the reality. 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.
- macawfish 7y agoI know sharing feelings is risky around here but I'm gonna go out on a limb and share: it discourages me and deeply angers me that people are out here having to fight for six years to plant a vegetable garden in their yard. This is very grim. 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.
- keyle 7y agoI share my feelings all the time on HN. And I get a roller coaster of up and down votes... Never stop sharing your feelings, otherwise what's the point of a community. 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.
- wizardforhire 7y agoI second this and will add that often, our value in these discussions come from our dissenting opinions as result of our experience. Rather than shying from, we should be embracing and encouraging our diversity of opinions as a community. Or as a wise sage once said to me... “fuck your eggshells” which for me has been a very handy approach... balanced with compassion and patience of course.
- saalweachter 7y agoWhat's the point of collecting HN karma if you're not going to spend it occasionally voicing unpopular opinions and making cheap sarcastic replies?
- flukus 7y agoWell there's the dopamine hit for getting likes. Likes are probably the most destructive drug in society.
- spectramax 7y agoIf I were to buy a house, I would make sure that it has no HOA bullshit. I am willing to drive farther into the outskirts of the city but there is no way in hell I would ever want any HOA police my own property. It just feels wrong. Just thinking about this sort of thing makes me angry.
- davidw 7y agoParadoxically, it's more likely you'll find a HOA-free house in an older more central part of town. The 'burbs are the prime breeding ground for those kind of organizations.
- cwbrandsma 7y agoI’ve owned 3 different homes, all built around 1975, only one had an HOA (that did practically nothing and everyone was happy). 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.
- windexh8er 7y agoI was just reading "Snow Crash" again and your comment reminds me of the Burbclaves in the story.
- alkonaut 7y agoI don't think it's that the problem is that there are rules, it's just that they are too strict. Next to my area there are houses in an "unplanned" (i.e. rural looking) area, and par for the course is 3 rusted up car wrecks in the yard. Having a junkyard is unsightly. Growing vegetables or drying laundry isn't. Edit: important note is that there are is HOA deciding - it's the local authorities that set these rules.
- danans 7y agoMany of my neighbors have front yard gardens, often because depending on the orientation of the house (it's a dense area) the front yard might have the best light. 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.
- flowersjeff 7y agoProbably because, recently, CA passed a state law making these legal?... I also am in the Bay Area, and I assure you - we have more than enough busy bodies that would report (if they could).
- danans 7y agoPerhaps, but the gardens have been here a while, probably since before the law you mentioned.
- angel_j 7y agoThey didn't really win it. A new law passed exempting gardens. One wonders if the law passed to save the ordinance, and others like it, from being uprooted in higher court.
- PhasmaFelis 7y agoThat may not be the result you wanted, but it's very much the result they wanted.
- anonu 7y agoThere was a tangentiel post earlier today on HN about letting your garden grow wild. 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....
- Kadin 7y agoLine-drying vs machine drying was, and I suppose still is for some older people (who probably inhabit the bulk of HOA boards and such) a class issue. 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.
- ultrarunner 7y agoThis is such an interesting perspective. Though she's never said it, I suspect my grandmother (96! this year) sees vegetarianism the same way— people with means could afford meat, whereas poorer folks simply couldn't. Intentionally choosing to limit or eliminate meat consumption just boggles her mind. This perspective kind of boggles mine. I hadn't though to extrapolate that position to other topics!
- shaunxcode 7y agoFood not lawns!!
- okonomiyaki3000 7y agoSee, this here's what the rest a ya'll foreners won't never unnerstand bout 'Merica. We got what ya'll cain't never 'magine havin' and that there is a lil thing we like to call Freedum.
- teekert 7y agoThrow away those veggies, slave!
- sparkling 7y agoTax payer dollars at work
- ptah 7y agothis woman's garden sounds like an example of what all gardens should be like: thriving polycultures
- enriquto 7y agoWait, what is wrong with having vegetables on your yard? I understand that if you want to raise chickens you need some kind of approval by the rest of the society, due to noises and smells. But what makes "vegetables" different than other flowering plants that you are allowed to plant? You can have plants as long as their fruits are tiny and non-edible?
- rswskg 7y agoAmerica 'Land of the free'.
- fit2rule 7y agoI have a wonderful garden. Its full of healthy, pleasant things .. trees bearing fruit (best pears I have ever eaten), berry shrubs, fruit bushes, luscious section, native tea's, salads, pumpkins, sunflowers, endless other delights among the privilege of overseeing it all, a daily water, a fair bit of weeding, occasional critter control, but .. yeah. My family regularly enjoys a new jam jar, and daily herbs and salads enrich every home cooked meal. 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.
- BorRagnarok 7y agoBanning people from planting veggies. Veggies! 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_Afghanistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_production_in_Afghanista...