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> Let’s say your city releases a list of all trees planted on its public property. It would be a godsend—at least in theory. You could filter the data into a li
by random28345 12y ago
> Let’s say your city releases a list of all trees planted on its public property. It would be a godsend—at least in theory. You could filter the data into a list of all the fruit and nut trees in the city, transfer it into an online database, and create a smartphone app that helps anyone find free food.
So assuming that an individual fruit tree produces 20,000 calories of edible fruit annually, and there are a couple dozen fruit trees in a typical American city, we will have spent a hundred man hours in app development and testing to turn half a million potential calories into a few thousand, as we inflict the tragedy of the commons on these public resources and encourage people to pick the immature fruit before someone else with the app does.
That idea is so stupid, by next week I expect to see 8 startups with a combined valuation of 80 million dollars all attempting to monetize the 24 fruit trees on public property in Mountain View by selling ads targeting "urban nomads" (aka homeless), or by paying homeless to gather unripe fruit for each other in whatever litecoin or ripple clone is in vogue that week.
- danielnaab 12y agoHaving previously lived in Phoenix for several years, I can tell you that the amount of citrus on public property that falls to the ground and rots is huge. Even at high density apartment complexes, people don't pick near capacity (although this might have something to do with heavy use of herbicides on manicured lawns). There's no tragedy of the commons going on there (and I have to wonder if you've ever tasted a green orange)... On the other hand, there are pretty sound reasons for planting edibles on public spaces instead of merely ornamental plants.
- vdaniuk 12y agoCome on, don't be so rude, it's totally uncalled for. And you are missing the perspective. Not all cities are typical American, okay? There may be cities in warmer climate zones with tens of thousands of fruit trees.
- tlrobinson 12y agoI don't think I could have written a more perfect parody of Hacker News comments that ignore the point of the article but nitpick one small thing in an attempt to demonstrate the commenter's intelligence.