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Old 02-10-2017, 10:29 PM
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Slippery Slope: Living in our Commons

Tonight I am noodling on a thought. I do not know where it came from, but it seems to be rooted in our debate over a wall.

When does our collective heart tilt away from the idea of building a national wall? People that grew up near THE WALL know that we outgrew it.

When I arrived in the U.S. my mind was disconcerted between all of our fences. What happened to unity I wondered? The Statue of Liberty? Those thoughts really hit home when I worked inside the fence at the GM Technical Center. An employee was from the middle east. Story was that he lived inside the Tech Center to save on rent. He also showered with Tech Center water for free. It all made sense to me. He was efficient. What I did not understand was why engineers that purportedly worried about efficiency wanted to kick him out.

What goes through your mind as you think about common spaces and how people fence them?
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Old 02-11-2017, 11:08 AM
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Private property is not the Commons and common space is regulated.
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Last edited by nailer; 02-11-2017 at 11:32 AM.
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Old 02-11-2017, 11:16 AM
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Private property is not the commons and common space is regulated.

I don't believe in private property.

Now get off my lawn!
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Old 02-11-2017, 11:30 AM
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I don't believe in private property.

Now get off my lawn!
Mister Meany.
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Old 02-12-2017, 07:36 PM
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Private property is not the Commons and common space is regulated.
I agree that you have the correct answer as to why the person should not have lived on private property.

Do you ever think about how to persuade us to live closer together and reduce our reliance on automobiles?

That's the stuff I think about lately. It seems like we all want to own our own little campgrounds but we end up getting lonely in them. Then we hop in our cars in search of hangout spots, whether they be bars, theaters, actual campgrounds, etc. Engineers are working their butts off to solve the energy efficiency problems but I think they have reached a physical limit. The pendulum has swung from efficiency being an engineering problem to efficiency being an emotional problem -- the emotions of living closer to one another. Politics.
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Old 02-19-2017, 10:08 AM
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I agree that you have the correct answer as to why the person should not have lived on private property.

Do you ever think about how to persuade us to live closer together and reduce our reliance on automobiles?

That's the stuff I think about lately. It seems like we all want to own our own little campgrounds but we end up getting lonely in them. Then we hop in our cars in search of hangout spots, whether they be bars, theaters, actual campgrounds, etc. Engineers are working their butts off to solve the energy efficiency problems but I think they have reached a physical limit. The pendulum has swung from efficiency being an engineering problem to efficiency being an emotional problem -- the emotions of living closer to one another. Politics.
I don't think the government can persuade the vast majority of Americans to voluntarily do something they don't want to do. The desire to have your own space is part of who we are as a species. People who can afford to have always put space between themselves and others, even within a family. What younger brother who shared a bedroom with his older brother didn't long for his own room. In addition, people who live in close quarters are as lonely as those they that don't.

I understand your concern about what Global Warming is going to bring about. It can be frustrating to perceive that we have the ability to address some of the identifiable causes. Are you familiar with James Burke's excellent Connections series? At it's close he presents four paths into the future we could take to address the problem. The last one is the path he thinks we will follow - muddle through as best we can because that is what humans have done with crises since the beginning of history. It's who we are as a species.
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Old 02-19-2017, 10:54 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nailer View Post
I don't think the government can persuade the vast majority of Americans to voluntarily do something they don't want to do. The desire to have your own space is part of who we are as a species. People who can afford to have always put space between themselves and others, even within a family. What younger brother who shared a bedroom with his older brother didn't long for his own room. In addition, people who live in close quarters are as lonely as those they that don't.

I understand your concern about what Global Warming is going to bring about. It can be frustrating to perceive that we have the ability to address some of the identifiable causes. Are you familiar with James Burke's excellent Connections series? At the close of it he present four paths into the future we could take to address the problem. The last one is the path he thinks we will follow - muddle through it the best we can because that is what humans have done with crises since the beginning of history. It's who we are as a species.
Great input Sir.
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Old 02-20-2017, 06:23 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nailer View Post
I don't think the government can persuade the vast majority of Americans to voluntarily do something they don't want to do. The desire to have your own space is part of who we are as a species. People who can afford to have always put space between themselves and others, even within a family. What younger brother who shared a bedroom with his older brother didn't long for his own room. In addition, people who live in close quarters are as lonely as those they that don't.

I understand your concern about what Global Warming is going to bring about. It can be frustrating to perceive that we have the ability to address some of the identifiable causes. Are you familiar with James Burke's excellent Connections series? At it's close he presents four paths into the future we could take to address the problem. The last one is the path he thinks we will follow - muddle through as best we can because that is what humans have done with crises since the beginning of history. It's who we are as a species.
I see what you are saying. The muddler camp is a big one and I must admit that it is my comfort zone. Perhaps a difference between myself and fellow American muddlers is that I have the courage to write that we need to use less land as we continue our muddling. We do not seem to want to maintain it anyway.
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Old 10-29-2018, 08:23 PM
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Originally Posted by nailer View Post
I don't think the government can persuade the vast majority of Americans to voluntarily do something they don't want to do. The desire to have your own space is part of who we are as a species. People who can afford to have always put space between themselves and others, even within a family. What younger brother who shared a bedroom with his older brother didn't long for his own room. In addition, people who live in close quarters are as lonely as those they that don't.

I understand your concern about what Global Warming is going to bring about. It can be frustrating to perceive that we have the ability to address some of the identifiable causes. Are you familiar with James Burke's excellent Connections series? At it's close he presents four paths into the future we could take to address the problem. The last one is the path he thinks we will follow - muddle through as best we can because that is what humans have done with crises since the beginning of history. It's who we are as a species.
As I continue my journey into politics I keep learning that what is old is new again. Political discussion can get so convoluted that that we even forget what we have said and begin to disagree with ourselves given enough time. Discovering and profiting from inconsistency seems to be the new business model of New York, New York and it has infected Silicon Valley. Or maybe their fascination with profit is mutual and they are involved in a circle jerk to use a colloquialism.

In any event the notion of love/hate affair with walls struck me in the heart again with the walls that are in NYC. They take the form of little pyramid pricks that prevent people from sitting. The rich people profit from sidewalk merchants and street musicians, but yet the rich people want to exclude others. So what permanent structures do they erect to insulate themselves from the ephemeral dances of street beauty?

Little prick pyramids like the butt irritating cones in the attached photo. They say to me thanks for your money, now get the fuck out. It would be funny and inspirational if the owner sat on them to show tolerance for pain like a god or a stoic. But the owner is absent. So were the customers. The associated restaurant had an empty chairs with empty tables feeling about it. The butt irritating forms were an unnecessary barbed wired fence around a space that people did not want to invade.

Somewhere else on PC I wrote an angry piece about Michigan business owners building cities that they do not want to live in. Here is what their dreams look like in NYC space if it all goes wrong.
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Old 02-19-2017, 10:37 AM
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Here's a commons question. The other day a vacuum truck stopped right in front of my house and proceeded to dump it's contents into the storm sewer. An abuse of the commons, no? Or, might it have been legal? I doubt it. I can't see why 'legal' practice would be to go to a side residential street not visible from a main street to dump....

I've got pics. Should I blow the whistle on these guys? The most that might happen, I expect is they guys on the truck might be in trouble. There might be some risk for me to, given the rep of private waste haulers....
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