Same comments I got when I said I was planting apple trees in my front yard. Those are for the public, the ones in my back yard are for me.
Everyone in my street is selling their apples on the street. Every house has a little basket and a sign “1 kilo 1 euro” or something like that. Some are even giving them away for free. I gave mine away in bulk, so I haven’t got anything to pu in the street.
The annoying thing about fruit trees is that the fruits are only good for picking for like 1-2 weeks of the whole year. If you don’t pick them during those 2 weeks, they rot and spoil. That’s why the whole street tries to sell them pretty much at the same time, because you can’t pick fruit like a basket at the time. You have to pick the whole tree during those 2 weeks.
Presumably because everyone assumes the tragedy of the commons will happen as it always does. And, little red hen, there’s a sense that if one person does the work, they are owed the fruits of their labor
Plus having rotting fruit laying around will encourage pests. Maybe put these into specific areas rather than just scattering them around.
Yeah, my city has street sweepers and gardeners, so I wouldn’t imagine this would be a huge problem.
They could even put out compost bins like public trashcans. I wouldn’t mind cleaning up a couple of fruits here and there as I walk by.
If it’s in a public place in front of businesses and such, then the business has an incentive to keep things tidy. So all in all, I think it’s a fairly easy problem to solve.
I’m thinking about fruit trees and bushes specifically. If you’ve ever gone apple picking you see how many apples are on the ground. Domesticated fruit trees are bred and grafted to be highly prolific, and you’ll have a lot more fruit dropped than you’d think.
Plus you’ll have animals going into the trees to eat the fruit. Commercial berry farmers have to cover their bushes and trees with nets to prevent birds from picking them clean. (And then producing very colorful art on outdoor surfaces.)
I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, but I don’t think people have entirely thought it through.
Some apple trees can produce hundreds of fruit a day. No you wouldn’t. That’s someone else’s problem. It takes massive organization and as you can see no one really cares enough.
https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/cities-are-planting-trees-why-not-make-them-fruit-trees
A small example of the work needed. You’re not going to get this everywhere or forever and what happens when people stop. The trees don’t stop.
how do you explain this just… not being a problem that anyone talks about in areas where fruit trees are already plentiful in cities? I feel like people use the word “pests” the same way conservatives use the word “immigrants”, it’s just an abstract scapegoat to throw out whenever you want to argue against something…
I had a long list of animals that I was going to use but omitted it for brevity. Rats, mice, cockroaches, pigeons, raccoons, possums, deer and, apparently, moose would be a few of them.
But in cities they’re already pretty prevalent so I guess adding another food source wouldn’t encourage them
What’s cool is we don’t even have to wait for the collapse, we can start working towards the greater good today!
I mean, yeah…one of them is an attempt at a solution for the tragedy. It’s a logical step to protect things from others ruining it by saying it’s yours.
But a fruit tree in a public space is like an open field or playground equipment in a public space. They are there for everyone, and people who complain that the ‘wrong people’ are using those public rrsources for personal use are selfish idiots.
Like if a company came in and took all the fruit, sure, that would be wrong. But someone taking apples to make a pie? That’s what it is there for.
What if one person comes in and takes it all? Don’t even need companies, just individuals.
That’s the tragedy of the commons.
What if the tree only produces 3 fruit, is it wrong for three siblings to pick and eat them?
What if I hire a dozen people to randomly, individually go and pick all the fruit and bring it to me, and then I make a profit reselling what they collect?
this is literally a legitimate business in the nordic forests thanks to the right to roam, people will hire (generally thai people) to go out into the forests and harvest berries and mushrooms on an industrial scale (by hand though) and then sell it to grocery stores or directly to people on the street…
and surprise surprise, i have never seen anyone complain about this. Rather people gladly pay their pretty cheap prices rather than going out and picking it themselves, and there’s more than enough available out in the forest that everyone can find some for theirselves if they want.
hell the law specifically gives you a tax break for selling fruits and berries you’ve personally picked, you can earn something like 25’000 SEK per year that way without needing to pay any tax on it.
This isn’t a fucking problem.
Talking about tragedy of the commons on the internet, in a decentralized network, is an extremely funny bit.
Do I need to mention that the guy who came up with it was a racist who wanted to justify displacing the “unproductives”?
And then you have old ladies come by to take all the fruit for themselves saying “It’s public property bitch!!”
There will be atleast 1 asshole trying to take all the aplles fer themselves. I guarantee it
Guess we can’t have anything nice as long as one person might be selfish.
I didn’t say we shouldn’t do it. I just wanted to point out that sadly one jerk will probably try and ruin it for everyone
Meh, that’s why you plant an abundance. No value if you can’t steal at least most and probably be able to travel.
I grew up in a town with plenty of fruit naturally growing (blackberries especially, which grow like weeds) and having an abundance absolutely meant that no one tried to horde it all. You could pick 10 pounds of blackberries and barely make a dent in the amount in any given neighborhood.
And if you actually read the Wikipedia article you linked:
The work of Elinor Ostrom, who received the Nobel Prize in Economics is seen by some economists as having refuted Hardin’s claims.[1] Hardin’s views on over-population have been criticised as simplistic[2] and racist. [3]
…
Hardin’s work is criticised as historically inaccurate in failing to account for the demographic transition,[191] and for failing to distinguish between common property and open access resources.[192][193] Environmentalist Derrick Jensen claims the tragedy of the commons is used as propaganda for private ownership.[194][195] He says it has been used by the political right wing to hasten the final enclosure of the “common resources” of third world and indigenous people worldwide, as a part of the Washington Consensus.[196]
…
Other criticisms have focused on Hardin’s racist and eugenicist views, claiming that his arguments are directed towards forcible population control, particularly for people of color.[210][211]
The “tragedy of the commons” is one of those things that’s very Intuitive, but doesn’t actually hold up to much scrutiny.
So the BLM lied about the (Cliven and sons) Bundy cattle degrading US property? No, I don’t sympathize with them, just saying the answer may be somewhere between each extreme. Key word: “may,” because I’m not a conservation scientist and people are people.
I remember when I was young I got ticketed for trespassing on public property. I was so offended. Yet that’s the society we live in. Public resources aren’t for use by the public, they are for use by the small fraction of the public who control them.
We’re gonna need the detail. The county jail is public property, but you can’t waltz in and say hi to the inmates.
It was for staying too late in a public park. It was meant to be closed after dark. I overstayed by like an hour.
I think there’s a big difference between breaking and entering and trespassing. Going into a restricted area is more like the latter. Although there’s the whole ethics of a prison to consider as well but I don’t want to get into that.
But yes there may be a small number of situations where public access should be forbidden but right now that’s a minority of all of the completely unnecessary restrictions that exist.