The Innocent Pleasure of Trespassing

> who is to blame if a hipster falls down a chute 50 feet onto concrete?

Why wouldn't it be the hipster's fault?

I'm in the Law and Finance building on 4th. For years our elevator access was secured by a hasp and had direct access to the roof. That was a fun place to check out the 250th anniversary fireworks with a 6 pack.

I understand your frustration. I moved my family (actually sold my home and moved to a different town) due to trespassers. I put up signs, but they were torn down or uprooted and thrown on the lawn. I also called the police, and they said that they would be as helpful as they could be, but unless they caught someone in the act then they couldn't do anything. The police said that if the trespassers were aggravated then they may destroy property, and that without solid evidence prosecution was unlikely to go anywhere. So if you irritate someone and "get a brick through your window" (this was the example the police gave), even if you get a picture, it won't prove they threw the brick. The solution was to move.

Oh! And then there are the mentally ill. There was this one woman who would hold meetings in my shade structure. She would arrange chairs in a semi circle and talk to the chairs. There weren’t any others...it was just her and her dog. She’d talk to them and ‘hear’ them.

She would be so irritated when I come by and she’s hold the door open to let ‘them’ out..thanking each one of her invisible friends for coming.

I knew she was harmless but i always locked my tools away. Once I forgot to lock a pair of shears and the next morning, the lavender hedges were all razed..she had gone on a rampage on the greenhouse plastic..shredding it.

I finally called the cops. They were sympathetic but said they can’t do anything unless I file a complaint and ask that she be arrested. I was reluctant to do this..and they said that their hands are tied unless they book her. If she is mentally ill and someone had filed a missing person report, this was the only way they can question her and detain her..maybe get fingerprints. I don’t want anyone to ever stay in jail because they are mentally ill..but I relented. She came by a few more times and then she moved on to another area from what I heard.

This is a whole another kind of trespassing. I have no answers. Just frustrated and really sad and angry.

That's heartbreaking - have you thought about setting up cameras so you have unambiguous evidence in case you ever have to bring legal action? Are they ever armed? Would it be worth while patrolling the perimeter of your land with a rifle every now and then or would they just leave and come back later?

I would consult a lawyer. Depending on the state, I would personally be walking the perimeter of my farm with a gun, shooting at anyone who's stealing my property/power on sight. Homeless people have advocates, sure, but this is basically home invasion, burglary, and probably many other things that are just plain unacceptable by &/or from anyone.

What about shooting at them?

I literally got in trouble for knowing this verse in elementary school. Dad came down with a tape cassette to show the principal what was up. :eyeroll:

Funny how Guthrie's communist, anti-borders, anthem got co-opted by nationalists so far that they don't even understand the meaning... this verse couldn't make that cut, though.

How do you spot these places or find out about them, in general?

I don't think an "enter at your own risk" sign would be enough to protect you from lawsuits. Even if you win the lawsuit, it is still expensive.

What about National Forests? Would you consider that true public property?

> National Forest is a classification of protected and managed federal lands in the United States. National Forests are largely forest and woodland areas owned collectively by the American people through the federal government, and managed by the United States Forest Service, a division of the United States Department of Agriculture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Forest

Also, consider Slab City:

> Slab City, also called The Slabs, is a largely snowbird community in the Sonoran Desert located in Imperial County, California, 100 miles (161 km) northeast of San Diego and 169 miles (272 km) southeast of Los Angeles within the California Badlands, and used by recreational vehicle owners and squatters from across North America.

> The site is both decommissioned and uncontrolled, and there is no charge for parking. The site has no official electricity, running water, sewers, toilets or trash pickup service.[3] Many residents use generators or solar panels to generate electricity. The closest body of civilization with proper law enforcement is approximately four miles southwest of Slab City in Niland where the residents often go to do basic shopping. As a result, the site is described by its inhabitants and news outlets like Vice News as a miniature de facto enclave of anarchy.

It might be considered a kind of Temporary Autonomous Zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Autonomous_Zone

And do you intend to do the regular cleanup and maintenance these areas need when they're opened to the public? Do you intend to clean up the literal human waste and trash on a regular basis?

It's a nice idea to have truly public property, but the reality is that people destroy land, especially when it's not their own, and upkeep isn't free or even cheap. Add to that things like zoning, land use codes and restrictions, and taxes, and it's easy to understand why we've lost so much public land.

It still exists, but it's hard to find now.

Shouldn't be a surprise, as private property (and keeping the government/all other parties out of it) is one of the fundamental tenets of the U.S. Constitution. And so a lot of people come with that mindset.

It's a double-edged sword, and while I agree with a lot of the points in the article (it's one of the primary reasons why Europe is unbelievably pleasant to visit), the US will never implement anything remotely close to free-to-roam (or whatever it's called in the UK, as an analog) policies. Too many private interests against it.

As one of the posters of a TLC, I can tell you that the scores of all my posts are going up and down like a yoyo.

Or it might be spiking up at irregular intervals then steadily decreasing over time. I haven't instrumented.

I see the parent post downvoted, but I don't see why.

Indeed, that was my first thought when I saw the title, and since it's a very long read, I just ctrl+f "danger", which doesn't come up once.

When I was a kid, I went into abandoned houses, churches, private land, and on a few occasions I crawled into old etruscan tombs looking for interesting bits (bits of broken vases, coins and such).

It was very fun, and also very stupid, and I count myself lucky that nothing ever happened to me.

One should be mindful when deciding to break into unmaintained areas, rather than charge in with a the hope of getting a nice instagram picture yelling "YOLO!".

One thing that always struck me as strange was the liability from tresspassers for "natural" conditions. I mean there are good reasons for laws against boobytraps or other active threats but it seems insane when disused quarries are ringed with /barbed wire/ to prevent lawsuits from fools diving into it.

I wonder why "assume your own risk" for any sort of casual tresspassing (as opposed to say fringe circumstances where it would be legally justifird as the lesser evil) hasn't been a legal standard. I guess kids falling down the proverbial well set the precedents for everyone.

Yeah, life is risk. Whatever you do, something terrible might happen. You could have a random brain aneurysm just sitting on the couch. At some point you have to take a risk and do something or what's even the point of being alive?

And yet, it seems like the West has become so obsessed with safety (in every sense) that it has become so sterile, no fun. Helicopter parenting is just one manifestation of that.

You can barely explore or experiment. Start fires and throw random stuff in them. Is it still even legal to build treehouses? Hang a tire from a tree? Or does everything needs to be certified and inspected for safety, hot cups of coffee labelled “hot”, lest you be sued into oblivion?

Indeed. Even the relatively harmless example of going up to a hotel floor to look at the view out of (I assume) the lift lobby is something that only works if you’re the only one doing it.

If a bunch of people start doing it then all of a sudden guests start noticing crowds of people outside their rooms, the hotel is obliged to post security guards to stop it happening, and bingo, suddenly life is slightly worse for everyone.

If you find yourself saying “it’s okay that I break the rules” with a full awareness that if everyone broke the same rules it would be terrible, then you are exactly the kind of selfish asshole that is the usual answer to the question of “why we can’t have nice things”.

You seem to be presenting a straw man argument about restriction of access for reasons of conservation and trying to generalise that to imply 'disrespecting boundaries' of any kind is therefore bad without justification. What about denying access to a hotel's top floor or a private beach is about conservation? There are far more many examples of denying the right to roam that are about preserving privilege or sheer arbitrariness than about conservation.

> But there's a reason why most places discourage this sort of freewheeling exploration; when you visit a place and disrespect its boundaries, you often end up damaging it for the people who come after you.

We're talking about abandoned buildings here. They are already practically ruins; I don't see how this applies. Even in your public parks example, we develop natural spaces so people can enjoy them even though doing so requires clearing some portion of the land for roads and facilities. Overall I agree that trespassing is selfish but I don't see anything wrong with that if it doesn't harm anyone else.

> But there's a reason why most places discourage this sort of freewheeling exploration; when you visit a place and disrespect its boundaries, you often end up damaging it for the people who come after you. Even footsteps will eventually wear away stones, knock things loose, and disturb delicate habitats/ecosystems such as fungi. As the old saying goes, "plants grow by inches, but they die by feet."

We're talking about abandoned buildings here. The damage caused by someone walking around is inconsequential compared to the damage caused by nature and the elements. This does assume that the trespassers aren't smashing the windows or chopping down structural members or something. But that's not trespassing, that's vandalism.

It's not like everyone has to go off the same trail, or up the same tower, or onto the same hotel roof. There are hardly any single things on this planet that would not be ruined if everybody did them, but we still use them with the implicit understanding that there mostly are sufficiently many fungible replacements.

Just because "Don't let any sheep graze; actually, just stop eating" technically is one solution to the motivating example for the Tragedy of the Commons, this doesn't mean that that has to be the solution that we actually choose.

> we all like beholding beautiful scenes which a majority of people don't think to look for.

Actually, that statement isn't true regarding me. When I see something beautiful, I really like to share the experience (even if not at the same moment) with other people. Seeing something beautiful, but only being able to tell others about it, is a bit sad for me.

You are attacking something the author did not say. I will assume that this strawman was unintentional (if I were to instead assume that you were acting in bad faith then there would no point responding to you; if you are in fact acting in bad faith, please take a moment to consider why it is that your argument requires a distortion of the truth to be defensible).

The author does say that trespassing on private property, owned by corporations, is not wrong like other forms of "trespass" may be. His argument has one critical nuance that you ignore, however: he says that trespass is not wrong when it is an act that reclaims fundamentally public spaces from private ownership to make them accessible to everyone. A park, a corner between two buildings, and even a view of the city are deeply public things.

Your office (especially the specific area in which you work and the items there) are not, and have never been, public spaces. These specific areas and items are also (by most interpretations) private property, which is another criterion that author has for property that should not be violated. To say that the author suggests that your office should be trespassed upon is an assertion ignorant of these components of the author's argument.

Specifically addressed in the article:

"I’m not talking about breaking into your neighbor’s house at 3:00 a.m. to rummage through their stuff for drugs or money. This is the mental image that most of us probably associate with trespassing—"

However if you were making a "tragedy of the commons" reference, then I'd be more inclined to agree.

Edited to add: But, yes, the article's headline and intro is a front for the author's argument against growing corporate ownership of the planet.

I tend to agree with the point being made, so I'm less likely to get snarky about "evil corporations" etc.

Their first example is entering a hotel meant for the uber wealthy and going to the top floor, but go ahead and build you straw man I guess...

Trespassing != breaking and entering

Whoosh

"Which is ironic, because he seems to be on the richer end of it (eg a white westerner who can afford intercontinental travel, on a job with a healthy work/life balance)"

Which means they're exactly the sort of person who SHOULD be protesting the system. It's easy to criticize when you're not on the inside.

I suggested an article to a colleague of mine. He was recently complaining about stale wage growth, and the article I suggested was showing reasons for of wage growth stagnation. He simply dismissed it by saying "yeah, but the person who wrote it is probably on $200k". End of story, point invalidated by privilege...

WTF is that attitude? The overwhelming majority of voices you can hear are those in a position of privilege, even in the age of the Internet. A long-form article like this one isn't going to come out of rando ne'er-do-well xchan channel.

Speak out from a non-privileged position: Pfft, work harder slacker

Speak out from a position of privilege: Pfft, your words mean nothing from that ivory tower.

Zero sum. That is not the way forward.

By that logic you have to reject all property ownership entirely and modern society becomes totally unable to function since no one could ever build a building.

I think the vast majority of us find the ability to own land to be more useful than everyone living in grass tents that someone else could knock over because they want to sleep there.

Nobody made anything really. Everything you "own" was made by someone else or at least the raw materials were not created by you. What's the justification for any kind of ownership?

Check out Georgism.

The instinct to possess and control territory is much older than humanity itself. I’d rather be in a bidding war than a literal fight to the death.

Because they paid money for that land?