this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2024
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You just know some asshole would pick all the trees clean and go sell the fruit
okay, and? plant more trees then, or how superhuman is this dude that they can personally harvest every single tree?
And then cut down the tree.
In the US, probably.
Here in Sweden, there are public fruit trees and bushes, herbs etc. all over the place, and very very rarely does that happen. I live a 15-minute tram ride from the centre of the second-largest city and have within a 10-minute walking distance of my apartment several kinds of plums, cherries, currants, apples, pears, other berries and most common herbs, edible flowers and so on, all in random public places. We also have several "fruit groves" around the city, larger green areas specifically for publicly available fruits and more.
Visit Portland. Lots of neighborhoods grow fruit trees.
And the fruit falls to the ground.
Nobody is going around selling them.
Watching the tree to see when the fruit is ripe and then carting around a ladder to pick it? That sounds like a fucking job.
As someone who lives in Portland, yes.
People stealing fruit from trees is the least of my Portland worries.
How acceptable is it, if you can reach a plant / tree from the sidewalk, to pick someone else's fruit? Would that be considered weird, or totally acceptable behavior?
i'd consider anyone who gives a shit about that to be weird and unpleasant, if you don't want people to eat your fruit maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe don't have half the tree hanging outside your property.
Only if you're weird about it. If it's a tree on the sidewalk, go for it.
In Hawaii it's quite funny to see, because it if can be reached, it can be taken. So there are these hilarious fellas who have these baskets on long poles, and at the end of it there's this little hand/grabber thing. They reach out as far as they can over the fence, press the button at the bottom, and fwoomp! There goes the fruit from the tree into the basket. I remember my cousin staking out avocados waiting for them to get ripe.
If it's overhanging public property it's fair game. The owner has plenty of fruit on their side too I'll bet. If they take issue with it they can guide their plant so it's confined to their property. That being said I wouldn't be reaching over the fence to yank a cucumber or apple.
it also depends on how much fruit there is, if they have literally 500 apples in the tree then there is no way they're actually going to make use of all that, if they have 4 sad fruits left hanging then you leave it alone.
If they've got 4 fruits left and they're all hanging over the fence then they just harvested their tree. Let's not look for hyperspecific edge cases here we're discussing a rule of thumb.
Hmm, weird but maybe good weird unless the person is weird about it.
And I mean just like 1 or 2 pieces. Not backing up a truck or anything. In case that changes your answer. Thanks
My dream is that people could live in supportive communes or whatever, so this seems fine to me.
So what
No offense to you personally, but I hate this kind of premature defeatism. Like... yeah, some people are jerks and try to take advantage of things. Put rules in place and enforce them as much as the people in charge care to.
I know it's strawmanning to bring this up, but people use the same argument to say "We shouldn't have food stamps for hungry kids or welfare for needy families or subsidized housing for people without homes because people will abuse it. Yeah. Some people will, and others will suffer because of their greed. But so many more people will continue to suffer if we don't even try because we are too scared of The Undeserving boogeyman. Not every tree will be taken advantage of, and as the sense of outreach and community grows, abuse of it will fall and it will be worth it. I guarantee it...
This is what "the tragedy of the commons" was all about in pre-Victorian England. Rich people decried the existence of land held and used by all the people of a community, claiming that it couldn't work in practice because eventually some asshole would always take it all for themselves. Turns out they were the some asshole, seizing all the commons for themselves as private property (a process known as "enclosure"), ending many centuries of actually successful common usage of land.
Honestly it's really telling on them.
Like you can't do nice things because X. So they don't do it.
That too. "I'm a fiscally conservative Republican who doesn't believe in handouts." Oh? How convenient that you can selfishly hoard all your money for yourself by hiding behind principle...
Sometimes they are even taking advantage of welfare themselves, but don't seem to make that connection.
Plant enough so they can't make a profit.