Hacker News Reader

Comment by PJDK | Hacker News Reader

Whenever these concerns are raised I find it difficult to gather any information on what the land was before it became "pseudo-public".

"insidious creep" implies that land that was previously public has become pseudo-public. But the examples cited seem to be land that was previously private has become pseudo-public. That just doesn't seem so dystopian to me.

View on HN

Suppose the land was private buildings turned to private park. Seems dystopian to me since it seems public but it is not. No public protests can be had near the MegaCorp for example.

Do you suppose an area with no access to the public is better than an area with conditional access to the public?

Of course, as it puts the public in a place where they're at risk of being harassed by the police without realizing that they're on private property.

The entire system of private property is terrible and I hope it will be abolished within my lifetime.

> The entire system of private property is terrible and I hope it will be abolished within my lifetime.

Would you be okay with having random people just entering your house, sleeping in your bed, using your toothbrush and then taking your computer on the way out?

Obvious straw-man, but my point is: There's got to be _some portion_ of the system of private property that you agree with on some level. You might for instance disagree with the way private property is distributed, or how access to it is made difficult for some groups, or how we value it more than public property. You might be in favor of more taxation, or of “fairer” taxation (whatever that actually entails would be hard for everyone to agree with) or of revamped eminent domain laws, but I find it really hard to believe that you'd hope for the entire system of private property to be abolished within your lifetime.

There's a distinction between personal property and private property. My house, bed, toothbrush, and computer aren't private property, they're personal property.

No, you're just being obtuse for the sake of making an argument.

No, I'm making a point that is well-accepted in political philosophy.

Not even remotely. Political thinkers have been making that distinction since the 19th century. Go back to the 18th century and people generally wouldn't even have used the term "property" to refer to things other than land.

Let's be honest though, the law is flexible, and generally favours those able to buy the most expensive representation.

> as it puts the public in a place where they're at risk of being harassed by the police

It's private land, the police have no role. People are being harassed by private security companies.

The police absolutely have a role. Are you suggesting that if you came home to find squatters living in your house that the police would simply shrug their shoulders and suggest you move elsewhere?

You can't squat this land. You can trespass on it, and in England trespass is almost always a civil thing not a criminal thing.

Lots of types of access come with conditions. This is true of both publicly and privately owned land. Huge amount of public land are restricted (Salisbury Plain for example), and we have good access rights to some private land (most of Scotland). In a small country there needs to be some rules as everything is so close together. It is not as clear cut as you suggested.

It should be clearly labelled as private property at least.

The 'pseudo-public' areas referred to in the article are signposted.

Why is that such an issue though? In the worst case, someone tells you it's private property and asks you to leave. Only if you refuse to leave do you commit an offence under English law.

It's a non-issue if it's properly labelled as privately owned public space. It should be also clearly delimited from public space.

> Only if you refuse to leave do you commit an offence under English law.

And even that's only a civil, not criminal, offence.

I'm not a fan of Livingstone, but this is pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TuxOUGV6hE

Maybe. Another poster brought up the impact that having a lot of private land conditionally open to the public could reduce demand for actual public land, which leads to less places where certain behaviors (those that are allowed on public land but which are banned on the private land) can occur.

Imagine someone who built a bunch of private parks all over a city that were open to the public, to the extent there was no demand for any public parks, but who decides to add a clause that no group activities related to sexual orientation (parades, protests, rallies, etc.) were allowed (of any orientation, so there was no discrimination issues).

Though, perhaps the blame still lies on the whole city for not keeping their public parks.

The notion that the default, most important activity to hold in a park is "protest" sounds also quite dystopian to me.

s/protest/any exercise of the first amendment

The one that doesn't apply in Britain ?

In your scenario, you're no closer to MegaCorp than you would have been before the parks (because the land was all private anyway, apparently). Not that this matters; there's nothing dystopian about MegaCorp buying land to insulate itself from your protest. In a free society, you have the right to speak, and others have the right to avoid you.

The dystopian part is that as private corps build up psuedo-private squares it reduces demand by the people for actual public areas. Eventually you just end up with streets and nothing else being public, because the private landowners provide all the "public" pedestrian areas.

Even the streets are frequently psuedo-public. There are plenty of cities where you must have a resident permit in order to park on the street for more than a very limited time. If you don't "belong" in the neighborhood, you are not welcome.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com