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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

That's illegal, though, for exactly that reason, so I'm not sure what your point is, other than that you have a problem with scofflaws in your neighborhood.

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My point is that scooters are not new offenders (or even the worst offenders) of blocking the sidewalk, but no one complains about the cars, that's just accepted.

Cars blocking anything (at least where I live, including driveways which are part of the sidewalk) have a very short TTL. Usually within 10-30 minutes the car is gone and some towing company is slightly happier.

There's lots of reasons to dislike DPT, but they sure are efficient at removing illegally parked cars.

> but no one complains about the cars

No one in your neighborhood perhaps. This varies considerably.

The cars parked across the sidewalk are individuals parking their car at home. Bird scooters littering the sidewalks is a business model. How do you not understand the difference?

I don't care who owns the vehicle, I care about who uses it and how much in my way it is.

The car might be a rental too, doesn't really make a difference.

If the homeowner left the scooter there would you feel better about it? What if it was his own personally owned scooter?

I still wouldn't be happy but yes, I would be happier. A resident homeowner/renter has far more right to utilize the public property in front of their residence than some [multi-]national corporation, just like residents have the right to vote for their representatives and the businesses don't.

I tolerate far worse externalities from my neighbors because they're my neighbors and I want to minimize pointless conflict for their emotional benefit as well as mine. Business that create externalities in my neighborhood for the sake of corporate profit, on the other hand, can either pay me and my neighbors in cash to deal with the externalities (with a decent profit margin for our time and effort) or they can go f* themselves.

That is incorrect. Ownership of private property grants no special rights over the use of adjacent public property.

Reread what I wrote. A resident homeowner/renter - that's literally the definition of a town, county, or state constituency. Living there (which only a human can do) grants you special rights to decide how that public property will be utilized, developed, and regulated by voting in representatives.

No that's not how it works. Blocking public sidewalks is illegal (although inconsistently enforced) in almost every city, regardless of who lives there.

A second bad thing that's equally bad to a first still ends up with double the bad things, which is worse than the single original bad thing.

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