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Comment by kypro | Hacker News Reader

We have chickens and I'd love to do an honesty box. Problem is we live in an English city and it's extremely low-trust like most English cities these days.

It's not even that I worry someone would steal the eggs that concerns me most, it's that a lot of people would probably think it's funny to throw them at cars or house/shop windows.

I'd love to live some where where this is possible... I heard that Lee Kuan Yew on visiting England in the 50s saw an honesty box and was inspired by how civilised the English were.

Not sure what's happened to us since then... You definitely couldn't do that now. We're like a completely different people. Although it's nice to see that this practise does still live on in some rural communities.

Also – the honesty "box" in that lead picture is absolutely beautiful...

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Can I push you to give it a try - places with honesty boxes feel like places with honesty boxes if that makes sense.

Obviously you might get your car egged once - but you can get eggs anywhere.

If it's any help, my (admittedly very nice) corner of Bristol has a couple of honesty boxes for eggs and things about the place and I've never seen any trouble from it.

Not quite honesty boxes, but Bristol has a good culture of "tat".

It used to be quite common to see usable household goods left outside a house for others to take.

As opposed to the story about the person who leaves their unwanted furniture outside with a sign reading "Free- Please Take". It sits there undisturbed for a week.

Then they replace the sign with one that reads "$10- put cash in letterbox"

Within an hour, the furniture is gone, though of course there's no cash!

I guess it's very location-dependent. I live a ways off a pretty busy exurban road in MA and if I leave somewhat useable stuff at the end of my driveway with a free sign it will probably be gone withing a few hours.

I'm considering placing a sign on the wall saying to knock for eggs next time we want to get rid of some. I think that's a fair compromise.

We get a lot of crime around here... The issue with an eggs honesty box is that it's likely to be a nuisance to the neighbourhood. If people are willing to smash windows, I doubt they'd think twice about throw some eggs around. In fact we got egged ourselves a couple of halloween's ago...

> Problem is we live in an English city and it's extremely low-trust like most English cities these days.

If you go hiking in the countryside, you encounter honesty boxes in small villages fairly often. I guess the fact that every knows everyone else tends to make smaller communities more trusting and trustworthy.

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