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What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

stevemagness.substack.com

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Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#461

Post by tonymet »

ineedasername wrote: post #458

>Violent crime against children has fallen steadily since the early 1990s.... The world didn’t get more dangerous. We got more afraid. This is the step that otherwise smart people fail at. "We were afraid of danger X so we did Y to prevent it and turns out it was a waste because not only did X not get worse, it got better! To heck with Y!" And don't consider, maybe, things got better for that reason ? This is "only s…

so are means. Mean reported crime dropping in urban areas does not mean that things are adequately safe. having x% lower chance of getting mugged in the hood doesn’t mean that your kids can ride the bus alone.

Urban areas in the 90s , in projects and ghettos were basically war zones in terms of murder rates. They pushed the average murder & violent crime rates off the charts. Those have come down, but that doesn’t mean that the cities are now safe for 5 year olds to walk around alone.

Compare moderately sketchy parts of LA to Tokyo or Helsinki and tell me which one feels safe and which doesn’t . You can tell yourself “LA is so much better than the 90s” but you still won’t feel safe in the same way.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#462

Post by seanmcdirmid »

jolmg wrote: post #421
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren’t you just describing an EV with regen braking and one foot pedal driving? The brake pedal is just for emergencies.

Dude, you're breaking the analogy. Imagine an ICE car from the 90s. It's not about what technologies you're using. It's about the skill and intent with which you use the brake pedal (considering it the only form of braking).

But the problem is fixed now with new tech. Now we just have to worry about heavy rapid acceleration in family sedans instead of bad brake discipline.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#463

Post by smcg »

ghaff wrote: post #438
ryandrake wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Buy something or leave" has become a kind of sinister, unwritten, yet overarching principle organizing and governing everyone's lives. Participation in the work-earn-spend economy has become less and less optional with each passing day.

I'm not sure that's actually true in a typical park. It may very well be true for a bunch of noisy kids in a shopping mall which exists and is paid for for the purpose of people, well, shopping.

have you looked at satellite maps of the US? there are plenty of places that are concrete jungles with little green space.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#464

Post by angst_ridden »

You can't control a society without keeping them afraid, so roll that tape of predators, kidnappers, gangs, and drug pushers!

What? A child doing something without adult supervision? Next thing you know they'll start thinking for themselves, asking uncomfortable questions, or looking for forbidden books in the library. Better call the cops and accuse them of vandalism or something.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#465

Post by MaysonL »

I remember walking the last couple miles of the Garden State Parkway a week or two before it opened. Could a youngster do such a thing today?

After checking the Wikipedia page, I realized that I was only 10 or 11 at the time. Somehow I remembered it as having been older – high school age.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#466

Post by strken »

probably_wrong wrote: post #376
BurningFrog wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why were loitering laws introduced? I doubt it was purely a sadistic effort to ruin the lives of kids. My guess is that combatting gang crime was a major reason.

My understanding is that loitering laws are much older than that - the first versions of these laws seems to date to 1342 [1]. IMO what all these laws have in common is that they're designed to allow the police to legally ask questions to people (or straight up remove them) who look suspicious but haven't committed any crime. Why would anyone want to remove people who haven't done anything wrong is a more nuanced que…

There's an inherent tension between protecting public spaces and protecting vulnerable but disruptive people.

Your link refers to an article which is very American and very 2018. Lots of large font size headings about race and sexuality and gender. I don't think it's a productive take on how to manage the tension. Racially homogenous societies still need to decide how to handle people who try to sleep at train stations and yell at the commuters.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#467

Post by throwawayffffas »

somehnguy wrote: post #451
cryptonym wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ofc, it doesn't mean it's any safer outside.

I mean..if it mostly happens in families that does mean it's safer outside

Families are outside too. Once you trusted your neighbor, if they are abusing their child why wouldn't they abuse yours?

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#468

Post by smcg »

fatnoah wrote: post #276
dyauspitr wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in the early 2000s people were forced to be outside because the inside was boring. This was supercharged in the 70s. That’s no longer the case. People have endless, on demand entertainment inside now.

As a child in the late 1970s/early 1980s, I was FORCED outside by my parents. The same was true for other kids in the neighborhood. We were told that chilling indoors was not an option, so get outside and be back by the time streetlights come on or at least call to say where we were.

My friends and I got yelled at for doing anything fun outside, and we couldn't go beyond our yards. Then the neighbor kid chased my friend with a knife and we really couldn't go anywhere until the little perp got committed.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#470

Post by basilikum »

theultdev wrote: post #439
basilikum wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans and their cars are simply insane. Most cars here in Europe are, well, cars. Still dangerous tons of fast moving metal bullets, but in the US cars are essentially designed to efficiently kill children. The hood of many cars is so high that you ensure to hit the kid's head in an accident. And people drive these huge tanks in the city where there is zero need for them and they are just impractical in every way…

if any car hits a child it's probably going to kill them. they aren't tall enough to roll over the top, even a smaller sedan. being defensive around stupid people is a lesson, teach the child to always be aware when near a road.

> if any car hits a child it's probably going to kill them.

That's not true. Obviously if you hit a child on the highway with 100km/h that child is gonna be dead. But when you're going 30 in a residential area and suddenly there is a child in front of you car, so you hit the break slowing down to 15km/h it makes a huge difference how your car is build.

> being defensive around stupid people is a lesson, teach the child to always be aware when near a road.

Safety doesn't work by just teaching the weakest part to protect themselves while allowing everyone else to build more and more deadly machines. This car centricity that puts the blame on pedestrians for daring to walk in the sacred car reserved area that separates everything from each other is exactly the problem.

These huge trucks are dangerous for absolutely no reason and they also take away insane amounts of space for no reason. They make everyone unsafe, destroy the planet and make cities shittier.

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