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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

#611

Post by strken »

Defletter wrote: post #591
strken wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is sleeping at a train station fine? (Unless you're talking about infrequent long distance trains). Trains are transportation infrastructure. Drivers don't have to put up with people setting up a queen bed in the middle of their lane on the highway. If a country doesn't protect its public transport infrastructure, then the rich and the middle class stop taking the train, the poor have to put up with things, and t…

Sorry, different person here, why does "sleeping at a train station" imply "setting up a queen bed in the middle of their lane on the highway" or anything of the sort?

People use a train station for travel. We don't allow people to sleep blocking a road, because that would obstruct travel, even though a road is a public space. Likewise, we shouldn't allow people to sleep in a train station where they'll obstruct travel, even though it's a public space.

I agree that the two aren't exactly the same, but public transport users have a right to safe, comfortable, unobstructed travel. There's a difference between preventing a class of people from using public transport to travel, vs preventing everyone from using public transport to sleep.

I also note that the case of long distance travel is an exception, because you might legitimately need to sleep at a station between legs. I'm talking about people who sleep in train stations with no intent of travelling anywhere.

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

#612

Post by buellerbueller »

PearlRiver wrote: post #579
buellerbueller wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, feels and vibes beat rationality and science. Is it any surprise the US is backsliding?

It is funny because we now know that in the 1970s there were far more randos kidnapping people than today. The FBI actually got pretty good at these crimes.

At least today we have a totally competent and sober FBI Director, and an FBI focused on solving actual crimes.

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

#613

Post by petsfed »

bombcar wrote: post #583
petsfed wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing about the big box stores is that they can apply so much pressure to their suppliers (and their landlords) that the price difference outstrips differences in quality and convenience. Once upon a time I lived within easy walking distance of my job, a big box retail store in one of these clusters. Elsewhere in the same cluster was a Market of Choice, which is basically a Whole Foods but for Oregon reside…

The corner grocery store (a regular one literally a block away) is fine for many things for me - 10-20% more is fine and saves a trip. But too many things are literally twice as much and for those the value of a Walmart trip is obvious.

My point is that American suburbs are so aggressively designed for cars that even considerable cost and inconvenience (driving 30-40 minutes) is acceptable in the face of much MUCH lower prices (even if the prices are so low because the quality is commensurately lower as in e.g. Levi jeans since they started selling in Walmart). If we hadn't let our communities be planned around driving to begin with, then building a big box would be less effective.

People are so habituated to driving, and the walking/biking experience outside of inner cities so unpleasant, that the corner stores simply cannot compete. Of course a big box store is going to have better prices, they win on economies of scale. But we've allowed our cities to be designed around the total separation of residence and commerce, so that you have to drive an interminable distance on unpleasant, congested roads just to get to an ersatz corner store. May as well drive to Walmart.

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

#614

Post by anon291 »

ytoawwhra92 wrote: post #596
anon291 wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have four kids, my neighbor has one, and I see this dynamic play out in real time. My neighbors are neurotic with their kid. Poor kid is hovered over. My kids play by themselves, walk to their grandmother's house (a block away), go to the park, and just kind of show up in our house from time to time. Of course the little ones are taken care of explicitly, but they too will age out of that. It's much better for ever…

> walk to their grandmother's house (a block away) Do your neighbors have parents nearby? I think this makes an enormous difference.

Yup! In fact he grew up in the neighborhood so he has parents and friends nearby.

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

#615

Post by Defletter »

strken wrote: post #611
Defletter wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, different person here, why does "sleeping at a train station" imply "setting up a queen bed in the middle of their lane on the highway" or anything of the sort?

People use a train station for travel. We don't allow people to sleep blocking a road, because that would obstruct travel, even though a road is a public space. Likewise, we shouldn't allow people to sleep in a train station where they'll obstruct travel, even though it's a public space. I agree that the two aren't exactly the same, but public transport users have a right to safe, comfortable, unobstructed travel. Th…

Sorry, I'm still failing to see how someone rough-sleeping on a bench is in anyway comparable to blocking a road and obstructing travel. The actual equivalent would be laying across the track... which is not what's happening. I have seen disturbing images of places who so acutely fail to support their homeless populations that they have no other choice than to sleep in the roads, but even then they're up against the curb, not actually blocking the road.

At this point, I'm beginning to think you consider the mere presence of a rough-sleeper at a train station to be blocking the use of that train station, regardless of what it is they're actually doing.

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

#616

Post by ajmurmann »

Aeolun wrote: post #385
buellerbueller wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maybe I was lucky to not get severely injured or abducted When the statistics are vastly in one's favor, it isn't luck.

I keep telling my wife our son is literally more likely to be hit by lightning than to be snatched by some rando, but somehow that is hard to understand.

Statistically the father is the most likely predator... Not sure if that's actionable.

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

#617

Post by ajmurmann »

alex_young wrote: post #17

I want to let my kids walk wherever they want to. It’s great for them. My 5 year old bikes to school, accompanied by an adult. It’s a bit more than half a mile away from the house. I’d like to tell him he can do this on his own next year, but there’s a single intersection he has to cross that makes this difficult. I’m not worried about him getting lost, abducted by a stranger or any host of movie plot scenarios. I’m…

One of my pet peeves is that in the US vehicle safety regulation is all about the passengers of the vehicle and ignores safety of people around the vehicle. The passengers are in control of what vehicle they use and already have incentive to pick a safe vehicle. So passenger safety is less critical to regulate. The same incentive structure does not exist for pedestrian safety. They have no control over what cars are on the road and carry the negative externality. Vehicle safety regulation should focus on pedestrian safety and safety of other cars impacted by the vehicle. It's bizarre the US has this so backwards.

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

#618

Post by slfnflctd »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #496
chrisgd wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps those are your greatest memories because that is what you were doing as a child. Would your greatest memories of you grow up now be playing Minecraft online?

I don’t really know the answer. I grew up in the early 2000s with a mix of video games and ‘outside with friends on the woods’ time. I have many great memories of playing games, but by far my best are always the ones, in person, out in the woods. Even my best gaming memories were at lan parties. Being in-person with friends is just better.

I think part of it depends on what kinds of friendships you have.

Some kids have major problems finding healthy, positive relationships with other kids in real life, often for very arbitrary reasons. For a subset of those, interacting through screens eliminates a ton (if not the entirety) of the friction of IRL interaction.

What it really all boils down to for me is that relationships are deeply important. Once upon a time, I thought I could be an island. I was wrong. Maybe there are a few who can do it, but not me, and probably not most of us.

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

#619

Post by tstrimple »

iamalizard wrote: post #521
tstrimple wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a noticeable problem because they are Chinese and there are so many of them it doesn't matter if 4k die while trying to cross at crosswalks? https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/how-dangerous-are-china...

How does it compare to other countries, though? 4000 is high, but it's out of 1400000000.

I think this perfectly illustrates the difference between you and me. You think there is nothing wrong with the untimely death of literally thousands of people because there are millions more who look just like them. I expect more of humanity.

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

#620

Post by simonebrunozzi »

tweetle_beetle wrote: post #161
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just listed some of the reasons why I moved from San Francisco to Venice, Italy. I have a young kid and I hope he'll enjoy the village-like, car-free environment here.

Isn't Venice as problematic/artificial as suburbia in its own way? If you're saying car-free then I assume you mean the centre, where the real population is tiny (compared to San Francisco at <50k), aging, declining amd dwarfed by tourists. My understanding is that it's increasingly meeting needs of tens of millions of ultra short term visitors rather than real communities. It feels like there must be a wide range of…

The actual Venice in the lagoon is fine. Nothing like suburbia.
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