There is one small, seemingly insignificant detail that destroys the case against litter and the litterer. Litter can only take place in the public domain — never in the private domain. FULL ARTICLE by Walter Block
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/13260/defending-the-litterer/
Defending the Litterer
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On my construction sites I have a simple policy, if any employee of a sub contractor fails to clean up after themselves, I simply fine the sub contractor and deduct it from their bill. It is simple and effective so I don’t have a problem with fines being leveled in the public sector, if anything I think the fines should be larger and force community service. Repeat offenders should be required to wear stripe clothing and be chained together.
And yes, I am the guy that will get into your face at a movie theater to throw away your garbage rather than leave it under your seat!
I don’t think you’re exactly getting the article, Greg. Though I do wish you were right behind me and the lady with 63 items in the express checkout yesterday.
Movie theaters have people who clean up afterward between films and charge high prices sufficient to cover the cost of cleaning up goods consumed during the watching of a movie.
Whether I take my trash or not is up to how much of it I have (I tend to take my own, but I don’t take that of others in my group).
I disagree with your getting in people’s face entirely. Were I the owner of a theater I would ask you not to return if you imposed on other customers in such a manner. That would create a horrible experience that might mean they would not return. On the other hand, should you find that the theater isn’t properly cleaned because I’m not doing my job as owner, you have every right to not attend my theater. You definitely don’t have the right to go around practically threatening fellow patrons though.
Sounds like unprovoked aggression.
Most commercial facilities make it very easy to avoid leaving garbage around by placing a good number of conveniently placed trash receptacles at points of ingress and egress. That people don’t make the small effort needed to use them boggles my mind.
Government facilities, however, often place just a few trash cans in hard to reach locations, on the belief that laws against littering will prove sufficient motivation to inconvenience ourselves to the extent necessary to comply with the law. Tsk, tsk, tsk, they just don’t understand why people continue to litter.
I am now beginning to understand the bizarre “rationale” behind some of the ridiculous requirements imposed on members of the military, such as the prohibition against having any trash in the trash can in an office or barracks room (due to supposed fire risks posed by trash in trash cans). Government bureaucracy is an uncontrolled creature of mandate. They don’t need to make sense…because…they don’t need to make sense.
Let me add to your last sentence DayOwl. The government doesn’t need to make sense because they are the only ones who have a monopoly on the whipping stick to make sure their will and only theirs be done….the individual be damned.
When people trash my business, they get kicked out.
Everyone should buy this book Municipal Commodity Trader Stimulus Plan. All landfills are hereby renamed Commodity Exchanges. Each city sets per pound buy/sell rates per pound of plastic, glass, paper, etc. rates are posted on the internet site of the Municipal Waste Mgmt Association. The individuals you see pushing shoppings carts full of refuse must obtain commodity trading licenses for $1 at the local unemployment office. Uncle Sam asks you to do your part and force freeloaders in your household over the age of 18 to obtain their licenses. People on unemployment or welfare longer than 3 months, and anyone convicted of illegal or unlawful activity will be required to obtain a license. Caseworkers determine the required trading activity.Commission checks are mailed weekly or can be picked up at the local unemployment office for a fee. This simple plan will create encourage full employment and enable full enjoyment of our public spaces. I also propose renaming all prisons Commodity Recovery and Processing Centers.
Interesting article, but the conclusion that the litterer is actually a hero seems a bit of a stretch.
Maybe “acting rationally”, but hardly heroically.
Maybe you haven’t noticed that that is how all of these articles of this type have been ending. Generally I don’t agree on the title of ‘hero’ either, but meh. It is his attempt at creating a meme as far as I can tell.
I agree. The term ‘hero’ seems to be more provocative than literal in this case.
Where I live in Tennessee there are miles and miles of trails through private woodlands that are used primarily by four wheelers. Some but not all of the property owners have given the state a recreational easement in return for a property tax reduction. The area was once home to many manufacturers of white lightening. Because my few acres abuts the thousands these trails traverse, I often ride them on my mountain bike or hike them with my dog. When I am hiking and biking I frequently carry a garbage bag to haul out litter left by those damn four wheelers. I can pick up at a six-pack worth of Bud Light empties every 2 to 5 miles after a sunny weekend. Although I consider the job of picking up others’ litter cathartic, I really hate seeing the unsightly trash along such otherwise beautiful woodland trails. In two different places within a quarter mile of a road, some jerks have dumped their household garbage into depressions, where heavy rains can carry some of it into down-valley streams. (There is a free public dump only 2 miles from my home.) Someone who probably runs a nearby service station or auto-repair facility dumped 15 old tires along one of the trails. I am afraid the epithet litterer or litterbug is too mild for these bozos.
I think this article plays a couple of funny games with the definition of “litter”. If we consider litter to be, “any waste disposed of in a manner inappropriate to the policies of the land owner”, then the whole point kind of becomes moot. The sports complex owners don’t want you to leave your garbage under the seat and consider it littering, but do not heavily enforce their rules. The restaurant owner that sees you throwing napkins on the floor escorts you off their property for littering. If a guest at my home is has a runny nose and is tossing the tissue paper on the floor, they loose their guest status very quickly.
The key is that every group has a different disposal policy, including the government. Those policies, and the need to enforce them, is required. Most enforcement individuals (both private and public property), will make an attempt to recognize intent: the person that has arms full of stuff on the way to the garbage, and is leaving a trail, is to be treated with beamusement, not harassed.
In the end, rules are put in place to allow people to function in proximity to one another. If I want to sit naked in the middle of a hundred acres I have to myself, no problem; if I want to sit in church naked, I am likely not going to be welcome; if I want to sit in church at a nudist facility, no problem. When we are among others, we need to establish commonly accepted behaviours; the policies set by the property owner (and enforcement of those policies) help to head off problems by establishing acceptable behaviour prior to entry to the property (The greeters at the church are likely not going to greet me with a smile if I show up naked). Acceptable waste disposal is one of those behaviours.
I am certainly open to the argument that government policies are dumb, or that enforcement is done poorly, or that government claims of ownership (and therefore ability to make and enforce policy for the property) is unethical; but the elevation of litterer to hero… I’m not sold on the idea.
And Klavius, to try to bring you around to the article, what do you do to someone who drops trash on the floor of his own house?
Not sure where you’d be going with this, but its his property, he gets to set the rules. If I don’t like the rules on someone else’s property, I get to leave and go somewhere else. As long as the trash does not start spilling onto my property, we don’t have a problem.
I think this is the best thought out position. Better than litter = “hero” IMHO. I read through this article but couldn’t have put my unease into words any better than Kavius. Private property has appropriate littering rules for that property. Sometimes even ones that are different in different areas of the private property. Let’s look again at the restaurant. If a patron were buying meal after meal and dumping them in walk way next to his table he would be escorted out. The argument “he’s paying for it” only goes so far. In the carpenter example, innocuous piles of wood shavings are not an issue to affect health, or safety. However, were the carpenter to leave his TOOLS all over the floor, (sharp planes, chisels, etc) this would be a concern of the private property owner.
Far from being a hero, the litterer is someone who is taking advantage of the system, just as the person who throws food on the floor of the restaurant is. However, as Dayowl said, there are reasons for everything. Private property has a financial reason to make it easy for people to clean up after themselves allowing the company to be more efficient and make more profit. Government has no such incentive. In fact (like the speed limit) some in government may view it was a revenue source rather than a punishment for people not following the rules. In this case it behooves the govt. to make it difficult for the users to clean up after themselves so they may extract more money via fines.
None of your examples are working. Yes, by all means make all property private property. In the here and now the litterer is throwing trash on his own property. He’s not a great hero, but heroic in the manner of say, Johnny Rotten being a snot and sarcastically yelling “God Save the Queen.” He points to the fundamental errors of this society as a whole and at a risk to himself: minor hero (unwittingly or not).
For the opposite, take a look at Michael’s typically moronic comments below.
The conclusion seems inescapable. For public-spirited people, to whom unwanted private litter on public property is disgusting, people lacking in public spirit are the enemy. While for people to whom public property is the enemy, public-spirited people are all communists– subversive sorts who try to impose their beliefs on others.
So I’m supposing it would be a gesture of political activism to dump your trash on the roadside. Show ‘em who’s boss in this country! Stuff your used crap and Happy Meal remains ‘in their face’! Is that where we’re headed?
If you ever been somewhere rural, where people own their own property, you’ve seen public spirited people. They are more than happy to help out their neighbors. From time to time, they will voluntarily do a public project for the common good. It is true genuine community. In large cities their is only false and coerced communities, it is here you see problems such as litter. The residents of the municipality Cleveland are too disparate and their goals too divergent to create public projects, so you end up with some dominant group of residents using the monopoly of force to impose their version of the common good.
“If you ever been somewhere rural, where people own their own property, you’ve seen public spirited people. They are more than happy to help out their neighbors. From time to time, they will voluntarily do a public project for the common good.”
I live in a rural area. The back roads are strewn with old couches, bed frames, refrigerators and burnt out Chevies. Many of these sites are state game lands, power company property or just privately owned woods the owner doesn’t patrol around the clock.
“It is true genuine community. In large cities their is only false and coerced communities, it is here you see problems such as litter.”
Uninformed prejudice. I’ve also lived in cities. The sense of community in either is about the same. Citizens will band together only when some individual takes the initiative and goes around knocking on doors. If not? The trash accumulates and everyone complains to their wives about it.
City people are not different. Country folk are not nobler. We all, other than a few hermits, live in a community. And we usually take it for granted. If a concerned citizen comes to us and asks our help, though, we often get off the couch and pitch in.
If your block in Cleveland didn’t do so, maybe it was because you didn’t become that necessary first responder.
Well said, Michael.
If littering is “heroic”, then so is the wholly self-interested use of other publicly-owned resources, open-access commons, and poorly-policed private property. Who cares what others – envirofascists, the lot (from my neighbors to others who use the resource)! – think? It is our DUTY to be heedless of others; those smug goody two-shoes who think they’re doing the “right thing” by not inconveniencing others (or who ridiculously devote time and effort to clean up what us good libertarians – as a public service – despoil) are actually doing everyone a DISSERVICE, by refusing to help accelerate a shift of all property into the hands of people who will fall all over themselves to cleanup after us!
Brilliant; I see it clearly now: BP is being HEROIC for messing up “wild resources” like “fish”, “shrimp” and “oysters” and “walruses” in the Gulf, the livelihoods of the lowlifes who catch them, and the budgets and property of other people living down there who like a “clean environment”. It’s the polluter, after all, whose public-spirited acts show that the real problem is not the one who indirectly injures others, but the government system that hasn’t assigned private property rights to all so-called “common pool” resources (or gotten out of the way, so the big boys could claim them for themselves)!
Same is true with all of those corporate polluters whose concentrations of money enabled them to persuade judges to ignore strict common-law protections of private property, and who deliberately proceeded to pollute willy-nilly (in a public-spirited way, of course). Rather, it was all of those stupid people forced to breathe in the dirty air, drink the dirty water and on or in pollute land who then petitioned big brother to help who were wrong, and who subverted the noble goal of the industry owners of homesteading pollution rights to do pretty much whatever they wanted.
But I’m confused about one small thing: if “public-spiritedness” is for envirofascists and suckers, then why are you appealling to it by calling litters “heroes”? Doesn’t our mission – to see the end of all public ownership and the destruction of all commons – demand that we eschew all sappy appeals to “community” or common good, and insist on individual selfishness instead?
This would be good to know, because it would mean that LvMI commenters could put down the burden of trying to police comment threads, or upbraiding authors who disappoint. Instead, we could all nobly (oops, selfishly, I mean?) become litters, even here!
TT
Wow this has sparked a debate.
I’m with @AJ Nock on this. My view is simple, in some places such as India doing as he describes is a necessity. Because you can read way too much into this, if you want to drop litter be it on your own karma.
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