On Thursday, May 8, 2003, at 07:21 AM, Harmon Seaver wrote:
When we were working with the local gov't community garden committee, and suggested that they quit applying chemical fertilzers and pesticides to the garden areas, noting that the Madison community gardens had gone organic 30 years ago, one of them stated "Oh, but that's Madison." Finally got them to stop the chemicals, but they still insist on coming in every Spring with heavy equipment to plow up all the plots, and, given the wet clay soil there, can't do that until very late, so people aren't allowed into their plots until May 25 -- in an area where you want to plant potatoes and peas mid April. Our suggestions that people just be allowed to do it themselves with tillers or by hand as they do elsewhere came to naught -- "But we've always done it that way."
This is a minor, but illustrative, example of why the problem is best fixed by property rights, not collectivism. (Funny, the word "collectivism" rarely pops up here. We ought to use it more, as it better describes a bunch of things we often call socialism.) On your own property, in your own garden, one doesn't have to argue with committees and government officials and city councils about spraying or when one can start working the soil. This is the commons problem cropping up again in this common garden. Me, I have my own garden plot on my own land. And even if I didn't own land, working out a deal with someone who _did_ have land would be preferable to working in a so-called "community garden." (We have a few here in Santa Cruz. Bums and winos make a token effort to stand around and rake. Mostly it's an excuse for community money to be handed out to the "farmers." I've also walked past the weed-choked community garden in Berkeley, on the site of "People's Park," IIRC. Skanks and bums. New slogan for these urban community gardens: "Hoes fo da hoes! --Tim May, Citizen-unit of of the once free United States " The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. "--Thomas Jefferson, 1787