"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!" Life in NYC is radically different and, I trhink, poses some interesting questions to purer libertarians. In NYC there are many community gardens in poorer neighborhoods. These community gardens receive no meny from either state or city governments, and occur on lots that have been abandoned for (sometimes) decades. In many cases the lot has come under the technical ownership of the city, which left the lot basically a field of bricks and illegally dumped garbage, which the locals transformed into a thing of relative beauty.. Recently, for the purposes of building low-income housing, the city has decvided to bulldoze some of these gardens, which the locals have put a lot of sweat into over the years. Needless to say, the locals don't want their garden bulldozed and, despite the fact that they are often of very low income themselves, don't want additional housing built on the garden's lot. However, the cost of buying the land is normaly well beyond the reach of even a large group of such locals (though a couple of years ago there was a move among some celebs to buy up the land and donate it to the community, but I think that only occured in Manhattan.) So, one could make he argument that "they should have found private property to make their garden", but this misses the point that part of the purpose of the garden is to greatly increase the visual livability of the neighborhood. (Also, these people simply could not afford to buy up such land.) And now, after creating a nice space in those lots for so many years the city wants to bulldoze them. Should thery be allowed to do so? Should the city be forced to sign over such land to the locals for them to "own"? Or should active resistance be utilized tostop the bulldozers? (Or is bulldozing the right thing to do?) I really don't know the answer. Anyone care to comment? -TD

From: Tim May <timcmay@got.net> To: cypherpunks@lne.com Subject: Collectivism in "community gardens" Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 09:17:18 -0700

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

_________________________________________________________________ Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail