I poked around in Eastern WA hard enough on forest roads to find some funny things on my Motor Vehicle Use Maps. Twice I found some roads ending juuuuuust next to each other. Like surely, those roads were touching at one time. Maybe the map is wrong, they're still touching now? So I drive through this crazy network of back-winding roads, like some mitochondria fold from high school science class, to get to this juncture of almost teeny touching roads. Dang, it's blocked by a very small stretch of private land, it's for real. I don't know what powers that be decided to separate these roads and make 2 nearby road networks completely inaccessible to each other. But the effect is, I have to backtrack many many miles through the woods and go out the way I came in. The distances are severe enough that one can run out of gas doing that. I didn't, but after 2 such experiences I made very clear to remember that in the future, if the map doesn't show you can get through, THEY MEAN IT. You'd better be prepared to go back out the way you came in, and you'd better have the gas.
There was also a gated stretch of road that was for LEOs and other public officials only. I'm stopped in front of this gate, wondering if it's for real. Looking to see if there's any obvious way to open it. I'm familiar with private timber gates, I know that not every gate is something I can go into. But on my map this gate connects one huge forest network with this other town elsewhere, this is the only way to go, and it's deliberately blocked off. As I'm contemplating, a LEO pulls up, about to go through the gate. I ask him about it, he says it's exactly like I thought. LEOs, public officials only. The govt set this up deliberately, something to do with watersheds, fishing rights, sewer treatment plants, power lines, controlling public access, whatever. You can get to where you want to be in the forest, but you will be taking the looooooooooong way round, not this shortcut.
vagari said:
Courts that come along after I own my land and force me to allow easement can kiss my rear and will meet force
I'm not thrilled about such hard line notions of land ownership and control. Land ownership in this society generally means, I have lots of money. For some reason I think I've got all this money by some kind of right, like I earned every penny of it. That is often not true, especially if one made the money by organizing the labor of others and didn't pay them very well for it. Also a lot of infrastructure exists that was put there with taxpayer funds, that we tend to take for granted. Having large amounts of wealth is actually very much a privilege, obtained by social constructs in our economy, often at a lot of other people's expense. Everyone working a full time job is working the same number of hours, why are some people's labors regarded as massively more valuable than another's? Why do some people make barely enough to get by, to the point that they will never be able to afford land anywhere?
So, landowners have the gold and follow the Golden Rule. That is, they make the rules. They tend to allocate the vast majority of land for their own private purposes and leave very little of it left over for the public. Consider the ownership ratios in the urban fabric, for instance, how much of it is typically private vs. public space. And what little is public space, the adjacent private landowners can be awfully territorial about. Sure it's a public street with a public parking space but it's in front of MY house. So I'm calling the cops who are now going to hassle you. The landowners pay property taxes to fund police forces that enforce most rules and regulations on behalf of landowners. Anyone who dares to buck the landowner hegemony is treated as a threat.
If I were a superhero and could wave a magic wand, I'd allocate public and private space rather differently. A city would have a lot more public space in the network, not just roads that get everyone from A to B, that private landowners get to squeeze in on and constrain. I'd try to put areas that a small number of homeless can use publicly without interference or repercussions of law. I'd probably establish a maximum occupancy ordinance, as I don't believe the homeless should congregate in one spot in large numbers. It's dangerous, particularly for them. Everyone's better off if homeless people are dispersed, just a few over here, a few over there.
That kind of vision of public vs. private space isn't gonna happen until the country suffers some kind of natural disaster, making LOTS of people homeless. Then the relations between public and private space may change. Because, even when landowners pay for police and military, the economy may be in enough of a shambles, and the homeless population may be so numerous, that the landowners may not simply be able to "win that war" or keep control of how society is structured anymore. I hope that story has a happy ending, some kind of reform movement rather than widespread atrocities. The Great Depression offers some historical example of the kinds of things that can happen when large numbers of people are displaced.
