I think the main reason people get nervous about "the public" roaming their land is the liability and the personal injury lawsuit industry in the USA. If I let someone cross my land and he trips on a tree root and breaks his leg, now I'm possibly facing a lawsuit.
Also, what are they allowed to do? Simply crossing the land is one thing. Around here many private landowners are dealing with homeless encampments that are not only a liability but a sanitary issue, as they tend to be full of litter, needles, food waste, and human waste and end up attracting vermin.
If the law in England were to be similar to the one in Scotland (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Outdoor_Access_Code), then "access rights can be exercised for recreational purposes, some educational activities and certain commercial purposes, and for crossing over land and water."
"Access rights do not extend to motorised activities... Access rights do not include the right to hunt, shoot or fish... Gathering items such as mushrooms or berries for commercial gain is not covered by access rights; but the customary picking of wild fungi and berries for personal consumption is not prohibited under the code."
"Wild camping, defined as lightweight camping by small numbers of people staying no more than two or three nights in any one place, is permitted under the code. ... The code requires that campers leave no trace, and must take away all litter, remove all traces of the tent pitch and of any open fire, and not cause any pollution"
So, homeless encampments are not permitted since these would not fall under this code.
> are not permitted since these would not fall under this code
The thing is, the law/code only matters if it is enforced. I have little faith this will be enforced enough to be a deterrent when much more important things like shoplifting, bike or phone theft have effectively been decriminalized by lack of enforcement.
Edit: to be clear I am just playing devil's advocate here. I am in favor of "right to roam" laws, just pointing out that restrictions in the law by themselves don't mean anything unless they're followed up by adequate enforcement to deter the prohibited behavior and systemic changes to make said behavior unnecessary in the first place (in case of homelessness for example).
Scotland doesn't have the extreme levels of inequality that result in extreme levels of shoplifting, and therefore the shoplifting comparison doesn't hold up.
Inequality isn't the correct term. It's poverty, drug abuse and mental illness. Poverty still isn't a green light to commit crimes though. There are plenty of places to seek help legally. Crime is as much a cultural problem as anything else.
The problem is the large amount of people with nothing to loose and no realistic path to a better future. If your day to day reality is as bad as jail, you might as well shoplift or camp illegally or whatever. What are they going to do? House and feed you?
There are plenty of government programs and nonprofits that help the needy. They work for 80% of the homeless.
The issue with the chronically homeless who make up the other 20% is that they refuse the help because they don't want to follow rules such as curfews and no drugs & alcohol. The main reason for this is that most of them suffer from mental illness. This is a medical issue.
I'm not forgetting them. They fall into the category of 20% of the homeless who are mentally ill, and who need to be supervised in a safe medical facility. However, we cannot do that without their consent, and they will not give their consent in the majority of cases for the same reasons that they refuse help from government programs and non-profits. I'm also not sure that these people, suffering from mental illnesses like schizophrenia, are cognizant enough for giving consent.
>they will not give their consent in the majority of cases for the same reasons that they refuse help from government programs and non-profits.
...because of the underlying mental illness.
Do you really believe that you can get consent from this group of people who you say should be in medical facilities, when they have self-sorted into that group mostly by being too unwilling or unable to conform to any rules or structures?
>Also, the US is incapable of even reproducing itself, which falls far short of my definition of "works."
Not to say this is a non-issue (it's hugely important), but it seems a bit odd in a context where Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Sub-Saharan Africa (plus a few central Asian and South American nations) hadn't really been invoked
> You're forgetting the tremendous number of homeless who simply die.
A lot of that is exactly for the reason the previous comment points out: mental health issues that unhoused people refuse to get treated. As someone who now works in that field, that person is correct. There is no way for case managers to "make" them get help. If the person is having a non-violent incident, then no one can really assist unless the person wants help. Even in some violent cases, police and PETs (Psychiatric Emergency Teams) can't help.
I work with the unhoused in LA, a city with one of the highest unhoused population counts. There is very little we can do if the people don't want help, which is a bigger majority than you assume. We also have a housing shortage for people that can afford rent, let alone landlords willing to help the unhoused. You make it sound easy, but it seems to me, you actually have no real experience in the field, which may be fine. But don't say a system isn't working when the services system can't help those that really need it.
Sure, maybe the US government can do more. They provide a lot of our funding and we also get a lot of assistance from private donors. But at this point it's yelling into the wind. Without fully supportive communities and government assistance, we're really moving nowhere. And it isn't just some shortcomings of the government. It's also private property NIMBY types that don't want services in their area. Example: our main office is in the Venice/Santa Monica area. We have rules and regulations brought upon by local NIMBYs on what time we can be there, who can be there, what services we can provide, and more. So while we help the unhoused in that area, we have offices elsewhere that some clients can't make it to, which reduces the assistance they are able to receive.
So while it's easy to say "it isn't working", how hard has everyone else really tried? I don't see many people quitting their dev jobs to make 1/2, sometimes 1/4 of the wage to do a more strenuous job. The only reason I did is because the agency I now work for also helped me when I was on the streets and they're willing to pay me more because of my lived experience. I still do web dev and IT stuff on the side to make up some of the wages I lost transitioning, but it was somewhat difficult to adjust to.
So, what are your experiences helping the unhoused?
How have you been able to help those around you?
How were you able to help those that refused?
Do you have a contact list of agencies that may help theunhoused? If so, can we collaborate so hopefully more people can get assistance? Well, maybe not, since you're probably in a different part of the world than me, but here's a starting point for the LA area: https://www.lahsa.org/get-help. Also on that site is a careers page that has a full listing of agencies in the different SPAs in LA county.
But if you know of national agencies that can assist the unhoused population, please, let me know. We are in dire need of real assistance, not empty words.
We would, as a culture, have to make and act on the value judgment that dying in the streets, paired with all the other social ills that accompany having long-term homelessness, is sufficiently bad to justify involuntarily committing the mentally ill to secure facilities. Do you see that happening?
That doesn't have to happen when locals can help their local community. Do you see yourself trying to bring community together to help? Have you tried discussing homelessness with public fugures? Celebrities? Anyone besides complaining that nothing works?
Grassroots movements start at a local area and grow, particularly where government doesnt help. What have you done besides make an excuse for taking action? Do you really think that being a random person complaining on the internet is actually helping the people you say need help?
I noticed you didn't answer any of my questions. Just filled space with empty words.
Again, I ask, what have you done to help unhoused people? Besides finding excuses why it won't happen, then complaining nothing gets done.
What you don't seem to understand is sitting around comfy and cozy in your residence complaining about stuff doesn't actually solve anything.
What needs to happen is individuals, such as yourself, actually need to try and help the unhoused instead of crying that the government doesn't do enough or that people as a whole will never make it happen.
How much of your life has actually been spent assist8ng others instead of being cynical and doubting? How many excuses have you made up in order to not help? I get that complaining on the internet is "cool" nowadays, but with society growing larger, we need more people to help instead of crying and whining about every step of the process (see my previous comment about NIMBYs). But everyone just wants to complain and be seen as someone who cares instead of actually doing it.
So again, what have you done to help? Because being upset nothing/not enough is being done and finding excuses to not do anything is quite frankly, useless.
I don't think I purported to solve anything, nor was I particularly upset. Disappointed or resigned, probably. I think we've denied ourselves the possibility of fixing anything. I could probably be convinced of the possibility of meaningful improvement, but I'm mostly skeptical.
I don't really do anything, other than giving food and whatever else the food pantry people ask for. I guess I theoretically try to improve the homeless vet problem, before they're vets...
> Inequality isn't the correct term. It's poverty, drug abuse and mental illness.
Just curious where you think those last 3 things stem from.
Drug abuse and mental illness are much more prevalent in those worst off economically. Poverty (in developed countries) is almost always a result of inequality due to bad policies (lack of social safety nets).
> Crime is as much a cultural problem as anything else.
Right, part of crime is cultural, and part is economic. But culture is also determined by lack of access to economic opportunities.
> Drug abuse and mental illness are much more prevalent in those worst off economically. Poverty (in developed countries) is almost always a result of inequality
If the first half of your statement is true, then why do the billions of people subsisting on a few dollars a day around the world do not have society-wide problems with drug abuse and mental illness? Or are you implying that this causation only happens in developed countries?
What can you do to refute the idea that instead of drug abuse and mental illness being caused poverty, the same factors that predispose one to drug abuse and mental illness also predispose one to poverty?
> culture is also determined by lack of access to economic opportunities
Similarly, it's rather the other way around; lack of access to economic opportunities is caused by a culture that values human capital less. Of course, the two compound over time; but history is empirically full of examples of minority cultural groups that were discriminated against (whether legally, socially, or otherwise) but nevertheless succeeded economically due to the culture placing a high value on human capital[0].
> then why do the billions of people subsisting on a few dollars a day around the world do not have society-wide problems with drug abuse and mental illness? Or are you implying that this causation only happens in developed countries?
As stupid as the idea that inequality in itself causes these problems is, it doesn't have trouble explaining why this would only happen in developed countries.
Historic levels of inequality, including urban "anyone can easily see that their downstairs neighbor is a hundred times richer than they are" inequality, were much greater than modern ones and involved a lot less social pathology; maybe look in that direction.
> What can you do to refute the idea that instead of drug abuse and mental illness being caused poverty, the same factors that predispose one to drug abuse and mental illness also predispose one to poverty?
Looking for a root cause seems unnecessary for this question; mental illness can easily just cause poverty directly.
I think the direction of causality does bring into question what the expectations are for an egalitarian society is.
Is a society just if people with drug abuse, mental illness, and general dysfunction have equality of outcomes?
Of course, this simplistic debate belies the fact that all of these attributes have multifactorial causes, and most are in cyclical feedback with each other.
Dysfunction begets poverty begets dysfunction. No single intervention is socially curative outside of storybook logic.
Getting on my podium, I think that these factors are worse in developed societies than poor one (which often have greater inequality) for numerous reasons:
First would be the visibility of inequality. Next would be culture of material consumption. Next would be breakdown of social community (and the efficacy of social norms).
I think this explains why this types of behaviors are seen more in places like the US, which has a longstanding culture of materialism and individualism. I think it also explains why the behavior is more pronounced for outgroups and fractured broken communities.
This further explains why some groups within the US with strong social community have relatively low crime rates despite very poor economic conditions
> Historic levels of inequality, including urban "anyone can easily see that their downstairs neighbor is a hundred times richer than they are" inequality, were much greater than modern ones and involved a lot less social pathology; maybe look in that direction.
For example, we generally take Forbes as an authority on who's rich, but really rich people tend to be excluded from consideration, because Forbes can only measure certain kinds of wealth, and even when people's wealth mostly exists in that form, it can be hard to see.
Don't confuse a convenience metric with actual inequality.
I'm struggling to understand this one. Are you talking about the times of the cavemen, when I suppose everyone was equally materially poor? And yet you had other kinds of inequality back then, such as a bigger and stronger caveman being able to kill you and take your stuff, since there wasn't such a thing as a society or rule of law to protect you.
Or are you referring to the vast majority of people who for the vast majority of recorded history who lived in systems that elevated certain bloodlines above others, legally and culturally, and sometimes even to the status of gods? Certainly you cannot claim that, say, Queen Victoria and the common Englishman were more equal than King Charles is to his average subject, in every possible way.
>If the first half of your statement is true, then why do the billions of people subsisting on a few dollars a day around the world do not have society-wide problems with drug abuse and mental illness?
They don't live in societies with extreme inequality and precarity. Under capitalism, inequality is the problem, not merely poverty.
It's absolute poverty, drug abuse, and mental illness that constrain people's circumstances and influence their decisions. How similar or dissimilar a person's circumstances are to those of strangers they have no relationship with are not relevant.
>Inequality isn't the correct term. It's poverty, drug abuse and mental illness.
Inequality is absolutely the correct term. The rich wield their means to exploit the poor. Without the rich, the poor are not exploited and poverty, drug abuse, and mental illness all decline. Every. Single. Time.
This is a stupid take, frankly. Lots of crime in major American cities would go away if much more affordable housing was available. High cost of living causes poverty and stress, which can lead to drug use and mental illness. It's very obvious that these things are related.
If low cost housing is the silver bullet that solves the whole issue why doesn't the existence of low cost housing elsewhere solve the problem? The one time cost of transport to those locations would be insubstantial and irrelevant.
We tried building solid but low-frills housing developments in major American cities that impoverished people could live in for basically no cost. They became crime-infested hellholes.
I'm not even sure inequality/poverty is the main driver. If there is no penalty for shoplifting then it just makes sense to shoplift no matter your financial situation.
It's just that for a long while, enforcement or the illusion of there being enforcement mostly kept everyone in order, but nowadays the illusions are breaking down. More and more people are pushing the boundaries and realizing that no actual enforcement is happening, so why should they stop?
We see the same in white-collar crime where companies constantly push the boundaries in blatant bad faith and this keeps happening because the illusions that kept everyone in order have broken down and actual enforcement isn't sufficient to deter the bad behavior.
Keep in mind that shoplifting isn't merely a survival issue, there are "professionals" who steal for resale.
> If there is no penalty for shoplifting then it just makes sense to shoplift no matter your financial situation.
And yet enforcement isn’t as strong of a predictor of shoplifting as poverty/inequality.
It’s like the joke - I murder as much as I want and it’s not the fear of enforcement that keeps the number at 0. It may be why you aren’t shoplifting but please don’t extrapolate to the rest of us.
> We see the same in white-collar crime where companies constantly push the boundaries in blatant bad faith and this keeps happening because the illusions that kept everyone in order have broken down and actual enforcement isn't sufficient to deter the bad behavior.
White collar and petty theft are very different. The simplest proof is that white collar crime as a concept didn’t even exist until the 20th century whereas petty theft has existed forever.
> enforcement isn’t as strong of a predictor of shoplifting as poverty/inequality.
I agree because there's still some morality left. But morality itself can change, and if deviance is normalized by lack of enforcement we might very well end up in a situation where nobody thinks twice about shoplifting, just like when it comes to white-collar crime which is already normalized and keeps being rewarded by the market again and again, so it's not really surprising that more and more "blue-collar" crime is happening.
> White collar and petty theft are very different
Why? Are you saying stealing a 3£ chocolate bar is bad, but doing the same in software via a hidden fee or some arcane clause in the ToS that nobody read (and thus did not agree to) is acceptable? In both cases someone is out 3£.
> I agree because there's still some morality left. But morality itself can change, and if deviance is normalized by lack of enforcement we might very well end up in a situation where nobody thinks twice about shoplifting
That’s a strong claim, but is there any scientific basis for claiming that enforcement creates morality? Anecdotally I see morality police in super religious communities and all it seems to enforce is the appearance of morality but actually people are chafing against it and subverting it all the time - if anything the repression seems to create higher incidence of violent and sexual crimes. As for police, I haven’t checked recently but the number of police officers and the amount of crime that occurs seems to be fairly uncorrelated which is not supporting the hypothesis that more enforcement = better morality and less crime.
One place I saw this play is out is in the Bahamas where you and super rich white people putting up huge fences claiming that the locals had a culture of theft - if it’s accessible steal it - when the simpler, but more uncomfortable truth, seemed to be that poverty and inequality creates resentment and the amount of inequality was quite extreme.
> Why? Are you saying stealing a 3£ chocolate bar is bad, but doing the same in software via a hidden fee or some arcane clause in the ToS that nobody read (and thus did not agree to) is acceptable? In both cases someone is out 3£.
I agree both are unacceptable but legally one form is an acceptable way to do business. White collar crime is something totally different by the way - it’s about individual actions like embezzlement or corruption. Corporate behavior is a whole other category. A major difference of corporate misbehavior is that companies generally exhibit a very sociopathic behavior so they engage in that pure calculus you talk about and moral hazards are extremely real (largely because the market is allowed to reward sociopaths). People at the individual level however don’t operate that way though - aside from where the brain is broken and there’s a compulsive act formed for theft or crime (often due to formative experiences during childhood), most people just don’t want to hurt each other but that desire is weak vs self preservation and preservation of your family. And what starts out as preservation can spiral downward into trying to give yourself the life you think you want (that nice jacket or nice tv).
> is there any scientific basis for claiming that enforcement creates morality
Not sure (and doubt it) but my argument is that if enforcement was adequate then you wouldn't need morality - morality would be a "bonus" but even if it were to go away, adequate enforcement would still deter the undesirable behavior by making it unprofitable.
> which is not supporting the hypothesis that more enforcement = better morality and less crime.
"Law enforcement" in general is too broad to be able to draw this conclusion. Which crimes actually trigger enforcement (and what is the penalty)? If police is too busy busting kids smoking pot (or other victimless crimes that are easy to prosecute) to attend shoplifting incidents/property crime then shoplifting will remain regardless of how much "enforcement" there is (and of course the second-order effects from punishing pot smokers will set them up for a life of crime where they'll then "upgrade" to other crime with actual victims).
> both are unacceptable but legally one form is an acceptable way to do business
But law != morality. From a moral point of view I'm not sure there's a difference - in both cases someone is unjustly enriching themselves at the expense of the victim. When talking about morals and how they prevent people from acting antisocially, those morals may evolve over time if the bad behavior has been normalized by financial reward & lack of consequences.
> People at the individual level however don’t operate that way though
That is true but the economic incentives that are there (and lack of deterrence) means that people may start operating that way and I'd argue more and more people do, whether by choice or by lack of other options.
And I’m saying that enforcement and morality are swamped by poverty and inequality.
I’d recommend trying to find any grounding in evidence of your claims because the poverty and inequality links to crime are pretty well established in the data.
"If there is no penalty for shoplifting then it just makes sense to shoplift no matter your financial situation." True sociopath logic, my man.
Most people do not base their actions on some kind of spreadsheet where they are optimizing for economic success. Many people, I hazard to guess most, base their behavior on some sort of pile of moral ideas and/or general bonhomie. Most people are pretty chill and don't want to screw around with other people's livelihoods regardless of legal consequences.
> Many people, I hazard to guess most, base their behavior on some sort of pile of moral ideas and/or general bonhomie
How do you then explain every company out there being hostile to their customers and constantly pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable, or even things like wage theft which is surprisingly common? Or is there a double-standard here, where individuals are supposed to act in good faith but companies are not just allowed to be assholes, but rewarded for doing so by the market and lack of adequate law enforcement actions?
It's true that morality and good-faith behavior has mostly kept things working well, but it's clear that morals and good faith alone isn't good enough since there are entities that abuse the system so laws and enforcement should be there. If it's not, then I'm not going to be particularly angry about the little guys acting antisocially when the entire economic system is encouraging & rewarding it.
Look at it from an IT security perspective: it's great that most users are acting in good faith and are not trying to exploit your system, but you still need to plan for the worst and make sure your system can survive hostile encounters. The same should apply to our legal system.
The design of companies (especially limited liability companies, but many other aspects as well) diffuses the moral/aesthetic implications of decision making while concentrating the fiduciary implications, thus leading to behavioral patterns which are pretty inhuman.
I'm not arguing that there are not some bad actors - this is clearly and obviously true. I think the legal system should act in whatever way optimizes its goals (presumably, the flourishing of living things or something) and I tend to think the punitive impulse typically doesn't do that. It's main appeal is that it feels good to imagine someone getting punished.
> I tend to think the punitive impulse typically doesn't do that
Well when it comes to companies the punishment and deterrent should be monetary damages that will effectively make the undesirable behavior unprofitable and thus discourage it in the future.
But we're not doing that, setting the standard that antisocial behavior is acceptable (and rewarded by the market by being more profitable than acting honestly), thus it is no surprise that the little guys have a go at it (and guess what, since we're not punishing that either, there is no downside to doing it repeatedly).
> Look at it from an IT security perspective: it's great that most users are acting in good faith and are not trying to exploit your system, but you still need to plan for the worst and make sure your system can survive hostile encounters.
I think this is exactly the opposite of the right perspective for law and ethics. Society runs on trust, the more trust the better. ITSec runs best on zero trust. Applying the latter to the former lead to absurdities like "code is law" "smart" contracts.
> sociopathic and we haven't figured out a good way to deal with this
Great, so let's start dealing with this rather than continuing the double-standard where the big guys are allowed & encouraged to behave antisocially while the little guys are shamed for it.
Until this is addressed, I'm not particularly surprised to see the little guys start acting anti-socially too; it makes perfect sense in the system of incentives we currently live in. Some people are lucky enough to survive while acting morally, but I don't think it's fair to be angry at those who don't instead of addressing the systemic problem that encourages antisocial behavior, both individual & corporate.
Switzerland here: depends what kind of property. A large garden? The owner will likely call the cops on you for trespassing as soon as you show up (and they will come). A meadow some place up in the mountains? The rule is you camp after sunset and decamp at sunrise, but as with every remote place, if nobody sees you... Picking berries the same: it's stealing (Mundraub, yes in CH is still illegal) so in the smaller garden you'll be seen and probably reported but otherwise you'll be luckier.
> "Access rights do not extend to motorised activities...
This seems problematic as there are remote properties that are only accessible through long trails. Stuff like ice fishing spots where you might need to snowmobile a few kilometers. Same with ATVs for deep woods camping.
Personally, I have a registered trail through land I own and have no problem with it. I hope people get it to enjoy since I don't get enough chances to. I can't even get to it myself without passing through a dozen different lots.
If you want to camp in the deep woods, and there is no trail, hike. Seriously.
I appreciate land owners who do make trails available. Seriously. I like offroading, I'm grateful for people who give that opportunity. But I don't think we're entitled to reach everything in a motorized way. And I certainly understand if land owners don't want a permanent stream of ATVs across their land.
This is ultimately a balance of rights, and I think "no motor vehicles unless the land owners allows it" is a fairly decent balance.
I guess just like Scottish law is adapted to Scottish environment, similar adjustments can be made were applicable. No one suggested porting Scottish code verbatim to Alaska.
Also, it's not like long hikes with camping along the way are unheard of.
Maybe explicitly registered trails (like the one on your land) could grant more access than the default Scottish ones mentioned above. That way the people who are okay with motorized vehicle access can allow it while not affecting the majority who probably don't want vehicles running through their land.
A decade ago several teenagers wore a track through the back of my parents' yard with snowmobiles during winter. I'm not familiar enough with snowmobiles to know how much snow should be on the ground, but they kept going after it was reduced to muddy slush that had been churned up by the treads in the back.
My neighbor doesn’t really care about people walking on her property down by the river. But periodically some ATVer rips down the no trespassing signs and makes a complete mess of the trail during muddy conditions.
People need to give terms like low trust , especially as applied to large and diverse countries, a rest rather than spouting them because they think it makes them sound smart. In this case it’s what used to be a very rural town—founded 1653–which over the last few decades has become much more exurban and people who have lived there for a long time find the increased housing density, which in spite of still being pretty low, means people can’t just hunt and ride ATVs everywhere like they could 40 years ago.
A few kilometers of snow is easily crossed by skis or snowshoes. Every cabin in Norway used to be accessed like that (changing now the last 2 years, where people now mostly expect to drive to the door). But still skiing a few kilometers is a basic life skill to me, especially if one is going to be going into the woods in the wintertime... At least from 10-12 years of age.
This might be an unpopular opinion. But if you need motorized conveyance to camp remotely... then you should probably not camp remotely. It's ok if some wild areas are less accessible.
Seriously, we have nothing over here. All the land was bought up, often before there even was a united states. And the forests we do have tend to be very heavily regulated. You want to do anything it's all pay for permit and be clustered with a bunch of other permit buyers.
I am not aware of single forest in the Northeast where you can just drive in, camp, and leave without breaking the law.
I've done exactly what you describe (drive in, camp, leave without breaking the law) in the White Mountains in NH[0].
In general, dispersed camping[1] is legal in almost all national forest and BLM land. I think many people don't realize this but you can camp for free almost anywhere in a national forest (keeping certain distances from trails, roads and bodies of water)
If you hike in you can camp on the east coast, generally you must be at least 1/4 mile from where you park. On the west coats you can just pull in with your car and set up camp right there.
Historically, Maine had excellent recreation policies in cooperation with the private paper companies that owned the majority of land in the northern part of the state: areas not actively being logged were available for recreation access, as were vehicles on logging roads (though you best yield to the logging trucks that drive down the middle of the roads, even if it means you need to dive into the ditch). State recreation fees for snowmobiles, fishing, etc. would cover things like insuring the private landowners against liability.
However, starting in the mid/late 90's, much of the paper company land was divested and sold to private equity land holders (yay modern finance!) and those previous open access policies have been very much curtailed. It's a big loss to the community, but it sure must be making some money for shareholders somewhere...
There's lots of state + national forest land in the Northeast where that's legal. I've done it many times in PA/NY/VT/NH/ME. There are probably some options in the other more developed states too, but I don't usually visit them as much for outdoor recreation.
Outside of the most popular locations for tourists that's pretty much the default.
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If you've had trouble finding this, have you been limiting your search to parks? Parks are usually more heavily restricted in terms of camping.
In NY, the state parks will be heavily regulated having designated pay for/reserved camp spots along with amenities. However, the forest preserves (Adirondacks/Catskills) and state forests do allow backcountry/primitive camping.
Just look for a nearby state forest and look up the dec regulations for that site. More than likely you can can primitive camp there.
I've done it, it's just a huge PIA compared to out west where you just get on forest roads where there are clearings you pull into an camp all over the place.
The east coast just has this strong hostility towards camping for some reason.
There are a lot more people looking to camp in generally smaller areas especially on weekends. And the east doesn’t have the large networks of forest roads and almost roads and not really roads that you have in many western national forests and BLM land.
The West obviously has plenty of camping restrictions in popular areas like national parks and wilderness areas where you may have year in advance lotteries.
I’m not sure why the east would be uniquely hostile given the same agencies administer federal land across the whole country.
But, in general, yes if you want to get away from people and have more flexibility in where you can camp, you’re probably best off traveling to the western states.
There is comparatively very little federal land on the east coast. And even where there is land, it's not as friendly as the west.
Using white mountain NF as an example, their camping policy is much more restrictive than western national forests (i.e camp away from roads and trails).
There is virtually no BLM land and national parks are kinda strict all over. So you are left with state land and they tend to like structured campgrounds that you pay buy permits for.
White Mountain National Forest for one. There are restriction regarding how close to a trail or hut you can camp and the topography can be challenging but you certainly can.
But yes there are orders of magnitude more national forest
land out west. Probably more than the size of the entire or maybe UK.
Check out the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire or the Green Mountain National Forest in Vermont. I've heard it's also legal in CT State Forests but haven't actually seen this written down anywhere.
Which can also make camping and hiking in those areas far more dangerous. If a rescue team have hike in 20 miles to get you without any motorized vehicles and can't get a chopper into those remote areas? They shouldn't be remote, they should just be left completely inaccessible.
The problem then is people these days, IMHO are far more reckless and stupid and will try and prove Mother Nature wrong by attempting to go into these areas to get internet cred from Tik Tok and other platforms. Perfect example is the people who go to Longs Peak and attempt the Keyhole Route thinking its a well traveled hike and easy.
It's okay for some areas and activities to be more dangerous. "Completely inaccessible" is banning access for safetyism.
Decades of deaths in activities like backcountry skiing staying relatively flat while the numbers of people doing those activities exploding would go directly against your assertion that people are more reckless and stupid in the social media age than they were in the past.
If things like the Keyhole route are outside of your risk tolerance, that's a perfectly valid and rational decision. I'd encourage you not to do them. That doesn't mean no one else should be allowed to take risks you don't.
How do you prevent people from getting to close to your house and invading your privacy? Someone can come on your property with the intention to rob you, stalk you, etc and if they get caught they can just they were passing through. And unless you have cameras it would make it pretty difficult to prove otherwise. When you're out in the woods all alone that makes you pretty vulnerable and this isn't a situation I would want to be in.
"Access rights do not extend to the land surrounding a house or other dwelling (e.g. a static caravan) to the extent needed to provide residents with a reasonable measures of privacy. This is usually defined as the garden around or adjacent to the house that is intensively managed for the enjoyment of residents. " - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Outdoor_Access_Code
The article goes on to give examples where this has been legally determined to be a significant area - over 5 hectares (12 acres) around a property ... for people like me who don't fully understand areas in this context, that would be a square of 220m (720 feet) to a side.
You are allowed to fence this area off, or take other security measures.
And ultimately - its not hugely different to the current situation. If I intend to commit a crime against you, is adding a trespass going to dissuade me?
It sounds like you're not a good candidate for an owner of a large parcel of wilderness.
And that's ok! Not everyone has to own acres of undeveloped land!
I think it's appropriate that some kinds of ownership are as much a responsibility as a privilege, similar to how not everyone is prepared to be responsible for river or stream running through their property.
For a somewhat tortured metaphor, there are seats on planes that give extra leg room, as long as you're willing and able to help others in the case of an emergency. You get the benefit of the extra leg room, but you get the responsibility of helping others in an emergency. And that seems like a fair balance!
That's ok, I'm a voting member of the general public, and if we decide it's to the benefit of us all for the public to have access to their land, we will!
Preventing accidental privacy intrusion is easy. If you have a fence around your property (or even something as simple as a mowed lawn) then it is quite obvious where your plot starts and where the forest ends.
Someone malicious doesn't care about laws anyway. If they get caught today, couldn't they could just deny that they were there? I don't understand what would change in that case.
I mean, are homeless encampments ever permitted? Yet they show up and are very hard to get rid of. Its not a can of worms I would want opened if I owned property on the west coast, that is for sure.
I’d also add litter, trampling of grass/shrubbery, illegal structures (e.g. deer stands/blinds), theft (picking flowers, berries, apples, vegetables), and idiots trying to pet or take pictures with livestock that weigh 20x what they do. These are all things my family deals with despite our farm being posted no trespassing the entire perimeter. I literally can not imagine how bad it would be if people felt legally entitled to be there + how hard it would be to get law enforcement involved (“I’m not poaching, I was just taking the scenic route…”)
In Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri, it has to be explicitly signed via actual signs, or purple paint (relatively recent laws allow this in rural areas). Alaska requires signs. Indiana requires signs. Those are the states I am familiar with.
I believe the states that do not require notice are in the minority, but I'm not sure how to prove that.
Counterpoint: the people who are observing your boundaries currently are precisely the ones who wouldn't make a mess of it and do stupid stuff. And there's probably a set of people using it who aren't being dipshits who you don't know about.
The idiots are already doing the things you don't want them to do and allowing them to roam isn't going to change that. The problematic behaviors are the ones the laws should target (and perhaps already do, e.g. having a blind up without landowner permission is illegal where I live). Merely being on another's property shouldn't be cause to involve law enforcement.
I have supported the right to roam (and generally treated posted property as "open to respectful and responsible use") for years, and that has not changed since becoming a home and landowner. Our land is wooded, not agricultural, and I have no issue with kindly use by all.
I agree that most will use the land kindly, as you put it, but you can’t convince me that increased traffic/volume will not result in increased damage (though the per capita damage rate will likely go down).
Obviously illegal, in public places too, do no relation to the topic discussed.
>theft
Come on. Theft is obviously illegal everywhere.
>idiots trying to pet or take pictures with livestock that weigh 20x what they do
Good thing is that it anyone is hurt in this scenario it's the idiot. Why worry about it?
>I literally can not imagine how bad it would be if people felt legally entitled to be there + how hard it would be to get law enforcement involved
I used to do a lot of hiking (in Spain, France, and some other European mountain ranges). Many remote routes go nearby or through someone's fields or even properties (like through someone's backyard). There are many farm animals on the trails or just next to them. Fortunately nobody here cares and we are all more happy because of it
We’ve got horses and alpacas on our farm in Ontario, it’s super common for tourists with their hiking poles and huge cameras to venture off the Bruce Trail and onto our land to take photos with our animals.
Obviously they don’t mean any harm, but horses can be super dangerous and a kick to the head is fatal for humans. What separates places like Canada or USA from Western Europe is that here there’s an entire industry of litigators chomping at the bit for a case like that, regardless of how much of an idiot you think that person is. I’m not happy with the system either, but it’s a reality here.
These were provided as reasons why people dont want strangers on their land.
Im not sure how actions being illegal is a dismissal of the concerns. People doing illegal things is one of the main drivers for not wanting anyone on the land.
These activities are the post-facto justifications folks typically toss up when objecting to people on their land, but I find their lack of imagination dull beyond belief. If we're constructing hypotheticals around potential bad behavior by unknown actors, spice it up a bit! Why not claim you don't want folks on your land because you're worried someone will construct an unlicensed breeder reactor or idk, perform rituals designed to summon the Elder Ones?
Full Disclosure: I've gotten belligerent with folks crossing my yard to get to the municipal bus stop on my property and spent significant time and effort trying to get it moved off my block. I've intentionally planted invasives along property boundaries to block neighbors views into my property, put up posted signs in a residential neighborhood, and once gleefully ignored a hedgerow full of poison ivy to the point the actual Department of Transportation contacted me to complain about it making the corner of my property unnavigable to foot traffic and a hazard to road traffic. I offer no excuses for any of that, I don't want randos on my property because by and large I despise human beings. All of that is to say I think the entire conversation around ownership rights vs public rights could use a bit more honesty from the landowners who are either afraid of strangers or hate people in general.
The examples are obscure because people are providing examples from a very broad and diverse class.
The category "things you dont want done to or with your property" has millions of things in it, so if you pick 5 randomly they will be odd and dissimilar. That doesn't mean they arent real or legitimate concerns.
I dont think attitudes against trespassing is just fear or misanthropy. Enforcing a permitter is a completely logical method to reduce the number of people doing undesirable things within the perimeter. It is used all the time all over the world as a pre-emptive control.
Understand I don't disagree with you in any meaningful sense, and it may be more of a regional issue (I live in the South), but quite frequently these kinds of excuses are trundled out when what was actually meant is some combination of "the poors disgust me" or "I'm terrified of brown people". :/
Perhaps it is regional. I grew up in a rural area that was very white.
We had issues with people riding dirtbikes and tearing up our land leading to sand traps. We had vehicles and tools stolen, and one case of home burglary. Most common was hunters trespassing to hunt game we cultivated, and sometimes shooting towards our house.
Im sure some of these people were poor, but my distaste for trespassers doesnt come from that.
property rights and no trespassing sings provide a practical tool to for protecting your property. You might not see someone snooping around your garage, but you are more likely to detect them if they are not allowed within a mile of your house.
> If we're constructing hypotheticals around potential bad behavior by unknown actors, spice it up a bit!
> I've gotten belligerent with folks crossing my yard to get to the municipal bus stop on my property
So you want people to come up with unlikely reasons, then immediately turn around and deliver your own "dull beyond belief" example? Have you considered that other people's "hypotheticals" are also "boring" because those are the things they're actually worried about?
I'd imagine it's not about being illegal; probably more about the actual trouble of getting appropriate compensation on top of the fact that you have to catch the person who did it in the first place.
> Good thing is that it anyone is hurt in this scenario it's the idiot. Why worry about it?
American culture is very litigious. It's linked elsewhere in the thread but maybe also useful here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractive_nuisance_doctrine. Not exactly idiots but perhaps people who are a little naive. Although, I also wouldn't be particularly surprised to learn of a case involving adults.
>>Good thing is that [if] anyone is hurt in this scenario it's the idiot. Why worry about it?
Because then the idiot or his/her family will sue YOU for the consequences of their stupidity.
It happens ALL the time.
And even if you win the lawsuit, you lose, because you must defend yourself and your property at the cost of insane amounts of time and tens- to hundreds-of-thousands of dollars. So, even, if you win, you lose. Just because some trespasser was an idiot.
Things would change a lot if liability laws were changed so that if you are on someone else's property, the default is that it is at your risk (absent actual intentional man-traps which are already illegal). But this is not the case.
>>Fortunately nobody here cares and we are all more happy because of it
Yes, that is nice. The laws are different there, and they should be here. But a famous hiking trail in iirc Colorado was recently closed due to liability concerns crossing private property, and someone got sued. When the law was changed, it was again opened up.
Just because we want things to be a certain way, does not mean they are that way. Until the REALITY is changed to the better way, do not ridicule people for recognizing and acting on the actual reality. (When it changes, they'll likely change too, and of they don't, then you can ridicule them.)
The relevant point is that the illegality of those actions themselves only help if you manage to catch someone in the act during the few moments they're performing them.
Vs trespassing when you can exclude people with alarmed fences and can catch them during the prolonged period when they're on your property, even preventing them from getting sight of whatever they might choose to steal or vandalize... it's an orders of magnitude difference in costs and effectiveness.
> Good thing is that it anyone is hurt in this scenario it's the idiot. Why worry about it?
Because they can sue. Often successfully, but even where they would not ultimately be successful they can cause enough costs to extort you for a settlement.
> I think the main reason people get nervous about "the public" roaming their land is the liability and the personal injury lawsuit industry in the USA.
I would be surprised if that were really the case. I'm sure people would say that is the reason but I rather doubt that is the real reason.
People want their own kingdoms. (And private land ownership likely self-selects those people.)
I live in the US, and I have a "large" amount of property that is clearly marked for no-trespassing. The reason for this is the prior landowner was forced to sell when a trespasser drowned in the pond on the property and the landowner was sued, successfully, by their family.
If there were clear laws regarding trespassers and liability, I would gladly take the no trespassing signs down. I don't care if someone wants to go swim or fish on the very nice pond we have, but I absolutely will not lose my house for someone I don't know.
In the US, at least for most states I'm aware of, the attractive nuisance doctrine applies. And almost anything can be considered an attractive nuisance. It just sucks for everyone because it means the public and property owners lose out.
From my reading, the attractive nuisance doctrine applies to children - who I would have thought would be the people least likely to pay attention to "No Trespassing" signs?
That doesn't negate the parent point, and it's not just about attractive nuisance, although childproofing 100 acres is a ridiculous task. There's also been successful suits from people who get injured after breaking and entering locked buildings
All of the suits of this type that I'm aware of have been pretty well misrepresented by the media or person telling the story. Generally they fall into a couple of categories:
1) The person injured was a child (usually omitted from the story).
2) The owner of the building knowingly set a dangerous trap for intruders (e.g: a shotgun pointed at the front door).
3) Ended in settlement with no admission of wrongdoing by any party.
4) Totally made up.
E.g: the popular "A burglar fell through a skylight and broke his ankle" story was actually a teenager, who climbed on the roof of his school to try to point a floodlight at the basketball court, and fell through a skylight, becoming permanently disabled. They settled out of court.
> I would be surprised if that were really the case. I'm sure people would say that is the reason but I rather doubt that is the real reason.
It's a real reason, even if it's not as likely to happen as people think it is.
The example of someone tripping on a root and suing for damages would get tossed out of court. However, getting to that point could require you to hire a lawyer, deal with a lot of hassle, spend money, and other things you'd rather avoid.
However, there are many examples of land owners being sued for various things that happen on their property. Ironically, one of the arguments for holding the landowner responsible in these cases is to demonstrate that they didn't actively stop people from entering the land and doing whatever got them hurt or killed. If it can be shown that the area was a popular or well-known destination for local kids, for example, you have a different set of legal responsibilities.
Likewise, if you know something is dangerous and you don't make an effort to keep people out, you could bring legal liability upon yourself.
It's a real thing. The near limitless legal interpretations makes it logical to lock down a property rather than risk it.
The obvious counterpoint is to create strong exclusions in the law, and to allow victims of frivolous suits to pursue costs of defending.
The "right to roam" generally applies to unimproved or undeveloped land, so an exemption for injuries caused by natural features and activities compatible with legal land use should go some way to alleviating concerns.
If you are 'right to roaming' across my land and I have a legal quarry pit that you fall into, I should be immune, and you should be paying my lawyer's bill.
What you will find, is that indigent claimants have a hard time finding a lawyer for frivolous cases when the law is written clearly.
Lawyers don't take contingency cases that they know they are going to lose, and people that can afford to shove a frivolous case through the system by paying a lawyer hourly have enough money to pay a second lawyer.
Search online for beware of dog lawsuits in the US as an example of liability. The problem is that these laws vary by jurisdiction, so for example in California those signs do not protect the homeowner if someone is bitten on their land [1]. Michigan State University has a comprehensive overview of dog bite laws in the US indicating where "beware of dog" signs legally protect the owner from lawsuits [2] when someone trespasses.
To be clear though: No matter the interaction between postings and liability, successfully excluding people does protect you because it prevents the injury in the first place.
This is a good example of the difference between an excuse and a reason. The excuse people use to oppose roaming is "risk of lawsuits" but the actual reason is the "what's mine is mine and you can't use it" mentality.
If you own the land I don’t see any why it’s a bad thing to not want others trespassing on it. No diff than I don’t want people randomly deciding to sit in my car for whatever reason while I’m at work.
Keep in mind that 'right to roam' applies to unimproved and (some) agricultural land, and roamers can't disturb the right of enjoyment of the owner. This isn't your normal urban backyard.
Its more like someone walked through the parking spot that you paid to park in on their way to somewhere else.
Yes I want my own kingdom. I worked my ass off to get where I am, purchased a property with land for the sole purpose of solitude and freedom from other people. Being able to roam my own property and be free of social interaction and interruption. Is that not my right?
Some folks absolutely want their own private fiefdoms. I've got a "neighbor" right now that's archetypical. In less than a year of moving in he's already made ham-handed attempts to scam me out of control of my right of way, been an apocalyptic pain in the ass to the young couple that just cleared a couple acres and built a house next to his property, and made several attempts to discuss creating an HOA on our road. Then there are folks like me that are exhausted by having to navigate other people's agendas and just want to be left the fuck alone. Anyway, you're spot on. All of the pearl clutching about liability is just the socially acceptable excuse folks offer for their behavior.
Here in Sweden you're allowed to cross any land that is not directly connected to a house(read someone's lawn) you may pick wild mushrooms and berries growing there, and you may raise a tent and spend 1 night. The rule for camping as I understand it is that after you've stayed your 1 night in one place, you have to move "out of sight" from that location before you strike camp again.
You may not damage trees, cross fields where food is grown(as this would damage the crops) and you may not pick any planted fruits or berries.
Landowners are not liable for any injuries you may incur while on their land. Unless(I think?) you're on their lawn, which you're only allowed to enter if you have permission from the home owner.
There are probably a bunch of cornercases I'm unaware of, but that's the gist of it at least
Several states have spiritually similar laws, like how all beaches in California are public and it's illegal for private land owners to cut off access to them. I don't think anyone has won a personal injury lawsuit against a land owner for tripping over a root, but land owners have been sued for breaking that law and trying to create effectively private beaches.
Would this be because the beach is deemed public, not private with a right to access it? To allow someone to sue a landowner on the beach would be confirming it is privately owned by the landowner, no?
They are sued for blocking pre-existing access. Everyone, including those doing the blocking, acknowledge that the beach is public, but by blocking access they are trying to avoid people actually using it so they can enjoy it as if it were private.
I was speaking to the idea as to why these people haven't receives lawsuits about the injuries occurring to people on the beach. It is because the beaches are public, which means that it isn't an equivalent comparison to land that is private but which people might be given some sort of right to roam on.
I'm not sure the specific details of ownership, but the gist is that in California, everyone has a right to access the beach. Private land owners aren't entitled to blocking access to the beaches, even across their property.
This court case has been going on for years over this (1) and the only reason it hasn't been tossed out is the billionaire who owns the land keeps paying lawyers to appeal.
They mean on a person's way to the beach as they're crossing the private property. I.e. you park on the street and have to walk across a private yard to access the public beach, because there is no public walkway to get to the beach.
If someone were to be injured while crossing that private yard to the beach, the owner of the yard could be liable. What happens on the beach is not the yard owners problem, because it's not their property and they have no duties related to it (other than not impeding other people crossing their property).
If they are being forced to allow access through private property, and injuries could occur on the private property, I do wonder why there hasn't been any cases? Are we sure it is private property and not some amount of reasonable public property allowed for access to the beach (which the owners might be pretending is private property and then being sued to allow access)? On a non-California beach I've been to, there are public access ways (about 20ft wide) between every 3 to 5 houses. The houses are free to block their own land, but they can't block the accessways, the beach, or the dunes because all of that is public property.
I would assume there have been cases, just not specifically about "tripping on a root". I can't actually substantiate that, though. The SEO of the "lawsuits about forcing public access to the beach" is really high, I can't find any lawsuits. I would assume there are some, even if the plaintiffs didn't win though? People in the US sue for everything.
> On a non-California beach I've been to, there are public access ways (about 20ft wide) between every 3 to 5 houses. The houses are free to block their own land, but they can't block the accessways, the beach, or the dunes because all of that is public property.
No, California went way farther than that. They mandated that the entire coastline up to the median high tide line (if I remember right), has public access in the 1974 California Coastal Act. In later court cases, the court ruled that if there is no feasible way to access that public area without crossing private property, private land owners must permit the public to cross their land to get to the coast.
It's a little messy for older developments, but for new coastal developments the state requires the developer to sign an easement granting the public rights to use the land. I think there are a couple of beaches that are still holdouts due to various old-timey contractual things, but in general, you can walk across private property to access a beach behind someone's house if there isn't a feasible public route (I.e. you aren't expected to rock climb down a cliff instead or hire a boat, but you should use the public walkway if there is one).
I approach this from a matter of principle. I don't recognize anyone's "right" to enjoy someone else's privately owned property or, stated more honestly, to infringe upon the property rights of others.
My wife and I currently live in a medium sized city but we are not the type to enjoy city life at all and thus dream of buying a sizeable chunk of land for the both of us to enjoy and retire to. The biggest factor motivating us to want to make that "investment" is our ability to enjoy peace, quiet and solitude on our own property, knowing that there is not another human being within several acres of us.
Our lives and property do not exist for the enjoyment of others. We are not your tools. Find somewhere else to loiter, wander, roam or whatever. Our property is private for a reason. We have no desire to encounter anyone else on it regardless of what they are up to.
> I approach this from a matter of principle. I don't recognize anyone's "right" to enjoy someone else's privately owned property or, stated more honestly, to infringe upon the property rights of others.
I also approach it from a matter of principle - I don't recognize anyone's right to truly "own" land. They didn't create it. It existed before they were born and it will exist after they die. Allowing a market in land doesn't, beyond any fringe degree, encourage the creation of new land. Disallowing a market in land does not decrease the supply of land. So by what right can a person "own" a piece of land they didn't create?
On a base level, land is what a country is. Your citizenship of a country entitles you to exist upon the land of that country. Imagine if a child were born into a country where every scrap of land was privately owned, and every land owner refused that child the right to exist upon "their" land. What is the child supposed to do?
I recognize that there are social and economic advantages to allowing people some exclusive rights of access to some land. I recognize that there are advantages to allowing some people some limited rights of monopoly when they make improvements to land. But I do not recognize that a private entity can truly "own" land, completely and in perpetuity, as if they had created it from whole cloth.
100% true. The cult of land ownership is one of the most absurd norms in almost the entire world modulo the few nomadic peoples still around. It’s not just unjust and unsustainable but simply not pragmatic, judging by all exceptions: air space, pollution, zoning, rivers, damming, emergency access etc etc.
From a human development perspective, what makes sense is to define usage rights. If you’re using the land for X I can use it for Y. This originates in the principles of refining nature: for instance if I build a boat out of a log, then it reasonably becomes my property because of the human labor that went into it. Where to draw the lines between when, where and how nature gets refined enough to get usage rights can’t easily be deduced from principles, and will vary across regions and cultures. For instance in sparse regions you can afford a larger buffer zone around dwellings. Even within a country (like the US) human lifestyle varies so much that it’s reasonable to have different rules in different places.
Perhaps people are married to the concept of owning land so much that the wording cannot be changed. But it’s already obvious that nobody owns the land, the rivers, the lakes, the air. It’s absurd that it’s illegal to walk in the wilderness because of an imaginary line in the sand.
I’m from a country with freedom to roam, so I have my bias. That said, to its credit the US has despite its strong private land ownership laws, an amazing and vast set of national-, state parks and BLM land. So from an access-to-nature POV, it’s an incredible country overall.
> I recognize that there are social and economic advantages to allowing people some exclusive rights of access to some land. I recognize that there are advantages to allowing some people some limited rights of monopoly when they make improvements to land. But I do not recognize that a private entity can truly "own" land, completely and in perpetuity, as if they had created it from whole cloth.
What's the difference? Of course nobody truly "owns" land in the cosmic sense, for the reasons you stated; and of course most societies nevertheless permit the legal fiction of "land ownership", also for the reasons you stated (that generally it results in more favorable outcomes for society as a whole). So you're back to square one.
A Georgist land-value tax is the fairest solution to this problem, I think. Let society as a whole enjoy the fruits of that which no landowner caused to happen (the value of the land without any improvements), and let the landowner enjoy the fruits of his own improvements upon the land.
> I don't recognize anyone's "right" to enjoy someone else's privately owned property or, stated more honestly, to infringe upon the property rights of others.
There are those that do not recognize your "right" to exclude them from passing peacefully over land. Notably, in the real world, the FAA doesn't care one bit if you think you own your land. They will use the force of the federal government to let anyone fly a plane over your house (including at low altitude).
As a more extreme example, many indigenous people do not recognize your right to own land that was never sold.
Your principle doesn't really stand up well in the real world.
There are all sorts of exceptions to private property rights. People can legally come onto your land without your permission for all sorts of reasons (utility workers, aircraft overflying, government agents, police, private citizens who haven't been told not to, etc..) The 'right to roam' is just an extension of that, that says that if an undeveloped piece of land lies between where you are and where you need to go, you can pass over that land in a way that does not interfere with the landowner just like all the other exceptions to a landowners "exclusive" right to the land.
A property claim is a bundle of rights, and people democratically decide what is in the bundles. What something being (your) property means is up to all your neighbours to decide. Fortunately someone with more exclusionary view can move to a place where lots of people think like them - a community of solitude is what you need!
Uh, no? My neighbors have literally no say whatsoever regarding what is or isn't a legally permissible use of or activity on my property, and no governing body exists to permit them any kind of referendum on the subject.
You write this as if your land is a sovereign nation... Regardless of where you are in the US you are under many layers of government(by the people/your neighbors) that absolutely regulate what you can do on your property.
Heck the people can even legally forcibly aquire your property if the will was there.
I feel like we're having some kind of vocabulary issue here? My neighbors (the individuals who own property bordering mine) are neither legislators nor lobbyists. As such they have no access to the legislative process, and thus no control over what is or isn't a legal use of my property. To be absolutely clear "The People" can't do a damned thing. Local/State/Federal government is another matter entirely to be sure, but it's not like my neighbor can walk into the county courthouse and reasonably expect to have legislation drafted that alters land ownership rights.
Unless your neighbors are convicts or something, they have access to the legislative process. If you're doing something on your property that annoys enough of your neighbors, those neighbors call in to a local representative, an ordinance gets passed, police show up if you keep doing it. This can and does happen. Maybe you live in a county that's really lax, but still there are local laws in place that got there pretty much exactly by some neighbors getting together and bugging their representative.
This is so hard to understand as a European. Why does it need to be your very own land to be enjoyable? I regularly go hiking in the alps. Sometimes I walk for hours without meeting a single other soul, but if I do, it's always a friendly greeting as we pass another. Why can't we share these places?
It's actually quite funny that the freedom to roam in large parts of Europe predates the USA by several hundred years and is universally accepted by landowners, yet it's talked about as if it's some sort of unprincipled anomaly.
You're not asking anyone to share, though. You're asking for the government to grant you a legally enforceable entitlement to use property that someone else worked to acquire and maintain.
So your question becomes "why should property rights exist in the first place?"
The answer is that our existence, by nature of being a human being, has material requirements. Humans have non-material requirements as well (friendships, hobbies, art etc.), but you can't dismiss the material requirements of the human experience. The same reason that it needs to be your food, your bed, your clothing is the reason that land ownership needs to be a protected right as well. If you weaken respect and protection for land ownership then, rationally, you weaken the recognition of all property rights from food to clothing to musical instruments to your tech devices. Each material "property" may serve different purposes for the owner, but that doesn't negate the necessity of owning property. And a claim to property is the ability to control its use.
> If you weaken respect and protection for land ownership then, rationally, you weaken the recognition of all property rights from food to clothing to musical instruments to your tech devices.
there's a fallacy of scale here, in the same way a handgun isn't the same as a nuclear weapon, and so should probably have different provisions applied to it. land is vastly more useful, and usable, than someone's shirt or ipad. multiple people can enjoy a stream, or a forest, or even a singular tree on a piece of land at the same time, and in a multitude of ways. that's not true of an ipad or shirt. this diversity and simultaneity of use puts land in a different class. severing tight coupling of personal property(like shirts and ipads) with private property(land, generally structures on land, though the latter is admittedly more contestable), is pretty useful and seems totally rational to me. it seems less rational to think weakening one would weaken the other. If anything, the distinction between personal and private property opens up new ways of thinking about property that can lead to agreeable outcomes. more generally, see also the benefits of the commons - https://www.nature.com/articles/340091a0
that said i'm with you in certain respects, i generally like solitude personally, but though i dream of having ten or so acres myself, i don't want to deprive anyone else of thoughtfully, carefully, and temporarily enjoying it either.
Private property has never really been exclusive. This isn't a new line that is being crossed.
"Owning" land gives you some rights over it, but not exclusive ones. It doesn't even give you exclusive right to access the land. People can temporarily access the land for a variety of legal and valid reasons like utility work, police investigations, sales, surveys, etc. They can even permanently access the land through easements.
Right to Roam isn't saying that you don't have property rights, it is just providing another limited exception to an already long list. It is saying that people have the right to enter your unimproved land for the purpose of crossing it in a way that does not interfere with the property owner's other rights. In some places it also includes the right to temporarily sleep on the land.
There is no 'material requirement' to being a human that requires that if you own a large piece of unimproved land, people cannot peacefully walk across the parts you aren't using.
You can reject one property right without rejecting all property rights out of hand (obviously. A simple counterexample: why shouldn't someone own all of the air? Are you against ALL property rights? etc..) Similarly you can reject one specific nuance of one right without rejecting others. The right of ownership (dominion) under roman law could further be broken down into the right to use (usus), to profit from (fructus), to destroy (abusus), to occupy, which can also be broken down into freehold, leasehold, commonhold, etc. It's not a silly question at all to ask whether your rights to dominion shouldn't prevent traversal by walkers etc, and your thinking on the matter seems to be quite simplistic and black and white.
To use an analogy: In the US there are fair use exemptions to intellectual property rights. That doesn't mean there's no such thing as intellectual property, or that it's meaningless.
The right to roam in some other countries is a fair use exemption to land ownership rights. That doesn't mean there's no such thing as land ownership, or that it's meaningless.
I did not. I asked why you apparently cannot enjoy the countryside without owning the part of it you're standing on. I wonder what someone piecefully hiking through your land is taking away from you, how they diminish whatever you get out of owning it.
Property rights aren't boolean, but a gradient: You can definitely grant someone the right to pass through a given area without allowing them to permanently settle the place, or go hunting.
Having said this, I actually don't think the approach you take to ownership is a good one: Humans are social creatures. We benefit from sharing, and yes, that includes food, clothing, and musical instruments. Just acknowledging that we don't live in a feudal society anymore and can share some things doesn't immediately imply revoking all property rights or living in some kind of communist nightmare.
Going back to your original post: You mentioned your biggest dream would be owning some property in the country that you have to yourselves exclusively. If you had easy access to nature that wasn't bound in private property, would you have as strong a desire to have your own in the first place?
Hear, hear. Go back far enough and it's stolen land, insofar as any land can be owned. Entitled folks ranting about "their" property is kinda gross. You were granted that right by society, through ancestral collective agreements and cooperation wrt currency, labour, etc - not some divine right, privilege, or "hard work". Many times, killing or threatening people was how it was acquired not too long ago - and it's not too late for that to happen again (see Ukraine).
There are other ways to organize land-property rights. i.e. leased for some lifetime period, to be returned to the commons thereafter. There is only so much on this planet, and the richest individuals/corporations will gobble it up before too long; then what?
Property rights doesn’t have to be bogus for the right to roam to exist.
Can you develop random land under the right to roam? No, that remain the exclusive right of the owner. Same goes for logging, farming, and depending on legislature a whole heap of other benefits to owning land.
That doesn’t mean your country has to acknowledge a right to roam, it’s ultimately up to all legislatures to decide where to draw its lines.
None of those lines are self-evident, though it doesn’t matter which rights the land owner cares to acknowledge, as that is the prerogative of the legislator.
> So saying property rights are bogus, but body autonomy rights are ok seems like an arbitrary line to draw that makes society worse.
That seems obviously wrong to me. I can imagine a world without private land ownership that still grants people rights to privacy and autonomy in their home, even grants the privilege of open space around some of their homes (but since this is my imaginary world, ugly monocultured lawns aren't allowed).
The benefits of such a world are that wealth is less arbitrarily concentrated, that municipalities can own the land they govern, that cities and states have the ability to adapt to changing populations without running into private land barriers at every turn. Like in all things, it would be a balance, just as today we have a balance (albeit an extremely lopsided one) between individual rights and governments rights. Eminent domain exists, so the right of an individual person to permanently own a slice of the Earth and keep or grow or ruin it for future generations is already not absolute.
> I can imagine a world without private land ownership that still grants people rights to privacy and autonomy in their home
I dare say that you don't have to imagine, and there are past and current examples of societies that are closer to your vision than what modern developed nations allow for in terms of private land ownership. I think the median person is better off in systems that allow for private land ownership than not.
Look at China: they don't have to deal with private property rights, so they're able to build tons of infrastructure to benefit the people (good!). But the same powers that let government do that are also used to horribly oppress minority groups like the Uyghurs (bad!).
Of course, things owned by the people can be run for the benefit of the people if the people are composed of angels in perpetuity; but that, I'm afraid, will have to remain in the realm of imagination. ;-)
> But the same powers that let government do that are also used to horribly oppress minority groups like the Uyghurs (bad!).
And this kind of thing doesn't happen outside of Chinese pseudo-Communism? That would be an unreasonable assertion.
Look at Vienna instead, where the municipal government owns a large share of quality housing. I've heard it works relatively well; for example, living in low-income housing doesn't mean that you get kicked out if your income rises. You get to stay in your community indefinitely even as you advance in your career. This is an example of how it's possible for good things to exist without some rando middleman getting rich off of it. (I mean, maybe some rando is getting rich here, I'm sure there's still a nonzero level of corruption; but it's not a system designed to enrich private individuals.)
Things owned by anyone will be run to the detriment of the people without wise and careful systems built. Build good systems and iterate on them and you can have good systems. Build nothing, and you can have bad systems run by private individuals. The idea that private owners of land/capital are somehow immune to the corruption that makes government so scary is complete nonsense. It's just that nothing works without putting in work.
> The idea that private owners of land/capital are somehow immune to the corruption that makes government so scary is complete nonsense.
Neither private nor public owners are immune to corruption, but private owners don't operate with the legal monopoly on violence that the government does, so the consequences are a lot worse in the latter case.
I believe what Vienna gets right that complements subsidized public housing is that it doesn't have US-style dysfunctional zoning and regulatory processes ("environmental" review, etc.) for construction, so the free market is actually able to produce enough supply to meet demand.
In addition, there aren't bizarre "tenant-friendly" laws such as those that prevent eviction even in the case of nonpayment of rent; it is my understanding that this applies to public housing, as well. And I would bet that the public housing of Vienna is not subject to the same level of social degradation as those in the US, making them altogether more pleasant places to live in.
Many people view private property, and in particular land, as theft. The reasoning is that at one point private property was owned collectively by society so the only way that it could now have a single owner is if it was stolen at some point.
Note that in this case, private property is separate from personal property like someone's house, car, clothing, etc.
What do you mean by "society"? I could demonstrate that it is a word that is so vague as to be meaningless, but I will humour you and assume that you mean "all individuals coexisting within an arbitrarily defined geographical boundary" and I will shorten that to "all of us" for brevity, because I think (hope) that abides by the spirit in which you meant it.
Theft, by definition, is the forceful transfer of property from the owner to a non-owner, therefore infringing upon the owner's rights.
If "society" is "all of us" and "all of us" owns "all property" then the idea that recognizing and protecting an individual's rights to claim property is a contradiction. When I say "right" I mean a moral principle defining and sanctioning an individual’s freedom of action in a social context. So if "society" is sanctioning the freedom to acquire and maintain property, the "society" cannot have been "stolen from" as a result of "society" itself recognizing that right.
There's no ambiguity here and it's clear what is meant. At some point in the past, someone powerful enclosed a chunk of land and enforced that enclosure with violence. Hundreds of years of systematic enclosure of the commons in the UK denied many people the vital resources they needed to live and Right to Roam is the attempt to reverse some of that elitist legacy.
How did you get that land? Presumably you acquired it from someone legitimately. But how did they get it? At some point, it was enclosed and almost certainly enclosed to exclude others without their consent. It is the notion of private property that is the problem here, not problems you get by denying people their birthright.
You are not alone. My wife and I managed to attain that dream in the last year. 20 heavily wooded acres, each of the "neighbors" lots range in size from 10 to 40 acres. Being able to go entire days without seeing a rando is every bit of what you think it might be like and I strongly encourage you to make the move as early in life as you possibly can. large acreage frequently takes significant investments in time and labor to get into a configuration that suits you, don't wait until you're so old that that work pushes the limits of your physical abilities. Best of luck to you!
I'm interested to read more about the "personal property liability" thing in the US. I have never heard anyone explain why your example would expose you to liability. There are other things I can imagine, like unfenced swimming pools or open sinkholes that you knew about, but tree roots and general features of the land? Maybe there's a long history of case law about this.
Basically just think of it as a continuum from things you're obviously responsible for (a child drowns in your pool because you didn't put up a fence), to things you're obviously not (somebody fell and broke a bone because they tripped over a tree root in your acres of backyard forest).
That there's a big gray area in the middle, and that somebody can sue you if they're injured in that gray area, and even if they lose it's still expense and stress and a time suck for you.
I would say that a child falling in your pool is something you're obviously not responsible for. The fact that case law in the US says otherwise is a shameful commentary on how broken the US legal system is.
If you are required by law to put a fence around your pool and include a child-safe door, and you fail to do so, and a child drowns — why shouldn't you be liable?
(Although I think many from the US may interpret a "fence around a pool" to be an overreach of government regulation. But in Australia, "barrier laws" exist in every state/territory to avoid accidental drownings.)
Australia solved this differently - it's illegal to have an unfenced pool precisely because young children wander and fall into pools and drown. We understand that kids shouldn't die. If your fence is neglected or the kid was otherwise somehow able to get in, you're liable. Have a fence up to code, and you're not liable.
Did a lot of kids die in pools before that law was introduced?
NB I'm in Scotland so outside pools aren't a big risk but I also grew up in a small fishing village on a very wild and rocky coast with high cliffs and the idea of anyone trying to "protect" kids in that kind of environment seems very odd to me.
~60/year of <5yo Australian kids in the 90s, down to ~25/year in the 10s. That's a death rate reduction of ~3/100k, which is about the rate of <5yo deaths from cancer. 50% of the <5yo drownings in '93-'18 were in pools.
Of course, it's also a real thing that the home builders' and contractors' association lobbies to make every pool be legally required to be enclosed by a fence, which naturally needs to be built by a licensed professional.
What? No it's not. That's simply not true. That wasn't how any of those laws developed historically.
And that would just be a nonsensical thing for the construction industry to lobby on. There are things that are actually highly profitable for them to lobby for. That's not one of them.
I'm confused why you can't just accept the obvious that it's an effort to save lives. Like seatbelts.
>obviously responsible for (a child drowns in your pool because you didn't put up a fence)
Does this also count if you didn't invite the child and the terrain was clearly marked as your property? If yes, this is pretty surprising and non-obvious to me. Do i misunderstand something?
For me, the obvious example is bobby trapping your property and hurting a fireman who came to put out a fire.
You might indeed consider it non-obvious and surprising -- I certainly did when I first learned of it growing up here. Another classic example is that a thief can sue you if they fall through rotting floorboards on your porch and break their legs.
But we've collectively decided, as a society, that property owners are not just prohibited from booby trapping their properties, but are required to actively maintain them in a safe condition according to reasonable standards.
If there's something a reasonable person would know was a safety risk on their property, they'll be held liable if they didn't fix it and somebody injured themselves because of it.
The thinking is basically -- kids will run around onto other people's property, people get lost, etc. We know kids go where they're not supposed to. Nobody should be risking injury or death just because of that, if and when reasonable safety precautions by the property owner could have prevented that.
In other words, we live in a society, and we have a certain minimal level of active duty of care towards others. Owning a piece of property comes with rights but also responsibilities.
Don't at least the parents of the kid that drowned in your pool while trespassing on your land get at least a charge of "criminal negligence" against them? IANAL, but aren't kid's <14 supposed to be supervised at all times by an adult? And 14+ years old that drowns in a pool for inability to swim is also something that should be blamable on the parents, not the pool owner.
Edit with clarifications after comments: I meant, parent's should be supervising their young kids, or take the risk/blame, if something happens to the kids while they aren't.
(I roamed 'unsupervised' in fields and forest at young age with friends, and enjoyed it. But I was also taught to look where I step, and how to swim)
> aren't kid's <14 supposed to be supervised at all times by an adult
Hell no. A world where a nine or ten year old can’t go roam the neighborhood on bikes with some friends unless adults accompany them would be a dystopia. I know there are occasionally news stories about very-stupid harassment of parents for parenting correctly, but thank god it’s still not the norm.
Being a parent is hard. I would say that half of the US thinks parents are the problem with kids these days and that a good kid should "spend time outside in the neighborhood like we used to", and then the other half will call the police if your child is out of sight because "aren't kid's <14 supposed to be supervised at all times by an adult?"
But apparently there's no duty of care towards oneself to not trespass into unknown conditions, to watch where you're going, or to supervise one's kids?
Following it to its logical conclusion, I guess I'm supposed to put up a construction fence every time I dig a hole? Or stack a pile of wood? But an orange plastic fence can be jumped over or cut, so I guess I need a high chain link fence? But then how do I make the fence posts safe so someone doesn't hurt themselves by running into those? And what about the hazard of digging the holes for the fence posts? Etc etc etc.
This whole topic is essentially a backwards precedent that reeks of the common US anti-pattern of unfunded policy mandates merely pitting individuals against one another and considering the matter solved. If we want fewer people to drown, then make unfenced swimming pools (or perhaps even ponds) straight up illegal, with stiff penalties (I believe they're just generally town ordinance violations with a few hundred dollar fine right now). If we want to take care of people who get injured in such ways, then create a general fund for that. Tying the two together is like some moralizing version of "thoughts and prayers" that really just sets up a perverse reverse lottery where everything is fine until you get unlucky. (see also: all the harm that law enforcement causes and then just walks away from)
(Also FWIW I don't think there's anything "collectively decided" about the current legal landscape. From what I understand these liabilities basically arise from courts having created these theories of liabilities, and the unknown unknown risk comes from not knowing what theories the courts might create next (ex post facto!). If these liabilities had been created by statutory law through the nominal democratic process they could at least be enumerated and thus definitely addressed. But alas)
> But apparently there's no duty of care towards oneself to not trespass into unknown conditions, to watch where you're going, or to supervise one's kids?
No, there absolutely is.
The key word is "reasonable", which I used intentionally and multiple times in my comment.
Every time you dig a deep hole that might be hard to see, yes you're supposed to put up some kind of cones or warning tape or something. You're rightly not allowed to turn your yard into a booby trap, even if it's part of a construction process. (Of course you don't need to put something up while you're working and supervising -- but you sure do overnight while you're away from it.)
We're supposed to watch where we're going, but we also expect to be able to walk across a yard without breaking our ankle because of a hard-to-see hole.
Just like there's a big difference between a hole filled with water where a child could drown (that requires an actual physical barrier), versus a hole where they might fall in but break an ankle at best (cones are fine).
And I don't know why you think a pile of wood is unsafe, that's fine. Why would you need a fence? Unless it's stacked so high you can easily push it over to topple it, but you shouldn't be doing that in the first place.
You're trying to push examples to unreasonable extremes, when the whole point is the concept of reasonable safety.
(FWIW, I happen to agree with you in thinking that tort law is not always the best way to implement this, that there should often be legal enforcement regardless of whether someone suffers an injury, and that injuries should often be compensated out of a general fund. It's tricky though because this would require a level of constant, regular government safety inspections of private property that not everyone is OK with. However, I think the general standard of reasonable safety is nevertheless absolutely correct.)
"Reasonable" is a courts / legal industry weasel word that allows them to kick the can down the road not defining explicit requirements, which is what creates so much of the unknowable liability. This might be fine if we were talking matters of a few thousand dollars, but when we're talking about hundreds of thousands or more, creating a game of life-altering hot potato. And ambiguity would be understandable if we were talking about equitably judging personal action vs another personal action, but what we're talking about here is personal action vs an existing situation that was entered voluntarily.
I do not see that it is "reasonable" to be responsible for any random uninformed person lackadaisically traversing my property as if it's some maintained event space they were invited into with a corresponding warranty of fitness. Yet the courts disagree, and so we're off to the races about what's "reasonable".
Do I need cones for a drainage ditch/brook that has been around for decades? Do I need cones for the 6-8" ruts due to driving through a part of my yard when it was waterlogged? Do I need cones or a fence for a tree that has half fallen down, resting on a neighboring tree, that I've yet to take down the rest of the way? Do I need cones for stumps of cut down trees? Do I need cones for items kept on the ground? Do I need warning signs about possible bees' nests in parts of structures? Do I need warning signs about the high number of ticks due to my letting the grass get halfway to a meadow? Beware of bear because it can hide in my overgrown bushes? These aren't unreasonable extremes, but actual concrete examples.
The world is an inherently unsafe place. We create structure that makes tiny slices of it "safe". Creating a general requirement that the nominal owner of a chunk of land is ambiguously responsible for making it completely safe, even for those who were uninvited, just devolves into putting up one big fence and "no trespassing" signs while hoping for the best. This is precisely what this thread is lamenting.
Also compensating out of a general fund would in no way require government inspections of private property. We're talking about extremely rare situations here, meaning this could be covered as-is in a statistical manner. In fact it already mostly is by private insurance, except when/until it isn't, with that reverse-lottery dynamic rearing its ugly head again.
(The wood pile example is because climbing on them is unsafe, yet looks fun. It's essentially the same type of attractive nuisance as a swimming pool)
> Creating a general requirement that the nominal owner of a chunk of land is ambiguously responsible for making it completely safe
I think that's at the root of your misunderstanding.
Nobody is claiming anything can be made completely safe.
But there is a such thing as reasonably safe. To take general precautions where it is possible and economically reasonable, over potential harms you are aware of, or any generally responsible person should be aware of.
And in terms of all the examples you gave, you can probably figure out what that means. And if you can't, you can ask general contractors or HOA reps etc. (if applicable) who have lots of experience.
Sorry, I do not accept this "it's so simple I'm not going to answer". If it's so straightforward to answer in general, then it should be easy for you to answer. Because what I see is a field of unknown unknowns. It would be bad enough if the bar was me knowing that a harm could happen. But rather even if I don't know, a court can just fall back to social bullying with the catch-all justification of "any generally responsible person" should have known. So despite technically not needing to make things "completely" safe, it is effectively completely because the possible conditions for which you can be held responsible for allowing is unknowable without going to court.
I don't know why you'd mention HOAs, as they're generally their own little micromanaged Hells - I'm not looking for an answer that even grass over two inches tall is unsafe because Karen might have a panic attack. And general contractors generally create LLCs and buy insurance rather than preventing all liability ahead of time. At best they react to problems that repeatedly occur in their industry. They're happy to take money to provide an illusion of complete ownership though.
I do mean all of those examples literally. Personally, I can foresee harm in all of those, and they all seem quite "economically reasonable" to mitigate. So do you just mean "yes" for all those examples? (and if so, why didn't you just say so?)
I'm obviously not happy with any of my listed sources of possible harm existing at this here fix-er-upper, hence them being in my head. Which is why I'm working on them before say having guests that I let run wild in the backyard. But it's a bit rich that such extreme responsibility is still legally inadequate because randos can just trespass uninvited (thus unsupervised and unbriefed) and then demand I pay for the results of their poor choice.
And note here I'm not trying to be callous. I have said that there are legitimate reasons for swimming pools to have fences. We're quite agreed that the well-known pattern of kid jumping into swimming pool alone and drowning is a horrible thing that should be specifically addressed. If we were only talking about specific enumerable regulations like swimming pools needing to be fenced, one could run down that list and know they've all been taken care of. What I'm taking issue with is the unknown blanket liability simply by virtue of owning property, especially when you have not held that property out as a place for others to be.
In most of the US, the attractive nuisance doctrine applies, unfortunately. And nearly anything can be considered an attractive nuisance, or at least there's probably a lawyer out there willing to take the case and cost the landowner money.
"can sue you" is a very very important detail here. As I understand it, in the UK, the losing party in a suit pays legal expenses on both sides, which discourages "let's just shake them down" lawsuits. in the U.S. it's way too easy to get a contingency lawyer who knows anyone can sue someone else for anything and they'll have to settle for $$ just because it's cheaper than going to court to "win" against a weak complaint. I did some financial modeling on this years ago that gave a good prediction of when cases will settle in the U.S. tl;dr when the money given to the defense lawyer approaches the probable expectation of the loss you're trying to avoid.
In the "you pay your own cost" system of the US, only the rich can afford to bring a case as well. And we have the added downside that only the rich can afford to defend themselves. I would much rather have the loser pays system, even though it isn't perfect.
The other major downside of loser pays is that it makes litigation very difficult to stop once it starts - and lawyers, funnily enough, will always say that you have an excellent case encouraging people to start litigation....
A good lawyer will not take a case that you are very likely to lose, and he will advise you that you have no case. I believe a judge can also admonish or censure a lawyer who brings a frivilous claim into court? Not sure how often that happens.
last case I heard numbers on the lawers fees were $500000. This for a case where it was clear they would lose (3 different parties were sued and the nobody could figure out how to split the $100000 loss- that is one party spent 5x the total judgement)
I am not a legal scholar, but anecdotally a common theme in US law is that if you don't make obvious attempts to stop someone from doing something with your property (be it land, objects or intellectual property) then you are tacitly approving it.
The most well known example is probably Trademark Erosion.
Given this theme, it's not hard to see how a judge could rule that if you allow a lot of people to traverse your land, you are inherently maintaining a passageway and are thus responsible for ensuring its safety.
Open holes that you know about are one of the issues with the Colorado peaks. There are old mineshafts up there. The owners put up signs, they get torn down.
There's an interesting (slot canyon) local hike that's a good example. The whole situation is a mess, it's an old non-operating mine grandfathered inside what's now a national recreation area. Seems some years ago somebody's car was damaged (not exactly astounding, you need a 4x4 HCV and know how to drive it to get there.) Since it happened on private property their insurance tried to go after the landowner. For years it was posted as no trespassing although some groups still did sneak in. Then there was a period of a few years where it wasn't posted and we (local hiking community) believed it was accessible (nope--flash flood took out the signs and gate.) I went with one such group. There were a couple of mineshafts in the side of the canyon, imperfectly blocked by chain link fencing. Once glance inside was plenty to make me NOPE! it but some of the group squirmed in anyway.
After seeing that I completely understand why the owner denies access.
While I in general support a right to roam it needs to come with extremely strong liability protections. There are too many idiots out there who do not respect that nobody's combing the land for hazards, nor is it even possible as they may change. (There was a case a while back, trespassing IIRC biker got hurt because a flash flood had taken out the paved road he was on. Owner liable.)
I think the problem is that there doesn't appear to be any plan to manage the land usage. In the US, there is tons of public land, but there are giant federal and state departments that manage it, and there are entire books of rules for how that land can be used. The public land is a collectively owned asset that is managed for public benefit. Areas can be closed off, or require permits, or limited to a specific usage.
The "right to roam" seems almost completely unregulated with no power to manager or limit this public asset. It's a right without any responsibility.
There's certainly a responsibility to follow other applicable laws. You aren't allowed to litter or murder your hiking buddy on private property even if you're allowed to be on it.
I'm talking more about permitted usage. In the US, public land is public, but you can't just use it however you'd like. Things like, can you camp overnight? Can you camp anywhere or just in specific locations? Can you use a horse or a bike or an ATV? Are you allowed to have a firearm? Can you fish? Can you hunt? Can you do professional photography? Do you need to stay on trails. Can you access the area by boat? Can you use radio-controlled model aircraft or cars? Drones?
In the US, the answers to all these questions are different depending on which piece of public land it is. Each is managed separately based on what is most important about the land and the people and wildlife around it.
It's just not clear that nearly as much thought is being put into the management handling these competing priorities in this case. There's almost an expectation that each landowner will be able to manage it themselves, without having any authority to really enforce any of their management decisions.
1. Right to roam (in the US) might might actually reduce homeless encampments.
In my firsthand experience, people are generally more sympathetic and supportive if you are just passing through as a homeless person. They may give you a ride and/or a small amount of cash without you asking, but the US is actively hostile to pedestrians in most places and you have zero right to pitch a tent overnight anywhere.
2. If homelessness is something you dislike, the primary root cause of homelessness is lack of affordable housing. This is a nationwide problem, not peculiar to the West Coast.
So if you don't like homeless encampments, try to find ways to foster the existence of more affordable housing generally. It's a win/win solution that helps the homeless without rewarding or encouraging bad behavior and gets "the homeless" out of "your" face (not intended as a personal attack).
And has zero relationship whatsoever to this issue. None.
> I think the main reason people get nervous about "the public" roaming their land is the liability and the personal injury lawsuit industry in the USA. If I let someone cross my land and he trips on a tree root and breaks his leg, now I'm possibly facing a lawsuit.
I rather got the impression that it was rich people wanting privacy.
As for lawsuits… I'm not sure how effective they are, but here in Berlin half the woods say "Privatgelände / Benutzung auf eigene Gefahr!" which means what you might guess without a translation.
It's entirely possible that the reason this type of lawsuit is still a real thing is because of rich people recognizing that it also gets them extra privacy. (At least in part.)
I know if at least several states that have a recreational use law, the gist of which is generally along the lines of "if you aren't being charged money to access the property, you can't sue the landowner for anything that happens to you while you're lawfully recreating."
Kentucky has a law of this type on the books, and it helps a lot with access to climbing at the Red River Gorge.
In the west it's more often that the public "roaming" their land is hunting for big game and trying to edge onto private land to find it. Hikers are inconvenienced but they aren't the norm.
> If I let someone cross my land and he trips on a tree root and breaks his leg, now I'm possibly facing a lawsuit.
Don't worry, you're impacted by laws anyways. (My fave example is outdoor pools in LA, which by now require a fence. Never mind if there are never any children on the property, there might be at some point)
> Simply crossing the land is one thing
Yup. And it isn't just homeless encampments (which we could address, if we wanted to ever provide housing), it's also that a good chunk of people are, well, asocial assholes. See e.g. folks defacing public parks, destroying natural monuments for kicks, destroying vegetation to get their insta pic just right, etc.
I don't have a good answer. People should be free to access public lands. There should be more public lands. But the consequences of that right often are destructive, and we don't seem inclined to fix that part.
Not a lawyer, but an important part of why those lawsuits can happen is under the idea that you invited someone onto your property, therefore, you have a duty to ensure they're safe when they accept that invitation. Places open to anyone, like a restaurant or grocery store, have an implied invitation because they want everyone to come inside and spend money.
So if someone jumps your fence and breaks their leg walking through your property, you didn't invite them there, you aren't intending your land to be open to the public, so the onus would theoretically be on the traveler to cover their own bills.
They could sue anyway, sure. But they can do that right now without any legal changes anyway, it would just be under well established law and they likely wouldn't win.
> I think the main reason people get nervous about "the public" roaming their land is the liability and the personal injury lawsuit industry in the USA
This is somewhat a solved problem in the US, what you're describing is actually nefarious behavior by cities and counties. I'll give an anecdote and I'm sure someone will come tell me if I'm wrong :)
In Texas we called these "public easements". Back then in order for the city or county to establish a public easement they had to establish that there was a reason, they had to indemnify the area and some buffer around it, and they were obligated to maintain the land that they created the easement on. Sounds simple, right? Not so much.
Cities and counties would often short change the indemnification, leaving the land owner on the hook for things they shouldn't be on the hook for. Sometimes the city would also have vaguely phrased policies like, "all public easements must have sidewalks" and those sidewalks would often incur some amount of damage to the landscape. Think about, for instance, a sidewalk going from a road, through someones property, to what is a dirt trail through the woods. Doesn't really make sense - but the city has a policy it's obligated to abide by!
I think in general cities and counties could benefit from some non-court oversight to these processes with the public that don't need to involve expensive things like lawyers and are frameworked to understand the perspective of both the public and people giving access. There should also be a zero tolerance policy for underindemnifying the easement.
Since you mentioned homlessness - I now live in Portland. Here's the way I deal with it:
If you camp on public land around my neighborhood I expect you to be a good neighbor. Clean up your trash, no feces or urination in public, no leering/jeering/being creepy etc... I've generally provided water, heating devices, medical aid, etc to people that need it - the same way a good neighbor would.
Some amount of people don't care about those boundaries though and will violate every single basic human expectation you can have. City code enforcement is generally not setup to handle disputes like this and neither are the police so it puts the public in really weird spots. I don't know how to solve that, but those folks aren't using easement rights. They're using public camping rights, which are entirely different and have more to do with camping on BLM and forestry land.
You're right, I don't think the US overall system is ready for a right to roam.
I come to this conclusion sometimes, one simple example is that most US suburbs are not ready for public transport because of the distances between each home.
I have some land in SE Oklahoma the going rule that I’ve been told is if you cross an open gate leave it open and if you cross a closed gate close it behind you. However, I still make it a point to meet and shake hands with the owners of the land I cross. I live in Texas and, especially near the border with Mexico, you’re putting your life in danger trespassing on land, no matter how remote, without permission.
Liability is a major reason but it's also a security concern.
Is someone up to no good? Casing a location to plan a robbery/kidnapping/theft/vandalism/squatting/arson (or any of these in progress but not yet committed or committed but not provably by the tresspasser)? It's difficult to impossible to know because you can't just determine intent.
But if their mere pretense in a location is prohibited that is easy to determine and prosecute.
It's very important for security sake to be able to create bright lines that bad actors need to cross and which good parties are unlikely to cross accidentally so that response can have a high accuracy.
People passing through may also litter, set fires, scare off wild life or travel to a space where they are allowed to hunt (and then kill wildlife that crosses properties lines, or inadvertently shoot bullets or arrows into space you're using).
The need to immediately paint one party or the other as in the wrong in a dispute can make it hard to see that in many cases all parties have worthwhile concerns and that there aren't easy answers.
I live on a large property in a very rural mountain area in the US. My property abuts state land on 2 sides but we've never really had any issues with trespassers, likely because of the first sentence of SoftTalker's comment. Our area is one of the most popular mule deer hunting spots in the Northwest which seems like it could be problematic, but in my experience the hunters are extremely respectful of private property. It's also nice to be able to hunt mulies on my own property and not worry about errant bullets. It is a but unsettling in the last 2 weeks of October (regular rifle deer season) when the local grocery store literally fills the aisles with pallets of Busch Light and Fireball.
The law could easily include a liability disclaimer. People just don't like other people, want their privacy, and want their "I got mine" land locked public lands.
Without a right to roam, we end up with cases of public lands that lack any legal public access. I just read this article in the LA Times about a state park in California that there's no legal access to: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-20/the-stat...
Im with the ranchers in the case of Sutter Buttes. They pre-date the state purchase of the land, which it did without access rights, and before the state turned it into a park.
It reminds me of the phrase: "Poor planning on your part does not necessitate an emergency on mine".
Maybe it will work out for the state in the long run, but it took the risk to buy land without access, with full knowledge, and cant cry foul later.
Given the land's Native American heritage, the ranchers leaning "We were here first" argument is... really something.
Private property rights are only as good as the government that recognizes them. Keep in mind that the government that gives you private property rights (California in this case) also has the right to take as much of your land as they want for 'public use'. If the government wants to play hardball, it is perfectly reasonable for them to build a road across the land and open it to the public. You can't stop them, your only recourse is to argue how much they owe you for doing it.
That is absolutely not true. There are many restrictions on eminent domain. We live in a society of laws, not a feudal one where the government has god-powers.
If you are making a practical force argument, the government is physically capable of illegally exterminating the ranchers, but there would also be consequences.
It isnt that simple. There is 250 years of case law defining what constitutes public use, and the situations where it can be justified. This includes when you can use it to build a road or trail, and when you cant.
Can you point to some precedent where building a public road to a public park across unimproved land was not a valid use of the takings clause?
The precedent is that eminent domain is remarkably unrestricted as to what constitutes 'public use' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London). Condemning occupied and habitable homes to build a shopping center is an allowed use per precedent at the federal level (additional restrictions apply in many states). Eminent domain for building a road is basically a given if that is the method that is chosen.
I dont like Kelo at all and doubt the current SCOTUS would rules that same, but understand the ruling. That said, in it's defense, the court was weighing the claimed benefit of thousands of jobs and millions of dollars of tax revenue. They would not have ruled the same if the public benefit were a park bench with no economic value?
Re-Native Americans, Luckily, both law and society have improved in the 200 years since the 1800's when Spain annexed Alta California.
I assume you think the forceful taking of native lands by the government was bad, so why do you think it is good to roll back the clock and justify doing it today?
There is an inherent contradiction here. It cant have been bad to do then, but good to do now.
Or in this particular case, if the landowners are so stubborn that they can not even allow for a road crossing their land, they could at least hint at the idea?
In-group vs out-group. States can take land from out-group, not from in-group (which is why the in-group participates in that state). Also, as someone else pointed out, this land was taken from Mexico, who in turn took it from the Spanish crown. The Spanish took it from the "natives" (scare-quotes since I don't know if that tribe took it from another preceding tribe).
In some cases, the law can be used to force the sale of an easement for access to a landlocked property. So, in that sense, it can amount to an emergency for you.
I have read about it in some cases, but it seems to depend on the situation. I suspect (and hope) that this is not one of the cases, given that the government bought the land with full knowledge that it was land locked.
I don't really agree with you, it's not in the public interest that property owners should be able to bogart land merely by encircling it, however the situation should arise, and it invites obvious abuses. Incidentally, the property owners in the article are doing just that, first by selling landlocked property evidently with an agreement among eachother to never sell a public right of way, and then by selling tours that wouldn't be necessary if they had, a form of rent seeking.
I think the fact that the state state initiated and brought about this situation has a major influence on my opinion. The state created the problem which it is now presumably struggling to resolve.
The Californian public got by just fine without access for 180 years. There is no urgent need for the public to access the location. Nobody will die or have major hardship without it.
Like I said above, I think there needs to be a extremely compelling need to use eminent domain.
I dont think the government should be engaging in minor utilitarian optimization. That is to say, there should be an very high threshold to use government power even if the the cost to the individual is quite small.
Where the government has trump cards which override individual rights and freedoms, they should be used rarely and out of necessity.
It appears that the land had an easement for access which transfers on sale.
> The land was served by a road easement at the time it was purchased by the state. An underlying landowner sued asserting that the easement was insufficient to permit park visitor travel between Pennington Road and the park, and lost. The court determined that the easement was sufficient to allow visitor use
If the fact that that these families grabbed that land before the union blocks state from having an easement to access the land, then the state should protect private property of these ranchers at all. So if some private militia enters and forcefully take over the ranchers land, the state should not intervene then.
Here in Spain you can't neither freely roam around into some protected nature spaces, but that's done to preserve a delicate ecosystem. Such as Urdaibai, or Doñana.
Also, what are they allowed to do? Simply crossing the land is one thing. Around here many private landowners are dealing with homeless encampments that are not only a liability but a sanitary issue, as they tend to be full of litter, needles, food waste, and human waste and end up attracting vermin.