The Glade 4.0

Depends on the children. I was in the store the other day...

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In time, this too shall pass.

I'm a little baffled as to why, myself. I always figured the city labor unions would demand this job in order to raise wages, hours, overtime, and union membership.

Still, I am glad that the sity leaves it to the homeowner. I'd rather pay a sidewalk tax in the form of getting out there and shovelling the snow than in the form of having to pay for more city bureaucracy, more union workers, and face the inevitable strikes, tax levies, and demands for additional wages and benefits. I consider it a bright spot of smaller government in the midst of everything else.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Sidewalks and streets are one of the many ways government encroaches on your property. There's a neighborhood here, for instance, that used to have beautiful 1/2 acre front lawns. The State Four-laned the road and took about 50% of everyone's front yard, for free.

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What's the alternative? Seriously I'd like to hear.

It seems to me people want to get places but don't want to have roads and sidewalks

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

That I would have a problem with. Fortunately that's now how it works in Texas. The state can't just grab right-of-way by like that. They can exercise eminent domain, but in order to obtain the land, they have to get approval from a panel of freeholders, and then they have to reimburse the owner for the property at "fair market value". I'm not sure exactly how that number is assessed, but it can be appealed to the panel by the landowner if he feels the offered price isn't fair market value.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Well where I grew up, there were no streetlights, no sidewalks, and it was a *gasp* private road! Meaning we didn't get a plow when it snowed, patroled by the police, and it was listed a a rural route for the post office. That ment all our mailboxes were in a row at the main State road, and people would stop and grab their mail before going home or walk up and get it during the day.

Yet the road always got plowed, since my father worked for a trucking company. He'd bring the plow home when the weather threatened. The road always got patched up, because every summer the neighborhood would pitch in for asphalt and we'd make a day of filling up any potholes. Neighbors who were strapped and couldn't pitch in for the $ end always took a bigger portion of the labor. Oh and we walked up and down it every day. When a damned car came we would move farther on the shoulder or on the grass.

Now I'm not advocating to return to dirt trails or gravel paths. I am demonstrating that when a community is left to police itsself things will find a natural balance and get done.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

Look, yeah, the neighbor's probably a dick.

But, the guy should have been smart enough not to build across a sidewalk, on the one holiday a year where the sidewalk gets the most traffic.

Yes, the kids could step into the road and would have to take responsibility for their actions. But, so does this guy. He broke the rules, he built a structure off his property, he should also have to take responsibility for his actions.

And the city was right to enforce the rules. They would be SCREWED if a child were hit.

It sounds good on paper and i'd like to think such a thing was still possible. Who steps in when someone refuses to contribute to road. Laws aren't for the law abiding and polight, they're for the lawbreakers. I'm not a big fan of government, but I do think God put them there for a reason. So please try and enlighten me on this one and i'll try not to be such an arse about it.

Also I don't think this guy put a display out to perform passive resistance against an oppressive government. He simply broke the community established standard and after a while stopped getting away with it.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Yeah dude once that guy biult that hoem across the street from me it was your road or the cravens's that was he defacto sledding destination.


Im drunk now, just finished werewold larp when jacque acalled me and said hec ome out to kareoke and i w as likesure,d ropped some t bills and blitzed.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

For one night of screaming kids a year, I would not complain.

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Hokanu
Duty is a magnificent blessing because it is the sign of trust from the universe.
END OF LINE.

Great ancedote... except for the part where you explain how you got your private road via the state road.

That is a problem with the implementation of eminent domain, and valid an argument against the concept of "public" property as con men are against free enterprise.