3 mules

[suomalainen]

He lost his appeal. The 5-page opinion makes it sound like he was asked to move from a non-camping area to a designated camping area down the road and he refused. I don't know that civil liberties are really implicated here.

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/ap ... 06-15.html

[7Wannabe5]

Mary Magdalene would be labeled sugar-baby. Composting toilets would violate sanitary codes. Low income children would stand in line to smear their hands with anti-bacterial gel before removing plastic wrapper from government subsidized nutri-muffin snack... I could go on and on.

[Kriegsspiel]

I encountered a modern version of this when I was sleeping in my van in Burlington, VT. Got woken up at about 0300 and told to move along.

[7Wannabe5]

@Kriegsspiel:

Well, that kind of make sense if you were dressed as pictured. Please examine my avatar for hints on how to present oneself in manner least likely to draw negative attention from those in authority.

[Kriegsspiel]

The gas mask only came out when I was somewhere stinky.

I'm looking at you, New Bedford.

[Jean]

That's why I always hide when I'm wild camping.
Even if it's not law enforcement, you're never safe from a group of bored young men.
In north america, I litteraly hide in pipes, bushes, change spot at dusk.
I sometimes even go as far as setting a camp, and sleeping 30 meters away from it.
That's fun actually.
Now my car is too stealthy, I can sleep downtown without being noticed.

[7Wannabe5]

I met a young couple who were wild camping in a city park where I used to take early morning walks. The girl slept with their dog, and the boy slept somewhat separated from them. I just had the thought that maybe that was a defensive strategy. They also sometimes acquired food by walking through restaurants and grabbing leftovers off of plates tables before they were cleared. They were both very conventionally attractive in appearance, so that might have granted them a bit of leeway in behavior before being busted as vagrants.

[C40]

That mule guy should come to Portland. It seems you can just set up a tent wherever (well, mostly next to freeways and on certain sidewalks)

[suomalainen]

Yeah, I dunno. 150 years ago he would have had different problems. And 150 years before that, and before that...point being that things change, so I don't necessarily see any prior point in time as being idyllic. At any rate, I don't know that it's an issue of "civil liberties" as much as it's a function of changing values with respect to property - whether it be owned by a private citizen, "the government" or a king or noble. How would he have fared in feudal england? You could also ask how the native americans fared when a private property system was forcibly imposed on their communal systems which had held for generations. And even among tribes, it's not like you had free passage through another tribe's territory.

[suomalainen]

No, I get it. It's a bit of the management problem driven by population density, right? In sparsely populated areas where everyone knows everyone else, you probably get more leeway (provided you are in the "in crowd"), but when you get more population density and people start rubbing shoulders more often and you get a bit of anonymity, you end up with the free-rider and other problems, so "you" (society) tends to want to manage to the 80% and the non-conformists start to have new pressure points applied to them. I simplistically tend to see the conservative/liberal divide largely along these lines even if you can't really put everyone into those neat little boxes. Long way of saying that the answer to your question "should it be illegal" is relative, not absolute. My earlier point was that guys like that probably never had it good - be they vagabonds, refugees, etc. I dunno. I sound callous, but it's more just a cynical view of human nature in the sense of group dynamics.

[Riggerjack]

So what's the difference between a this guy and the Bundy Ranch guys? Both using federal lands for their own unapproved purposes. Trial, fines, and or imprisonment are the ways we punish these things.

[Riggerjack]

It's not illegal to be a nomad. It is illegal to use someone's property against their wishes. As a.property owner myself, I didn't buy it for anyone else's purposes, I bought it for mine. Using it without my permission, even just being here without my permission is not something I take lightly.

You seem to feel that because he is using lots of people's property, in a way you are sympathetic to, is somehow right and good.

If one wants to be a nomad, buy a lot of land. If one wants be a farmer, buy a lot of land. If one wants to trespass as a lifestyle, expect resistance from the property owners one is stealing from. If he were living the low impact life he described, it's not hard to disappear in the back country. His blotter shows that despite the claims, that's not what he is doing.

[Jean]

Well, as an example, in switzerland, you can own land, which means you own it's produce, but if it's forest, you cannot forbid someone to go trough it. In Scandinavia, you cannot even forbid someone to sleep there. Property right are always limited, because you cannot forbid someone to reflect light toward your property, you cannot forbid someone to breath and emit carbon dioxide that will go trough your property.
Where we put the trigger is subjective, and even in a libertarian ideal, we have to set it somewhere between, "you cannot forbid someone to put his dick in you" and "you can forbid any interaction with your property".
I like to start from the state of nature, or what if the owner never existed.
In case of puting his dick in you, or eating your cheese, those options, wouldn't exist without you, so it should be allow to forbid them. It's the same about sleeping in your house. But in case of crossing your land, or sleeping on it, if you never existed, the land would have existed anyway, but not what you cultivate on it. So maybe forbiding it is an infrigment on natural rights, but forbiding to eat what you cultivate on it is should be ok. If I start to squat you land, and cultivate it, I will cause a change to your property, so you can forbid it to me. (like you can forbid motor vehicle in your forest.
Of course, this rule doesn't work absolutely (I haven't found it yet), but I clearly puts Mule on one side of the line, and Bundy on the other one.

To me, property rights are what a society allow owners to deprive others from their property.

[jacob]

It's not illegal to be a nomad. It is illegal to use someone's property against their wishes.

Only in some countries. In many other countries the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam [on private land] in certain forms (usually no vehicles allowed) is constitutionally guaranteed if not an ancient cultural norm.

[Riggerjack]

Yes, yes. And in Mexico, the beaches are all public land, etc. The point stands that using something, anything, that someone else claims is going to cause friction. Whether they are right to claim or otherwise, the conflicting claims (party A's right to exclude, party B's right to intrude) still means choosing to live in conflict with the people one meets.

The blotter is just his record of how this works in real life.

[Riggerjack]

And this, I think has a lot to do with the urban/rural divide than first principals of rights.

City folks see small, private properties, and big open public spaces. Nearly every bit of land is being used for something obvious, and if it isn't, it's because nobody cares. And because nobody cares, walking along the creek between developments is just fine. Nobody cares.

Contrast this with rural land use. Farming, mining, forestry. If you see people who don't belong, on your land, there is a problem. Maybe they are only curious what's up that driveway. Maybe they are littering, maybe, they are "shopping".

Whatever they are doing, it's not helping, and definitely could be hurting. And while this 10 acres or 10k acres is not being used in an obvious way. That doesn't make one's presence less invasive. It doesn't mean that your presence is without negative consequences for the landowners.

I have a bit of woods. And I fill a trash bag each year from litterbugs along my property line, but just as irritating, I have to pull "campsites" apart where someone will bed down for the night, then take off leaving beer cans and Fritos bags. Deer don't do that, abusive, self centered shitheads do that. If one uses the land in a way that is very similar to the people I clean up after, one should expect a similar welcome.

Now I'm not saying he is littering, or that he is causing damage. I am saying to a casual observer, he looks very similar. And that this is his choice. Thus the results of that choice are predictable.

City folks are getting more common. Even as population gains slow, urbanification is quickly growing. I recently read that we are gaining a new NYC's worth of urban growth (13million) per week. So perhaps we will see the urban usage become law. Maybe we won't be able to exclude people from our lands that are not residential. But that rule change comes with costs. Costs borne by rural landowners, and passed on to urbanites.

But what we don't have, is free passes, where we divide that some people, with special interests, get to do whatever they want, and pass the costs on to the public. Well, we do, but they have to do it in DC.

[Jean]

Well, maybe it works fine in Scandinavia and Switzerland because peoples commitment to not intrude (by littering and so on) is proportional to the absence of right to exclude.
I really don't see it as a rural vs urban divide.

[Riggerjack]

From what I have seen, through Google maps, is that Europe is still full of tiny village, surrounded by farms, with bordering forests where the ground was wrong for farming. So hikers and such are never deep in the woods, and no village is very far from another village. So walking through the greenbelt, on existing paths makes sense.

This guy is going from San Diego to Sacramento and back, each year. California has some of the highest land values in the country. If it can be used, it is being used. If he really wanted to be an independent nomad, move one state east. He and Bundy would probably get along fine. And if they didn't, they wouldn't have to.

Being a nomad through a bunch of settled people? That has never worked any better than it does now. Traditions, laws or fantasies aside, if you want to be nomadic, go where the people are few and far between.

[Jean]

I understand your point. But land value ain't really higher in california than in switzerland. If it was considered normal, it would work well in California too. It's only a cultural matter.

[Riggerjack]

. But land value ain't really higher in california than in switzerland

My point wasn't absolute land value, but relative land value. Western California is the only place on the west coast that approaches European population density and values. But it's all about motor transportation. Everything was built around cars. Walking and biking routes are adapted from this infrastructure, not the other way around as in the old world.

If he wanted to be a nomad, and be free from conficting with literally everyone he encounters, there are places where this can be done. But he chose some of the highest value, densely populated, heavily used land as his stomping grounds. I'm not surprised that some people stomp back.