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I'm a fan of a minor celebrity from Vancouver, a Twitch streamer Northernlion (NL). He goes on "arcs" and in a recent one he can't get a slide fixed in his neighbourhood. Long story short, he is fond of his memories as a kid, how he played on a playground with his friends. They had a slide and how much fun was had with that slide. Now, he also wants his daughter to have memories like this, but alas, the slide has been broken since 2019 (more? less? I refuse to rewatch the video). He calls up a local low-level bureaucrat to offer a solution: he can pay for the repairs.
A low-level bureaucrat gives him a run-around for weeks and after he alludes to being somewhat popular, the bureaucrat goes, "🤑🤑🤑" (NL is at the very least upper-upper-middle class, but he is no Mr. Beast), the fateful call is scheduled. The call goes roughly like this: if we accepted donations like the one you suggest, there would be an imbalance between neighbourhoods. Richer neighbourhoods would have better amenities and poorer neighbourhoods would remain slideless. But you can pay to install a bench with your name somewhere in who-the-fuck-knows-where. We'll take your money, but you can't tell us what to do with it.
NL then laments: the kid is already four, her "going down the slide" days are almost over as it is (unless she's going to smoke and drink there with friends when she's twelve. Although a broken slide would be suitable for that as is), so this whole slide thing is kinda urgent.
One chatter suggests that maybe one could FIX THE SLIDE, and I am elated, but a parry comes swiftly (don't we all have this second nature in common?): "I would be taking on the liability if someone hurts themselves". Suggestions in YouTube comment section involved calling up an elected official (a higher level bureaucrat).
As of today, I strongly suspect that the slide isn't fixed.
Remember those commercials, where it's a bright morning, a single house in the middle of a green field, mountains in background, dewdrops serenely resting on blades of grass and a beautiful girl swings a window open to let a fresh breeze into the domicile and the curtains soar like sails, everything's sparkling clean, then she presents you some cleaning product? Well, I can't remember such a commercial, but I can imagine it so vividly it feels real to me.
I can't be that girl for two reasons: firstly, I'm not a girl, secondly, my window can't open more than... care to take a guess? It's 10 cm/4 in. I can't open a window in my rental apartment because there's a window opening control device (WOCD) installed on it that prevents me from opening it wide open.
All new buildings in British Columbia are mandated to have those devices installed when the window is 90 cm/3 ft from the ground. When I learned about this, I started to suspect that there's a fenestration industry conspiracy: there's no reason that I can fathom other than profit, why those devices would be mandated. Did a shadow fenestrator cabal collude with the governments of Canada, the UK, Australia, Boston, NYC to implement such rules? Did they push the newfangled window devices in every single new build? Which led me to my current predicament?
It's much simpler, much more prosaic. I haven't seen any evidence of conspiracy (not ruling out anything, anonymous fenestrator tips are welcome): some kids fell out of the windows and thus, a new safety rule was born, added to the BC Building code at paragraph 9.8.8.1 "Required Guards". Its brilliant Sentence 4, reproduced here in full:
Isn't this wonderful? Now our kids are more safe! You can sleep tight: your toddler will not fall out of the window. By the way, how many kids did fall out? Oh, in the UK it's 2 per year.... Tragic? Yes. But...
I'm from Russia and in line with our, as the saying goes (I consider it a lie) "broad Russian soul" they also install windows that swing open broadly, all the way inside. Khruschevkas have them, new builds have them. So in Russia, I could be that cleaning product girl in almost any damn building, or at least I'm half way there - just need a way to become a girl. I could swing a window open and let a warm summer morning wash all over me.
Back in the day, I've seen news about people, sometimes even children falling out of windows, but somehow Russians (and most of the world) decided that the issue was related to parental negligence or indifference, rather than the design of the windows.
"Well, if you are so confident you are safe, take the WOCD off". Yup. Here's my thought process: I can't take them off because I would be accepting responsibility for anyone who falls out. I'd be liable in case something happens. Even to my own child perhaps. I wouldn't want her to fall out of the window, or any of her friends. Or my adult friends. And, anyway, let's say I take them off. Strata would instantly notice my tiny North American windows (there's not much to swing open anyway) swung open all the way. Like - it would be noticeable from the street, akin to a chad-virgin meme:
I don't really want to antagonize my strata's busybodies who will send a stupid email to my landlord, who will in turn forward it to me:
Ugh... Feels like I'm rubbing salt into my imaginary wound in my pride.
I said to my wife "I'm taking off the safety restrictors" and she had the exact same reaction:
What the hell is going on?
Let's quickly acknowledge something: both mine and NL's problems can be solved without anyone's involvement at all:
Neither of us have an insurmountable problem on our hands, I'd argue that the problems are pretty trivial and nobody cares if we make our lives a bit more comfortable, even if we circumvent all of the bureaucracy but the first thing both of us thought about was: there's a process, there are rules, there's a big brother who watches the safety in our society and it is paramount everybody's safe and I don't want to be liable for anything that happens. Ever.
This thought process that both of us went through is a far more interesting phenomenon to me than a default libertarian argument of "government should get its hands away from my business". It should, but if it does, there's no guarantee anything changes in our heads.
We teach kids to think like this: here The Last Psychiatrist describes how we deal with bullies at schools nowadays. In essence, in the name of safety, we inadvertently brainwash away all of the righteous, moral, community-oriented instincts before they can flourish. He vividly paints how a girl is instructed to stay away from a bully instead of standing up for your peers: do not speak up, stay in your lane so you don't get hurt. Someone else will deal with the bully.
Now, in what I described with NL's slide, with my window WOCD devices, we don't need the Watchers present. They're already in the back of my mind, telling me that this is done in the name of safety, that they'll get their way anyway. When the Watchers don't want to or can't do something due to a lack of money or staff, well, in this situation all of the parties are completely impotent. Slides sit there completely unfixed. Windows stay safely restricted by safety restrictors.
"We'll handle it" is everywhere:
the Watchersthe Science.Fundamentally, we have less opportunities to exercise agency anymore and that shapes one's mind in a weird way. It embeds the Watchers in the back of your mind when they are not there physically. I think how we bring up kids is partially at fault, but the bureaucratization of the society is equally damaging. School is Not Enough by Simon Sarris addresses the first part. The whole body of work of TLP addresses the second part. Maybe I'm coming around to some of the Hlynka's arguments.
How do we make kids have more agency?
How do we make adults with more agency?
How do we go back to the society Alexis de Tocquevillle's observed?
I serve on a nonprofit board that does work in a state park, and while I can sympathize with this guy's plight, I understand why the parks people acted the way they did. The explanation they gave him about parks in poorer areas, etc. was bullshit. Not without some truth, but bullshit in the sense that there's more to the story and it was a simple explanation they could give him for why they were saying no. The grain of truth was that if people who live in low income areas (whose parks may be in worse condition) see that a higher-income area is getting new playground equipment, they're going to bitch to the board about it and that's a headache the board doesn't want to have to deal with. But that's not really the reason.
The real reason is that the guy knows that there's no way in hell that this is happening if they say yes and it's easier to just say no and stop it right there than to let this progress any further and waste time and money. The way this guy rambles my thought was that if he came across to the parks guy the way he comes across in the video there's no way he's getting anywhere. I don't know what you mean by him being given the run around for weeks. It's hard to get the timeline down because of the rambling, but it looks like he followed up after not hearing a response for 12 hours, and was then given the option of a phone call or in-person meeting. He then said he declined the meeting because he didn't want to drive to the guy's office, which shows his lack of seriousness right there, and schedules a phone call which he then postpones, possibly because he actually was busy, possibly because he wanted to waste the guy's time, it's hard to tell, and was then disappointed that the guy offered to reschedule it for the following business day.
I honestly don't know what the guy's strategy was, or what he was even looking to do. At one point he seems sure that the guy s going to tell him it's going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to install a $500 slide. No, not quite, but it's clear that this guy is clueless. You can't just buy a slide from Home Depot, sink a few holes in the ground, and call it a day. I mean, you can, but that slide isn't going to last a full season without falling apart. I have catalogs of various park products our private group orders with their own money for public use, and while I don't normally look at the playground equipment, a slide costs $5,000 on the low end for small one for toddlers up to about $15,000 for a fancy deluxe one. A typical basic 8 foot slide would run around $10k. Then there's installation, which is going to involve digging post holes for concrete footings on the supports, which is going to run at least another few thousand. And that's American. Northernlion, of course, has no idea where one even buys this kind of thing, or knows whether these supply houses even deal with the general public or if you have to have an account and a sales rep assigned to you, or what kind of contractor you call to even do this work.
He wants to blame all this extra expense on bureaucrats lining their pockets, but prices are what they are, and contractors charge what they charge. What does he expect the parks department to do, install a slide and send him a bill hoping he pays it? Waste time going through the equipment selection and ordering process only for him to back out when he finds out he can't afford it? The reason they asked him if he wanted to buy naming rights or ad space or a brick or whatever was because if this guy actually has enough money to pay for a slide installation then he has enough money to contribute to the capital projects the park has prioritized. If he'd expressed interest in that then they may have taken him more seriously about the slide since he'd obviously have the money, and they aren't going to ask how much he's willing to spend because they don't want the meeting to end with him being humiliated or assuming the high totals are due to corruption.
So they give him an excuse that is partially true. One of the things that any private group needs to take into consideration is that the agency they are dealing with is governed by a long-term plan. They have a vision of what they want the parks system to look like in five years, or ten years, or whatever, have an idea of how the vision is going to be funded, and how they're going to implement things. This is a process that the public is invited to collaborate in, but few do. The people who do collaborate are more influential than people like this guy will give them credit for; public comments are taken seriously. Just because you offer to pay for something doesn't mean they're going to let you do what you want. They may be willing to deviate from the plan, but it's not like any Tom, Dick and Harry can just submit proposals and get the green light.
I've spent the last decade trying to get trail built. The park has about 80 miles of existing trail, most of it built in the 1960s on old logging roads. These are in rough shape and vary between swampy and eroded due to poor design. They require a lot of maintenance just to stay passable, and many are beyond repair. The biggest hurdle we had with any proposals that we would build and pay for ourselves were along the lines of "We already have 80 mile of trail we can't maintain, so you have to show us that you have the manpower to take up some of that burden before you can add mileage." This is the kind of goodwill that takes years to establish. They don't want a group that comes in with enthusiasm and builds ten miles of trail, only to have that enthusiasm fade over time and end up with overgrown, unmaintained trail. It's happened in other places. If you want to be taken seriously you have to do it as part of an organized group that demonstrates that it deserves to be taken seriously. This isn't beyond the capability of anyone who is willing to put in the time. But too many people aren't, and bureaucrats are wary of people with ideas that they can't commit to. Saying "If you want to help here are some projects you can donate money to" is easy because he can donate to his ability or desire, and it doesn't require any follow up. Building a playground feature immediately puts him on the hook for more than he likely realizes, and commits him to possible future obligations (Is the park going to be expected to maintain this equipment, or does he have money for that too? Will they be able to send him a bill for repairs? Is he willing to donate to a capital fund? Will he get fixed if it breaks a few months after opening and the park doesn't have money allocated to fix it?)
As for the window thing, the code only requires those guards to be placed on windows that are below 2 feet above the floor and 6 feet above ground; i.e. it doesn't apply to most windows people have in their homes., i.e. it only applies to the kinds of windows a toddler would be liable to crawl out of without the assistance of a chair or something. If your windows do not fit this description than it's on the landlord, not the municipal government. I'm not sure where you're getting the 90 cm from.
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