Ancient problems require ancient solutions.

If locals don't mind then why not?

This is so sad to me, but thankfully, not all of us are like this.

My neighborhood has a small park that features a pear tree and a plethora of frost grapes. My wife and I are of a conservationist bent, so we monitor the plants in the park for any bad news and help keep the trails manicured. I can say that pear tree and grapes are both used wisely and with others in mind, as people from the neighborhood show up to take only what they need. One lady does take a lot, but she makes terrific jams then passes them around.

It's quite a positive culture around this park, and it was in place long before we moved there. It also goes against everything I otherwise tend to experience with my fellow Americans, namely greed and gluttony of consumerism.

Yep, I certainly would prefer food get thrown away then for somebody to drive up to my property, harvest all of the fruit, and then go and sell it to other people.

However, that's less about deserving it, and more about the food being taken for someone's personal profit.

I also think most people would be happy for the food to go to those in need, but then for make reasons we have laws or business policies that forbid it... Starbucks doesn't want to pay 10 million dollars because an employee gave a homeless person food they we're allergic to... We do love lawsuits here..

https://fallingfruit.org/

I'm from Russia.

By the way if you know how plants grow and spread "get eaten by humans and pooped into sewer" is not always the best reproduction strategy and so throwing away is not always a waste.

And judging that some people don't deserve something is not always wrong unless you are philosophical extremist. If you have so many fruit trees around that anyone in need can pick one any time you probably don't live in an area where a map of fruit trees is useful. It's catch-22 isn't it?

Am I misinterpreting your comment, or are you suggesting that GP is being unreasonable for being frustrated with the people they described?

Theres a ton of fig and dates in socal people don’t pick. That being said its hard to pick these trees. They might be located in clumsy areas like by some razor wire in a parking lot. You aren’t sure when its time to harvest unless you know this tree well. Harvesting might not even be practical considering the best fruit is picked not dropped and picked up, and these trees could be huge. Then of course these being unsprayed trees the fruit is going to be full of wasp larvae at least for the figs. Then the rats will eat most of whatever is there thats worth eating anyhow before you realize its there.

Commercially its a different story. Trees are planted and pruned to maintain easy harvesting. They are sprayed and rodents managed, as well as being overall outproduced by the yield on the farm. Fruit trees are a lot of work. Even literal money growing on trees would be work, against what the saying might imply.

Would you prefer fruit that grew near a city road, after many decades of cars passing by that place while burning leaded fuel?

Here in Antwerp there's a long street (the Markgravelei) lined with cornelian cherries (Cornus mas).

I think most people around here don't know that they're edible and anyway that fruit is somewhat of a hassle to pick and prepare, but anyway once they're ripe they fall on the sidewalk and on cars, staining everything red, making the sidewalks slippery and leaving seeds behind. And there's no wild life to speak of, maybe some rats but not many, and birds don't seem to eat the fallen fruit. Wasps do, but it's not a positive point.

There's no soil (except a ~1m² square around each tree) because it's just a street in the city so although I don't find them a bother and I can pick a fruit from time to time while walking, I can well understand why people who live in this street would complain about it.

I can't understand what went through the mind of people who chose to plant these trees here. I think it's almost as bad as if those were mulberry trees (relative to staining power).

But it's just a remark on how fruit trees can be annoying to some people, for my part I used to live in another city where I was able to pick blackberries and raspberries on my way to work or to the supermarket, sometimes pears, and it was great. And in autumn I pick chestnuts here. Not too often because of PFAS pollution.

Probably a situation with stuck up neighbors most of the time. If you’ve heard of the homeowners association problem in the USA, this could be the cause. Having rotting fruit is fine for the soil and everything, but the stick up the butt neighbors or HOA probably would complain or ban the practice. US Americans are pretty separated from nature in their big suburbs.

> Do hotter temperatures or different wildlife make them a bigger problem in the US somehow?

In many places, people worry about bugs and rats eating them, and the ones that don't get eaten start to rot and grow moldy. Generally just things people don't like in a dense city.

Any rotting fruit that falls on the ground will attract many animals and bugs. Lots of flies and wasps, as well as bigger animals like rats or raccoons. Depends on the city for the specific animal, but seems like there are plenty of animals in big cities (at least here in the US) - NYC famously has rats, for example.

Rotting fruit also quickly attract bees and wasps and larger problems like raccoons.

It is more likely to be seen as messy, just aesthetics. Another big reason for chopping down fruit trees in urban areas is they mess up cars that are parked under them.

Might have a lot of worms and be poor eating for the casual picker

> "I presume that Americans always take the poo of their beloved pets from the streets."

They're supposed to by law (and just good old-fashioned manners), and many do clean up after their pets, but anywhere you go there's always gotta be at least one jerkwad that doesn't care one little bit about anything beyond the tip of their own nose.

They do, more than most countries.

that's better if it works better, but often profit is what works better as a motive. ultimately what matters is that the fruit finds its way to hungry mouths—and that those mouths are human mouths and not rat mouths!

systematic harvesting is much better at that; whatever kind of point-scoring exercise people engage in on the way is irrelevant

i don't want the rats in my neighborhood to return those nutrients to the environment, and i don't like tracking composting fruit into my apartment, though i guess if parrots eat the fruits while they're still on the tree that's okay

Actually yes. Ingroup preference is a good thing.

That is incredible difficult and basically boils down to resocialising people in another culture.

In the case of refugees we are facing the additional problem, that some originate from areas that are long time disfunctional, resulting in humans that never before have been socialized in a working society.

I believe that an important factor is to mix newcomers and locals, unfortunately that goes against the desire of both the government and the immigrants. Both want to centralize for efficiency resons.

That’s fair. I don’t want to marginally increase the level of toxicity.