If you have a shop in a house in Thailand and a crazy person decides he likes the shop and stays in front of it all day yelling, in Thailand, the people in the house call the police, who make the crazy person leave. In the US, every person, crazy or not, has Freedoms and Rights, and the police won't do anything to help the people in the house because it would be wrong according the the US way of thinking to curtail the Rights and Freedoms of the crazy person (who is yelling all day near the shop, which is very near the house).

Consequently, owners of houses in the US try to make it as boring as possible and as useless as possible for any crazy person, homeless person or group of teenagers to hang around near the house. One way they do this is to make sure the house is surrounded only by other houses, trees, parking spaces and roads (and there is not anything as useful or interesting as a shop in easy walking distance).

This is a bit of an exaggeration, but it is directionally accurate.

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davidw 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

No, it's mostly just car-brain where people think that cities should be designed around cars cars and cars, and then if there's room left over, maybe some shops and homes.

So they worry about a neighborhood shop taking up the precious, precious parking spots or causing 'traffic!' even if in reality it reduces it because people have something close by their home they could even walk or bike to.

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hollerith 3 days ago | parent [-]

So the root problem is not the American commitment to rights and freedoms (especially for the disadvantaged) that Americans discuss constantly -- often in heated, emotional or abstract terms and sometimes in frankly ideological terms. According to you the root problem is an irrational and destructive commitment to automobiles, which (at least after the 1960s) Americans talk about much less than they talk about rights and freedoms -- and when they talk about them, they talk mostly in pragmatic terms, e.g., miles per gallon, turning radius, maintenance costs and space for car seats for children.

	▲	davidw 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I live in a city of 100K people, where there really aren't that many visible people with mental health issues or drug problems. I also go to a lot of city council meetings and hearings and observe local social media. It's the cars.

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hsbauauvhabzb 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Do people often yell at stores in commercial settings?