According to the article, petty, small minded busybodies in the neighbourhood(s) concerned have complained about them. What prompts people to make petty, small minded complaints is probably that they're petty, small-minded people. Unfortunately there are many such people. I'm sure that if local councillors / representatives pick up the issue, they'll be able to enact a quick change to local ordinances / by-laws to make these libraries a permitted development.

I know that in Germany these are encouraged by local governments (and contrary to what the article stated are quite common in France and Central Europe for more than 30 years).

They are encouraged in the UK as well, usually in the form of the old red phone boxes or workplace initiatives. I've never understood the appeal, myself. The books are almost always crap, or random middle volumes in a series, and you can buy your own from Amazon for next to nothing.

I prefer to borrow crap books rather than paying for them (but I don't read crap books), so I understand the market. In Zurich you find very good books quite often though. In particular if you enjoy classics.

I love the fucking irony that all you pro-big-government douchebags get so pissed off when....GASP....the big fucking government you love so much starts enforcing the rgulations that....wait for it...are part and parcel of a big fucking government!

OH....big government should take care of ALL our needs, the big-government-sheeple whine....

Well...then quit trying to usurpt big government authority to provide you books. THIS is the price you pay for demanding big government.

Theirony, of course, is that what you love here, that is being quashed, is the very notion of small, free enterprise, free market....you know....the thing all you big-government-loving douchebags say is ruining the world.


I LOVE IT. Suck on it, Libtards.

Yeah, but you can buy the classics new for a quid, and happily read them whilst sat on the toilet secure in the knowledge that ONLY YOU have been reading them whilst sat on the toilet.

Besides, the idea of parting with books is a painful one. I have never sold nor thrown away a book in my life.

Oct -- I can also just go torrent pretty much anything I want in the global "market" place, and read it on my environmentally-friendly ereader. Then I don't need people putting up the eventually-run-down-looking-eyesore "little library" that the local kids vandalize at least once per month.

@ krellin

That is also true. Any kid with aaccess to a phone or computer (which is every kid in the western world) has access to the classics for nothing. I will say though that in my experience the little libraries tend to survive unvandalised in most places. There are unwritten rules that people are highly inclined to stick to.

Octavious - I actually love the idea of the little library. I just also love mocking the hypocrites that don't understand why....well...you get it.

In my neighborhood we pay "association fees" (read neighborhood taxes), which the neighborhood uses to keep common areas clean and maintained, we have a nice children's park with a tennis court and a basketball net, etc. It is intended for the resident of my neighborhood, but it's not fenced off or anything, and I kids come from other neighborhoods all the time.

Next to my neighborhood is an older neighborhood with, generally speaking, a lower economic base, and beyond that is a trailer park.

My house backs up to a nature preserve right next to the park. And every spring/summer, I get to watch kids play in the park...which inevitably means I get to watch kids come in from the next neighborhood over...and the trailer park (I know this because my children ride the bus with these kids, and know who many of them are...) and inevitably, when the sun sets, and the kids are still in the park...I get to wake up the next morning and find out...the tennis net has been vandalized...or the basketball net torn down...or garbage is strewn about...because these kids don't pay for it, and don't give a shit, because nobody ever taught them respect and discipline...

...and that is why it is kind of surprising that something like a Little Library wouldn't become the target of vandalism. But, if not...then bravo. Perhaps there is a certain magic to books? ( I would like to believe that...)

This has nothing to do with big government enforcing big regulations, but more relevant is the idea of small minded individuals taking advantage of well meaning zoning policies as a means of spiting a neighbor's good intentions. Every neighborhood has these busybodies, liberal and conservative, and making the connection between good zoning policies that prevent traffic accidents and encourage pedestrian safety and the spiteful actions of these neighborhood jerks is irresponsible and indicative of the bigger problems in America.

In a nutshell, krellin is what is wrong with this country, not libraries.

ZONING POLICY -- THAT IS GOVERNMENT, duhhhhh.....

Nobody can enforce a zoning policy, small minded or not, if there is not a government to back it up.

And actually, 2WL, if you actually had reading comprehension, you wil see that:
1. I like the idea
2. I like and pay for a community park
3. You are a small-minded jackass who never has actually bothered to understand what I believe or care about, because you are like all the other small-minded sheeple.

The general idea behind the mockery, 2WL, is not so much specific to this instance....it is the general overall concept. THIS is NOT a government library...and it is being removed BECAUSE people are using the rules laid down by their GOVERNMENT.

In a less regulated society, I would be able to put a fucking box in my front yard with book in it without any problem, because it would be MY property, and the governent wouldn't even think about a zoning regulation telling me what I can do on MY property.

So...it IS a big-governemnt issue...because it's really a historically recent idea that the government can dictate to me ON MY OWN PROPERTY. THAT is ia big government idea that has filtered down to small local governments.

THEREFORE...the idea that big-government-style ideologoy (I know better than you puny citizens...) fucking up a nice thing is irony...and it is pleasing to see the big-government douchebags getting pissed about big-government style behavior ruining their fun.

Schadenfreude. I love it.

Ironic that 2WL, swinger of the big ban and silencing hammer, doesn't like the idea that small minded people in a community should enforce a standard.

Oh....the delicious irony.....Fuck off, 2WL...YOU are the problem, fucking hypocrite.

w8 krellin: your neighbourhood levies a tax? I'd be the first to refuse to pay it if I lived there! Taxes are taxes and devolution of some parts of big government to invasive neighbourhood communities doesn't make the government less big.