this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2026
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A Boring Dystopia
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I'm gonna lean on another commenter who made me realise the legitimate reasoning behind something like this (disregarding the fact that two years is absurdly high): If we permit anyone to do whatever "cleaning" they themselves deem reasonable without approval, we risk that unknowledgable people with good intentions cause serious damage. One reason could be that they create an acute flood risk (you're right: garbage shouldn't be flood protection, but the actual flood protection is built around existing circumstances, and if removing the garbage causes a major risk to people losing their homes, the correct approach is to first prepare the flood protection, then remove the garbage). Another is that people can unknowingly or unintentionally destroy habitats or otherwise damage the environment.
The point is: We have some very competent people that are capable of assessing the impact of various cleaning operations. We need to let those people do their job. There can be very complex interactions in play, that turn your good intentions into catastrophic consequences. Therefore, we cannot allow laymen to judge how large cleaning operations should be conducted.
Full disclaimer: While I think the above reasoning is sound, I think we should be very careful regarding how unauthorised cleaning operations are punished. For example, it seems absurd to me to give jail time for it. When the person in question is obviously acting with good intentions, it's much more reasonable to sentence them to take some course where they can learn about why what they were doing was potentially harmful, and perhaps sentence them to community service working on some authorised project. That way, you help them learn, let them work on something they want to contribute to, and get more resources for the authorised projects.
If people were doing this for clout/ad revenue or on a whim without trying to engage with the proper channels first I would agree, but it just isn’t reasonable to tell people to accept living in an environment full of garbage while their local government does nothing about it for literal years. If you walked along a river in your neighborhood with your pets and/or children how long would you accept seeing it choked with trash and sewage? Would you be okay with teaching them, through inaction, that this is fine? I’m not asking for you to answer, I just think all those things deserve as much consideration as ‘could this cause a flood if XYZ happens?’ Because of this has already caused a flood we clearly would have heard about it.
To me, this was a good faith effort made in the absence of any other resources. If this was load bearing garbage (!) then that needs to be communicated in their refusals/delays, along with a specific timeline for addressing it. That’s also assuming they have detected a real risk of significant flooding, which I’m skeptical of.
I feel like the punishment should depend on whether they did it competently or not. You should definitely get punished for screwing up even with good intentions, but if you actually are good enough to know what you're doing, you should get away with a relative slap on the wrist.