[Robotbeat]

That’s kind of subjective, isn’t it? A lot of people don’t feel threatened by businesses but instead feel threatened by a faceless and unapproachable government bureaucracy. See the DMV.

When anti-business or anti-government ideology gives moral license to antisocial behavior, nothing is gonna work out for you.

[Freak_NL]

It depends on how far the relation between citizen and government has deteriorated, and is certainly something to take into account. A practical example is the mayor of Manchester asking people not to apply the same destructive tactic to the new municipal bicycle plan¹. In Manchester the memory of the invasion of Chinese rent-a-bikes is still fresh, so the new plan will have to work at not being unapproachable and providing an asset to the city rather than a service for the few.

And it's not just the potential vandal (or activists) who affect the balance. If someone were to molest one of the unasked for app-hireable mopeds cluttering the sidewalk in my Dutch town, I wouldn't bother reporting it (in fact, I'd probably cheer them on). If someone did this to bicycles for hire part of a municipally managed plan (for which I can hold the council accountable as a voter, and whom I can address with complaints or suggestions for improvement) with fixed parking areas rather than devil-may-care-anywhere-on-the-sidewalk-parking, I would act differently.

1: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/nov/10/andy-burnham...