Yeah that's for the wrong sorts of people. Don't worry, it's only selectively enforced, and the cops know you're one of the good ones. /s

Nintendo: "That'll be $80."

That's not quite true. You can opt for adds instead.

it seems that most Americans spend all of their time between home, work, consumption places, or in a car between those places.

Accurate. Depending on where you live, there may be more third places available, but they're often something you really have to make an effort to find.

So much of that is about public transit.

When everyone travels by car, there's not much space for walking around or standing around. Places where people walk around or stand around become places for buskers, artists, small vendors, etc. That turns that space from just a place you pass by into a destination itself.

The other half of the problem is winter. Most of Europe is fairly warm compared to most of the Americas. It's only really the nordic countries where the daily average high is below freezing. In more than half of the US it's below freezing for months on end. That means that public outdoor spaces are not really all that usable for just hanging out in the winter.

Part of the problem is cultural. Many of the colder places in Europe do outdoor Christmas markets. Those aren't exactly consumption-free places, but you can walk around and browse without paying. The US doesn't even do that, making the cold months a wasteland outdoors.

I don't know if there's anywhere in the world that does extensive consumption-free public spaces for use in winter. But, that's what would really be needed in the northern US and Canada.

A very large number of Americans spend a lot of time watching sporting events. These are ostensibly free (sort of, given that people usually pay for cable or streaming anyway) except that lots of people watch because they're gambling. Gambling is of course also a fee and a monstrous one at that, but it at least has the advantage of not really feeling like a fee.

It's happening. The funding for libraries across the US is getting clawed back, and I suspect many (the majority) will eventually close permanently.

Here in the EU, the vibe in libraries is decidedly "get your books and GTFO". The old timey welcoming vibe and friendly librarians are a thing of the past.

I used to renovate houses for an organization in Atlanta similar to Habitat for Humanity. We would buy derelict houses and renovate them to provide housing for homeless people. Unfortunately these houses always had people squatting in them already, so the first stage of any project was us going in with various threatening hand tools and rousting out the current occupants. We appreciated the irony of this but I doubt they did.

I saw a librarian kick out a homeless guy for sleeping in the library because "we have a rule that you can't be unconscious in the library. It's for your own safety."

WTF? What kind of danger are you in when you're sleeping? What made this even stupider is he didn't need to cite some bullshit rule to kick the guy out, because he was snoring! He could've just said "Your snoring is too loud, and you have to be quiet in the library."

Here in Vancouver, Washington, the city shuts down nearly all public park restrooms and water fountains for 6 months each winter. Ostensibly it is for avoiding freezing water pipes, but I'm fairly sure it's to increase land values of old single family housing that tend to be where parks are located by giving police an excuse to kick out homeless.

Los Angeles got rid of late fees

Yes, if you torture the definition of "free" enough, then nothing is free.

Thanks for the opportunity to point out that most libraries also value community support. They can always use volunteers and donations but a great way to help your library is to look for book sales!

When a library has too many of certain books less popular than expected or books that have gotten a fair amount of use they need to replace them. A community book sale gives you the opportunity to buy books at a huge discount and the library the opportunity to get a little of their investment back to support more current needs.