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Please don’t pay to use a pay toilet

stallman.org

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Re: Please don’t pay to use a pay toilet

#101

Post by fredmorcos »

edanm wrote: post #72
franciscop wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coming from Spain and having lived in Japan, I have come to believe that the US is really far away from what can be considered a civilized society. There's a huge mismatch between the public opinion (best country) and the reality that you can see through smaller things like this. Some of these things are better even in the so-called "third world countries". Note: Spain was named for the smaller things like this ; pub…

And yet huge amounts of the "civilized world" are largely tied to the US. Maybe this is correlated, maybe not, but just scoffing and saying "they're uncivilized" lacks a little nuance.

> And yet huge amounts of the "civilized world" are largely tied to the US.

What? The USA is the least civilized country in the west and many parts of the east.

Re: Please don’t pay to use a pay toilet

#102

Post by hkjgkjy »

I don't understand americans on this point... I thought us Ëürøpæans were supposed to be the socialist ones?

I for one LOVE the City Toilets I find all around in Berlin. Thank you for providing this service, I'm happy to pay for it.

Re: Please don’t pay to use a pay toilet

#103

Post by oelmekki »

gcatalfamo wrote: post #19

I don't want to be "that guy" but, here in Italy, I have heard of several accounts of Stallmans visiting local Linux User Groups (full of his "fans"), and he would have them pay for his dinner or he wouldn't go. Although I understand his point: - I find pay toilets cleaner and I am not sure it is worth delving into changing the national policy of better maintained free clean toilets with all the problem we want to se…

> he would have them pay for his dinner or he wouldn't go

I assume this means he was not paid for his intervention otherwise? That sounds perfectly reasonable to me. In my city, there is a big punk squat/concert room which does not pay bands for playing, but they provide them with shelter and food. That's like, the minimum when you ask someone to come.

Also, I wouldn't see myself inviting friends to my place and ask them to pay for their food.

Re: Please don’t pay to use a pay toilet

#104

Post by Pica_soO »

adwn wrote: post #38
sambeau wrote: post #8

I'm not sure if this was put here to ridicule Stallman or as a coda to his comments about Skype but this is a simple well-explained argument that I happen to agree with. If local government can't use local taxes to provide shared toilet facilities to stop us all having to defecate in the streets then what are they (and taxes) for? Community toilets (and streets clear of shit & piss) are, in my opinion, a fundamental…

> If local government can't use local taxes to provide shared toilet facilities to stop us all having to defecate in the streets then what are they (and taxes) for? If local government can't use local taxes to provide free food to everyone to stop us all having to starve in the streets then what are they (and taxes) for? Is access to toilets a more fundamental human right than access to food? Edit: Stallman explicitl…

>Of course I'm not arguing against feeding the needy, or against social nets in general.

Of course you do. You just concat a nice relativizing clause to the end, to not feel like a monster.

Sorry, but in a world where people are starving, because the likes of you want to shirk responsibilities, noone could ever be not on guard. What a nightmare.

To constantly have to live with your back to the wall. And the irony, is that after you paid for the gated community guard, for the area to be exclusive, for the medicine and for the weapons- you paid more then European taxes for a "welfare" state - and got less.

Re: Please don’t pay to use a pay toilet

#105

Post by dingo_bat »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #46
dingo_bat wrote: post #14

> Pay toilets are nasty, and ought to be illegal. Those of us who are not poor can afford the price, if we accept the practice; poor people can't. Can't this be applied to basically anything? Food, water, electricity, pubic transport. Let's refuse to pay for all of these otherwise the poor can't afford it. Is this a parody webpage?

You don't think society has a duty to feed people who would otherwise starve to death? Who do you think should pay to clean up the rotting corpse they leave behind?

Why would you pay for other people's food? Are you kidding? Cleaning up a corpse is much cheaper than feeding a poor person her whole life.

Re: Please don’t pay to use a pay toilet

#106

Post by kodfodrasz »

Normal_gaussian wrote: post #68
kodfodrasz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also in Hungary. Free toilets are not common, only in government buildings, like schools, museums, government agency offices. Usually paid toilets are cheap (.5-1 €) and clean. Free toilets are not always so clean.

Cheap? 0,5 Euro is not cheap.

I'm not sure where do you live. It is cheap even by Hungarian standards, where average wages are around 800 euros.

You must see that public toilets are seldom used by the individual, usually one can serve such needs at home, at school, at work or at a restaurant, where it is usually free (for guests at restaurants). When one is in the (usually unexpected) need, then prefers cleanliness to freeness.

Re: Please don’t pay to use a pay toilet

#107

Post by diryawish »

Sir_Substance wrote: post #83
adwn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If local government can't use local taxes to provide shared toilet facilities to stop us all having to defecate in the streets then what are they (and taxes) for? If local government can't use local taxes to provide free food to everyone to stop us all having to starve in the streets then what are they (and taxes) for? Is access to toilets a more fundamental human right than access to food? Edit: Stallman explicitl…

>Stallman explicitly demands that public toilets should be free to everyone, independent of their financial situation. Using his logic, we should boycot food until food is available to everyone free of charge. Of course I'm not arguing against feeding the needy, or against social nets in general. I actually don't see how you could unironically argue against providing essential foods (think bread, beans and chicken/fi…

How do you know sanitation's affordable? How much do you have to pay workers to clean those public toilets?(anecdotally, these toilets have always been dirtier than the private ones I've used) Will those cleaners be unionized or require full-time benefits? How do you analyze toilet usage and concentrate cleaning resources on those toilets which are used more? How much funding do you dedicate to these analysts? How do you budget for future expenditures? Can you tell me how it is more efficient do this with a bureaucracy rather than a paid system?

As for the public health interest - how many homeless/low income/cheap people will be forced to shit in the streets as a result of pay toilets? Will it realistically lead to cholera?

It's completely reasonable to use pay toilets in some locales and public toilets in others. Believing in a definitive answer without analysis is not going to lead to good policy.

Re: Please don’t pay to use a pay toilet

#108

Post by kodfodrasz »

Normal_gaussian wrote: post #76
kodfodrasz wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically this was the mechanism the USA won the cold war against the USSR. Now almost all former socialist states are capitalist, because they went bankrupt.

That makes no sense. You are saying that the USSR went bankrupt because people were trying to use things in it for free? Surely it has a lot more to do with the political oppression and top down control of the economy.

People in this topic are arguing for free toilets paid by the government. Now what is that if not a top down control of economy?

Re: Please don’t pay to use a pay toilet

#109

Post by ansible »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #78
schlowmo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "[...] whose duty is it to volunteer to clean it up?" While this isn't applicable in all areas, a rule of thumb could be "those who making money with the people which have to use toilets". Anecdotal example: I'm living in an amusement district of a big German City. There are very few public toilets and most of the few are paid ones. So every weekend the whole district is smelling like a big bowl of piss, except in…

Or better yet, why not enact laws that say bars, clubs, gas stations, liquor stores, restaurants and cafés have to have free toilets? Give them some compensation, e.g. government pays for putting in or upgrading the bathroom and the restaurant just has to keep it clean and open. It solves most of the problems with public toilets out on the street, such as them being nasty and occupied by homeless people, because the…

Exactly that is being tried... somewhere in Europe right now. Saw the story on HN last year, and it seemed be cost effective.

Re: Please don’t pay to use a pay toilet

#110

Post by Wildgoose »

dom0 wrote: post #69
informatimago wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hence BREXIT, and why all EU countries should consider exiting from the EU!

Do you know what Article 18 of TFEU says? > Within the scope of application of the Treaties, and without prejudice to any special provisions contained therein, any discrimination on grounds of nationality shall be prohibited. > The European Parliament and the Council, acting in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure, may adopt rules designed to prohibit such discrimination. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-…

Except that "any discrimination on grounds of nationality" is clearly NOT prohibited, the obvious example being Scottish University Tuition Fees.

These are free for Scots, free for other residents of the EU, reduced rate (not Free) for Welsh and Northern Irish, and a special higher rate is applied solely to students from England, i.e. those with English nationality.

What was that about discrimination on grounds of nationality again?

Strictly, yes, I know, it's discrimination on nation of residence rather than individual nationality. Nice trick. Guess where the English tend to be resident? Yup. England.

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