Pay toilets and NYT: a free market microcosm • Hacker News Board

Re: Pay toilets and NYT: a free market microcosm

#81

Post by airhead969 » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 5:27 AM UTC

cwwc wrote: post #11

whatastory wrote: post #9

I don't want to seem too accusatory, but this just felt like an angry rant without much research. I've been to a few places on this earth, and while I know there are some Europeans who'll proudly talk about how paying for toilets helps keep them clean, I haven't noticed them being any better than gas station bathrooms in the US. Some are okay, some are total disaster sites. The only difference is someone or a machine…

Yes, the toilets in Taiwan are great —- and free. They have masses of public toilets in park, along with cleaning attendants. But here is the rub —- in the US, they would be overrun with homeless (I’m not saying this is bad; just that it would be the reality) while in TW the people who are attending to them would likely be homeless were they in the US. Is part of this cultural? Yep, probably. Is part of it structural…

America has extreme homelessness not as a cause of problems but as a symptom of neglect, exploitation, and a widespread lack of concern for fellow human beings. Fix homelessness and there will be fewer encampments and less nasty situations involving public and private infrastructure. It's cheaper to solve it at the core (housing) than prolong it and treat just some of the symptoms by throwing heaps of money at pernicious fallout areas like emergency rooms.

Re: Pay toilets and NYT: a free market microcosm

#82

Post by ggm » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 5:29 AM UTC

jdminhbg wrote: post #48

ggm wrote: post #2

I live in an economy with ubiquitous free toilets and they do not all descend to the unbearable. Socialised maintenance of the commons takes many forms. Only a reductionist believes the absence of paid toilets reduces toilets to the unspeakably bad. I concede the best toilets are free, but gatekept by transactional relationships of higher worth. The razors I steal from Singapore Airlines majestic marble temples in ch…

> I concede the best toilets are free, but gatekept by transactional relationships of higher worth. That's not free in any useful sense of the word. A 5 star hotel doesn't charge extra to use the very nice toilet in your room, but it's not free.

Absolutely not, but in like sense, nothing is free. The dirty public toilets are free because of an externality: your gastro-enteritis costs you time and money, but the toilet owner doesn't care. Or, if its New Zealand, the bag of poo you tossed out the window of the car, is somebody else's problem. (I mention this, because lack of public toilets near hiking grounds, and a larger than normal population of backpackers in vans, living the good life, has lead to a surge of people flinging poo-bags into the wilds. People never cease to amaze me: come to the shire, visit the lord of the rings, see the mighty mountains, fling a bag of poo at it)

The free public toilet in New zealand Designed by Hundertwasser is perhaps my favourite example of what you can get, if you stop obsessing about cost.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundertwasser_Toilets

Singapore Airlines never said "we have the best toilets with amazing schmick razors to take as schwag" -it wasn't on the brochure when I got gold class. No, its not free. Overall none of the airport toilets are free, its assumed you bought rights to be inside the airport secured zone.

But the basic toilets in Changi, are streets ahead of many other economies, and are not unusual: Public amenity in Singapore is really clean, and really well maintained.

Only a reductionist would argue New Yorks toilet problem stems from a lack of paid toilets.

Re: Pay toilets and NYT: a free market microcosm

#83

Post by airhead969 » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 5:30 AM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #31

alisonkisk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are those roles in in TW? McD employees, for all their troubles, are well above "pooping in the park" in economic comfort.

The lowest rung there are the recyclers. They pick up recyclable trash (kind of like the trash bin ladies do in SF but unlike SF don't leave a strewn mess). They rummage through dumpsters looking for recyclable items, take them to places which can recycle them for pennies, but it's enough to survive. It's kind of like if you had people redeeming bottles and cans and lived in section-8 housing. But these people are go…

There are recyclable miners in the US anywhere container redemption value is charged and reclaimable.

The rich in the US don't have any shame paying little if any taxes, buying tax loopholes, and corrupting government to get more socialism for themselves and removing it and economic fairness from everyone else.

Re: Pay toilets and NYT: a free market microcosm

#84

Post by nradov » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 5:32 AM UTC

solatic wrote: post #66

> The problems of public infrastructure are not money. The problems of American public infrastructure are exactly money, which is to say, the differences in funding capital projects versus funding maintenance. Forget public toilets for a second - one of the reasons why America's roads and bridges are falling apart is because they were built with Federal dollars, but no Federal provision was made for their maintenance…

Do you have any actual data to show that our roads and bridges are falling apart? Where I live the potholes get filled and none of our bridges have collapsed.

Re: Pay toilets and NYT: a free market microcosm

#85

Post by willdearden » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 5:33 AM UTC

SamBam wrote: post #20

> One of the top 10 principles of economics is, don't silence prices in order to transfer incomes. My Google-fu can't find this dictum anywhere. Is it usually said in some other form?

Probably comes from the first and second theorems of welfare economics:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorems_of_welfar...

Re: Pay toilets and NYT: a free market microcosm

#86

Post by notsureaboutpg » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 5:35 AM UTC

solatic wrote: post #66

> The problems of public infrastructure are not money. The problems of American public infrastructure are exactly money, which is to say, the differences in funding capital projects versus funding maintenance. Forget public toilets for a second - one of the reasons why America's roads and bridges are falling apart is because they were built with Federal dollars, but no Federal provision was made for their maintenance…

Idk, US tax rate is very high, there's a lot of money. California lost in the tens of billions to unemployment fraud this year (because of pandemic) and its still running a budget surplus this year. There's money, it's just being wasted.

Re: Pay toilets and NYT: a free market microcosm

#87

Post by HKH2 » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 5:37 AM UTC

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #69

The thing that makes me pessimistic about anything free, is seeing chewing gum in the urinals. It’s obvious the gum can’t go down the drain. It’s also obvious that someone will have to take out the urine soaked gum and put it in the garbage. There is a trash can literally 5 feet away. But I still find chewing gum in the urinals. If we as a culture can’t collectively get that right, I have doubts for anything more inv…

If we've moved from talking about cigarette butts to chewing gum then we've made a lot of progress.

Re: Pay toilets and NYT: a free market microcosm

#88

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 5:44 AM UTC

nradov wrote: post #84

solatic wrote: post #66

> The problems of public infrastructure are not money. The problems of American public infrastructure are exactly money, which is to say, the differences in funding capital projects versus funding maintenance. Forget public toilets for a second - one of the reasons why America's roads and bridges are falling apart is because they were built with Federal dollars, but no Federal provision was made for their maintenance…

Do you have any actual data to show that our roads and bridges are falling apart? Where I live the potholes get filled and none of our bridges have collapsed.

https://www.rpc.senate.gov/policy-papers/fixing-americas-bri...

Re: Pay toilets and NYT: a free market microcosm

#89

Post by adrianN » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 5:51 AM UTC

cwwc wrote: post #11

whatastory wrote: post #9

I don't want to seem too accusatory, but this just felt like an angry rant without much research. I've been to a few places on this earth, and while I know there are some Europeans who'll proudly talk about how paying for toilets helps keep them clean, I haven't noticed them being any better than gas station bathrooms in the US. Some are okay, some are total disaster sites. The only difference is someone or a machine…

Yes, the toilets in Taiwan are great —- and free. They have masses of public toilets in park, along with cleaning attendants. But here is the rub —- in the US, they would be overrun with homeless (I’m not saying this is bad; just that it would be the reality) while in TW the people who are attending to them would likely be homeless were they in the US. Is part of this cultural? Yep, probably. Is part of it structural…

I believe public toilets that are "overrun by homeless" would be an improvement over pavements used by homeless because they don't have access to toilets. Perhaps we should add some showers to public toilets as well?

Re: Pay toilets and NYT: a free market microcosm

#90

Post by dheera » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 5:57 AM UTC

whatastory wrote: post #9

I don't want to seem too accusatory, but this just felt like an angry rant without much research. I've been to a few places on this earth, and while I know there are some Europeans who'll proudly talk about how paying for toilets helps keep them clean, I haven't noticed them being any better than gas station bathrooms in the US. Some are okay, some are total disaster sites. The only difference is someone or a machine…

> gas station bathrooms in the US

Gas station bathrooms in the US are also not usually free. As a non-white male I've been told frequently they are for customers only, and have had to on many occasions point to a car actively filling up gas so they can see that I am a customer.

That said, I hate this culture though because when bathrooms aren't free, we end up with shit and urine on the sidewalks. Everyone has to poop and if you don't give them a place to do it that poop is still going to come out anyway.