San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet • Hacker News Board

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#521

Post by xenadu02 » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:55 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #427

screye wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sound like something I’d see back home in India I have started appreciating bribery and corruption as a necessary lubrication for any excessively bureaucratic system to work. Trying to go through all of the legal rigamarole of the Indian regulatory process would mean nothing ever gets done.

> I have started appreciating bribery and corruption as a necessary lubrication for any excessively bureaucratic system to work. I feel similarly, when it comes to pork. We tried to eliminate that from congress, calling it wasteful and corrupting. And perhaps at some level that is accurate. But when we took it away, now all we have is naked ideology. It's not clear to me that this is an improvement, in fact I think i…

The so-called "pork" definitely gave everyone an incentive to compromise to a far greater degree.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#522

Post by hot_gril » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:56 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #512

ActorNightly wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

That's absurd. NIMBY is absolutely, 100% independent of political ideology.

IMO so are the two major political parties. Self-interest takes priority. Not 100% but like 75%.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#523

Post by baby » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:56 PM UTC

anon291 wrote: post #303

s0rce wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved from Canada to what I thought was progressive SF bay area, not so much, very conservative on many issues.

The bay area is 'conservative' on issues that actual American conservatives are not very conservative on. For example, bay area people seem to hate building housing, whereas most red states are building like crazy.

what about NYC?

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#524

Post by bombcar » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:57 PM UTC

hedora wrote: post #471

jesuscript wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source, my dear friend. The world is just too weird for me delineate between real and unreal at this point.

Tangentially related, Folsom, CA still knows how to build stuff in a hurry: https://www.theonion.com/preemptive-memorial-honors-future-v... Separately, they completed the spillway upgrades about 10 years after that video was produced, so 1 for 2?: https://ascecapitalbranch.org/geotechnical-aspects-of-the-fo...

California can move mountains when they really need to - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekUROM87vTA covers the Oroville dam disaster and recovery (the disaster was averted, and the recovery was fast).

In things that are NOT obviously life and death is where it gets bogged down by people "trying to help".

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#525

Post by rootusrootus » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:57 PM UTC

vanillax wrote: post #47

I would never step foot into a public SF toliet. Last time I went in there the homeless shit all over the floor and toliet and walls. I went in and nearly threw up. A homeless person pointed and laughed at me. Fuck that.

At the last office I worked at, there was someone who did that to our bathroom. Not a homeless person, either, but one of the employees. They never figured out who.

In a public bathroom, I wonder how much of that happens because of mental issues, and how much is a byproduct of the bathroom not getting cleaned often enough.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#526

Post by carapace » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:57 PM UTC

ChrisBland wrote: post #64

If you think about some of the really interesting architecture of San Francisco, do you think they could be built now? Imagine trying to get the golden gate bridge built today. At some point you have to accept that not everyone is going to like every aspect of your plan and tell them to go pound sound or nothing will ever get done.

We just built a new bridge.

> The eastern span replacement of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge was a construction project to replace a seismically unsound portion of the Bay Bridge with a new self-anchored suspension bridge (SAS) and a pair of viaducts. The bridge is in the U.S. state of California and crosses the San Francisco Bay between Yerba Buena Island and Oakland. The span replacement took place between 2002 and 2013, and is the most expensive public works project in California history,[5] with a final price tag of $6.5 billion, a 2,500% cost overrun from the original estimate of $250 million.

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

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#527

Post by baby » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:58 PM UTC

I'd really like to read an anonymous report from someone working in the government and who understands why the city is such a mess. Like, I read so many theories, but they mostly seem to be written by people with an agenda or who have no clue.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#528

Post by bombcar » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:59 PM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #481

ZoomerCretin wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If food became twice as cheap, would you consume twice as many calories? Induced demand is easily applied to traffic because people shift consumption from X to X+Y% miles when trip times are reduced. Housing demand is finite. There is no +Y% additional housing that is being consumed when it is free, because it's only available to people who have none. Google's software engineers aren't going to be using free housing…

> it's only available to people who have none. It's only available to people who have none across the entire country , plus it lowers the cost at the margin to becoming homeless (albeit only slightly). > Housing demand is finite. So is traffic demand. Demand being finite does not mean that induced demand no longer exists as phenomenon.

Induced demand is just another way of saying the supply is too low - and increasing the supply doesn't "increase the demand" it just reveals demand that was already there (and being unfulfilled).

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#529

Post by rootusrootus » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:59 PM UTC

dahfizz wrote: post #138

insanitybit wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public toilets aren't really for you, they're for the people who have nowhere else.

Then they should rebrand from public toilets. Maybe a sign that says "poopy poopy homeless toilet" would clear up the confusion.

At that point we should just give up and make a pit latrine and ask the homeless to defecate openly into that.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#530

Post by rhino369 » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:59 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #512

ActorNightly wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

That's absurd. NIMBY is absolutely, 100% independent of political ideology.

I agree. Free market conservatives will suddenly love zoning if it keeps a factory out of their neighborhood.