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

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

#761

Post by kelseyfrog » Fri, Oct 21, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #756

kelseyfrog wrote: post #753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree. I'm asking for a response in the form of "Global center for issue X is..." Instead I've received a "Part A is left of center, Party B is right of center." So no, I don't think I've been given what I asked for.

That is what I gave you. The “global center” on social issues is that the public, through the government, has the prerogative to regulate personal and social morality. They have the power to regulate abortion, who can get married, what kind of birth control is available, etc., based on social consensus. Even countries that choose to allow certain things, typically do so as an exercise of that prerogative, not as a ma…

I can't help but feel I'm getting XY Problem-ed here. Thanks for trying, but I'm apparently not capable of communicating clearly enough to get what I'm asking for.

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

#762

Post by anon291 » Fri, Oct 21, 2022, 4:41 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #654

anon291 wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Texas and Idaho have much more housing and build much more, for better or worse. And are much cheaper.

Most Texas and Idaho cities also have a lot more physical space to work with than SF does. (Hell, most cities, period, do.)

Absolutely... There's no denying that SF is going to be more expensive based on natural barriers. However, this same sort of dynamic plays out in many more cities than SF

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

#763

Post by rayiner » Fri, Oct 21, 2022, 4:42 PM UTC

Der_Einzige wrote: post #754

rayiner wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nationalization of politics is a huge problem in blue states and cities—it totally eviscerates accountability. Pointing to republicans in Texas becomes a get out of jail free card to explain why a toilet costs $1.7 million in San Francisco. It’s particularly a problem with the bread and butter of state and local governance: education and policing. Why are cops in Minneapolis—a city that has two greens on the city…

Trying to imply that Greens on the city council can stop police from murdering their own constituents is also silly. They don't hire the cops, and meaningful reform of PD department's ends up being the voters job since it's usually ballot measures. Consider that in places like Portland where city government and local people are openly hostile to the cops, the cops are simply quiet quitting. Despite having the budget…

The Minneapolis City Council can vote for bonuses for MPD: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2022/10/03/members-of-mpls-cit.... Don’t act like they can’t exercise other oversight.

The point is that a democrat signed Derek Chauvin’s checks. A democrat has authority over the department’s training and disciplinary policies. Insofar as police unions stand in the way of reform, democrats are responsible for that too.

Those democrats obviously want to shift focus to Trump voters in Kansas with “Blue Lives Matter” lawn signs. But those Trump voters are just heckling from the sidelines. They’re not the ones with actual authority over how Minneapolis runs its police department.

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

#764

Post by roflyear » Fri, Oct 21, 2022, 5:17 PM UTC

dustymcp wrote: post #759

roflyear wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least democrats do not want to take away women's and gay rights.

I doubt all republicns want that either, the problem is that 2 party system makes it all the same which is insane.

Not even the majority want same-sex marriage to be illegal, but only 55% of Republicans support same-sex marriage. That's a low number. 60% of republicans want abortion to be illegal.

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

#765

Post by thescriptkiddie » Fri, Oct 21, 2022, 5:24 PM UTC

nemo44x wrote: post #107

“the committee evaluates each project’s design, scale and massing for accessibility, safety and aesthetic merit.” The review process “ensures that each project’s design is appropriate to its context in the urban environment, and that structures of the highest design quality reflect their civic stature.” This is a perfect example of why you codify requirements and any review for permitting is as objective as possible.…

Politicians will happily spend $1 million on consultants and studies to figure out how they should spend $100k on actual infrastructure. It's like it's been decided that money isn't wasted until you spend it on something physical, and they are paralyzed by fear of building a "boondoggle". But paralysis costs money too, in some cases more money than building the wrong thing.

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

#766

Post by nemo44x » Fri, Oct 21, 2022, 5:48 PM UTC

Der_Einzige wrote: post #757

haberman wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just spent a few days in Birmingham, Alabama. The downtown streets were so clean you could eat off of them. It is really hard to come back to Seattle and see all of the trash everywhere. In the Seattle airport one of the bathroom stalls looked like someone had used the floor as a trash can. There were orange peels, discarded shoes, and various other trash sitting on the floor next to the toilet. Social problems exi…

Birmingham has all of its black people locked up with some of the highest incarceration rates in America. They'd just arrest your ass and throw the book at you if you camped in the streets. This is your alternative.

Prisons are just used for too much. I wonder if there’s a coincidence in incarceration rates increasing as we phased out mental asylums. Asylums had some issues but maybe there’s a middle ground between lobotomy and todays situation of treating so much as criminal.

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

#767

Post by programmer_dude » Fri, Oct 21, 2022, 6:06 PM UTC

david_allison wrote: post #747

programmer_dude wrote: post #734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An expense of $60,000 could be written as $60M This is unfortunate. $60,000 is $60K (capital K not k) using SI suffixes. Please reject M=1000 today.

> Please reject M=1000 today. This is infeasible, and what does it mean to reject something in a written document? I don't understand what you're trying to accomplish here: you're arguing against an established convention in a sector of the market which you don't have experience with. The upside if you're successful is that I don't need to type an additional 'M'. The downside is that it requires enforcing a blanket s…

Help the convergence along by objecting to the use of M=1000 wherever you see it. We already have an unambiguous standard (it is the SI system of units and suffixes if you are unsure). People should be using it.

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

#768

Post by ROTMetro » Fri, Oct 21, 2022, 6:08 PM UTC

Redoubts wrote: post #725

1024core wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and part of the reason the costs are so high is because PG&E is holding the city hostage. One thing you'll see when you live in SF long enough (20+ years here) is that they'll come up with all sorts of crazy excuses to justify bad behavior. Blaming PG&E for the $1.7M cost is bullshit.

It's why I left. You can't even fix this.

I fled too. I miss so many aspects of the area, but the politics got so toxic when the libertarian hippies (let's all just get along) were replaced by authoritarian progressives (our way is the only truly good opinion, therefor the only opinion allowed, agree or be evil) and you could no longer have any policy discussions about anything.

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

#769

Post by ROTMetro » Fri, Oct 21, 2022, 6:30 PM UTC

hcurtiss wrote: post #658

galdosdi wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The destitute are merely more visible in "big dense blue cities" but statistically there are more of them in rural red places like Mississippi and Oklahoma. After all, in OK or MS you need a car, which is a $2000+ asset, just to even access any public space or resource or make yourself visible at all. There's much more poverty in those places, but it is hidden away. You can see a slight bit of it at gas stations that…

Somehow those poor in rural areas find places to live other than tents, tarps, and heaps of garbage. That leads to me to believe your facts are wrong or somehow misconstrued.

No. I moved from the Bay Area to a rural area, we have an entire tent city out in the countryside too. It's just way less visible and people are more understanding of it as the average citizen lives pretty close to that level. Lots of people pay a couple hundred dollars a year to park a 40+ year old camper/trailer on someone's land and can only afford to eat meat that they hunted for. People are SUFFERING and our politicians are fighting over if transgenders should be allowed to exist (yes, yes, human beings should be allowed to exist, now, about the crushing poverty leading people to hopelessness and escape into fentanyl in our district mister conservative family values politician, how about read address REAL social issues?).

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

#770

Post by haberman » Fri, Oct 21, 2022, 7:11 PM UTC

Der_Einzige wrote: post #757

haberman wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just spent a few days in Birmingham, Alabama. The downtown streets were so clean you could eat off of them. It is really hard to come back to Seattle and see all of the trash everywhere. In the Seattle airport one of the bathroom stalls looked like someone had used the floor as a trash can. There were orange peels, discarded shoes, and various other trash sitting on the floor next to the toilet. Social problems exi…

Birmingham has all of its black people locked up with some of the highest incarceration rates in America. They'd just arrest your ass and throw the book at you if you camped in the streets. This is your alternative.

Offer people food and shelter. Hopefully they will take it. If they decline because they like the streets better, there has to be some recourse. We can't cede the health and safety of public spaces because we are too afraid of having to ever tell a person "no." It's not compassionate to let people live in dangerous and unregulated encampments.