Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Where did all the public bathrooms go?

daily.jstor.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 873 posts

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#361

Post by left-struck »

paulpauper wrote: post #184
psadauskas wrote: post #157

We'll spend a trillion dollars bombing people halfway around the world that never meant us any harm, but paying a custodian to clean a public toilet (and providing help for those that might misuse it) is a bridge too far.

And then we'll brand anyone who dares to go to the bathroom a sex offender or other huge penalties. That is the paradox of a country that is so wealthy yet low trust. Public infrastructure is the first to go unless legally mandated( sufficient public bathrooms does not fall under this apparently).

> And then we'll brand anyone who dares to go to the bathroom a sex offender

>anyone

What? I’ve never heard of this, what part of the world do you live in?

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#362

Post by qurren »

vehemenz wrote: post #326
qurren wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> _really_ depends on where you are That kinda applies to anywhere in the world. On the average, I've seen much cleaner toilets in first-tier China cities than first-tier US cities. And much more accessible as well. Free public toilets literally everywhere. All over the city, in every shopping center, in every coffee shop. And you don't need to buy a coffee and trash it to use them.

Small nitpicky correction, but in China, city tiers are designated by policy and generally correlate to the quality of life for the middle class there. The US doesn't have a tier system. If it did, it wouldn't make much sense because the quality of life in American suburbs and exurbs is generally better than the most developed cities (unless you're rich, of course). Free, clean toilets are everywhere in America, just…

> not in the dense city centers

aka exactly the place people need them regardless of which country

In the boonies it's much more acceptable to go in the bush in either country as well

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#363

Post by thayne »

slg wrote: post #276
throwawayffffas wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it became unfashionable to put mentally ill people in asylums. The additional fashion of "giving local people a voice" in construction projects planning did not help either.

The problem regarding putting mentally ill people in asylums is who gets to decide who is mentally ill? I mean that's literally incarcerating people for thoughtcrime. If people have committed no crime, how can we justify taking away their freedom?

Ideally we would have a way for people who can't take care of themselves, or hold a job to be taken care of that isn't effectively putting them in prison.

Mental "asylums" that were almost as bad (and sometimes worse) than prisons is clearly bad. But just leaving people to live on the streets or end up in actual prisons isn't strictly better.

I'm not saying we should bring back the asylums, at least the way they were, but there should be a better way to take care of people who aren't able to care for themselves.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#364

Post by qurren »

boelboel wrote: post #300
qurren wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> _really_ depends on where you are That kinda applies to anywhere in the world. On the average, I've seen much cleaner toilets in first-tier China cities than first-tier US cities. And much more accessible as well. Free public toilets literally everywhere. All over the city, in every shopping center, in every coffee shop. And you don't need to buy a coffee and trash it to use them.

Chinese first tier cities aren't accessible, you can't even live there as a country bumpkin.

There are multiple forms of "accessible". For someone impaired and unable to drive, the Chinese cities win hands-down because transportation is a non-issue.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#365

Post by ericd »

socalgal2 wrote: post #348
justin66 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess if you don’t have a massive population of antisocial people who destroy the public facility, you can provide them. It’s a shame we in the west surrendered that. What a weird way of stating the problem. There is too large a population of homeless, mentally ill, and drug addicts wandering the streets. We didn't surrender anything, at least not during the last half century in the United States. We did as littl…

> We did as little as possible to deal with homelessness and mental illness SF would beg to differ. They have a budget of $100k per homeless person. They can't solve the problem because the problem is not money

Something to keep in mind is that that figure includes homeless people who have been homed and are being supported, it's not just the ones currently on the streets.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#366

Post by dripdry45 »

ipaddr wrote: post #329
UncleOxidant wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just not sure that stronger punishment and enforcement is going to be the answer here. It seems like many of the Asian cultures have a much higher level of social cohesion even without the threat of punishment. How do we get (back) to higher social cohesion in the West? I recall seeing a film of a shanty town somewhere in the US during the Great Depression. It was very neat and tidy. What happened between then an…

America has a low social cohension because of global immigration instead of targeted immigration compare to China. America use to share a culture because people came from the same places and shared the same religion and had a common history going back to the Romans.

....sadly more true than anyone here would probably like to admit. I love having Indian coworkers and there’s a large Indian population where I am at, but they are just completely separated in every single way from everyone else. and they keep it that way.

my Pakistani coworkers are absolutely wonderful. Sweet, hard-working, very enjoyable to talk to, but their families and lives are just a totally different universe and they don’t share it.

The honestly very poor black community around the area? they fucking hate us white people. like actively, all the time, no what no matter what you have or haven’t done they don’t like your ass one bit. i’ve seen inside some of the homes, and they are filled with independent black power movie posters about shooting Whitey. No kidding.

I know it takes a village, but when people are so very different and forced to be near each other, it doesn’t mean that they will socialize or help each other; it’s like living on two different planets. there’s all kinds of social research showing this now, and what you get is micro segregation along income lines, rather than everyone helping each other and lifting up the community together.

I wanted for most of my life for people to get along and the world to be a better place, thinking that education and modern access to information could somehow make things better. It seems that was entirely and completely wrong. when people have any kind of discomfort at all about new culture or new person or new idea? They pretty much just run away.

The people here on hacker news are probably an exception, because we are here searching for commentary and interesting ideas and new information.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#367

Post by DavidWoof »

Exoristos wrote: post #137
arjie wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right about who is causing the damage etc. but the 'commons' does not refer to the people; it refers to the shared resource. So a public park is the commons. And when it gets polluted with plastic rubbish etc. because externalities are not internalized that's a tragedy of the commons.

The fallacy in "the tragedy of the commons" is that there's something inherent in having a shared resource that dooms the shared resource. At least this is the popular understanding. And I'll add that if we look at shared resources both with more breadth -- e.g. across history and cultures -- and in more depth -- e.g. cross-analysis, they come out looking much more successful than you'd think.

That's not true. As with all game theory payouts, it's not saying that a Nash equilibrium is inevitable, it's saying that to avoid it you need incentives outside the game, it's saying that the incentives of the game itself don't suffice.

In terms of "the tragedy of the commons", that outside incentive is usually public shaming in smaller communities, or rules and laws in larger and more anonymous communities. If you look at shared resources across history and cultures, you usually find communities enforce very strong outside incentives against spoiling the commons instead of just relying on the kindness of strangers.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#368

Post by hackable_sand »

47635274172635 wrote: post #317
10000truths wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also answer this, if Americans wouldn't have bought the African slaves, all those African-Americans that are now enjoying life in the land of the free, where would they have been born today? Think if they could push a button today to wipe slavery from the past, but that meant they get to spawn back in Africa, they would push it or not? Legitimate question. Because it's not like nothing good came out of it. The reas…

You are moving the goalpost and just make up stuff. Plenty of time to ... do anything, yet nothing has really been done there. If they are so great they should have been able to defend themselves. If you want to keep the discussion real and objective, feelings aside. I am also not trying to excuse past behaviors or anything of the sorts. It was what it was and we always strive to do better when we know better. But th…

Reading about the history and effects will help clarify some of your confusion.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#369

Post by the_af »

sbinnee wrote: post #269

While living in France, I finally learned how to hold my bladder for half a day like an adult

Some adults cannot. Also, consider there are lots of people with conditions that deviate slightly from the normal (some medical, some merely "not standard"). They too are legitimate users of public bathrooms.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#370

Post by worik »

dripdry45 wrote: post #366
ipaddr wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America has a low social cohension because of global immigration instead of targeted immigration compare to China. America use to share a culture because people came from the same places and shared the same religion and had a common history going back to the Romans.

....sadly more true than anyone here would probably like to admit. I love having Indian coworkers and there’s a large Indian population where I am at, but they are just completely separated in every single way from everyone else. and they keep it that way. my Pakistani coworkers are absolutely wonderful. Sweet, hard-working, very enjoyable to talk to, but their families and lives are just a totally different universe…

What an awful society you live in.

It is not like that where I live.

The first generation of immigrants have trouble, natural enough. But are very keen that their children do better.

As for racism: Most racism here is systemic, from the state. There is casual ignorant racism, of course, but little hate.

What a mess has been made of your country. You should work to fix it.

It took us a lot of work to get here, and we have a long way to go. But I cannot imagine living in a society such as you describe.

Post reply on HN