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

451–460 of 873 posts

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#451

Post by ajmurmann »

ebbi wrote: post #294
xyzelement wrote: post #85

Lack of bathrooms has been called tragedy of the commons in this thread, but it's not the "commons" that are the problem. The worst 10% of society determine what we can and can't have. The "commons" aren't having public sex, shooting up drugs, or destroying the bathrooms with lack of... etiquette. The commons are victimized when these things happen and then there's eventually no choice but to shut them down unless th…

I don't think I quite agree with that. Virtually all offices I've worked in, the bathrooms have been less than ideally used by colleagues. The people you'd class as 'commons' may not be having public sex, shooting up drugs, but many can be dirty and/or selfish. And this is in an office where cleaners regularly clean the facilities (I'd hazard more frequently than public toilets are cleaned). There's always be pee on…

I'm of the opinion that the pee issue happens when there is no urinal. Insufficient urinals => no toilets in usable state.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#452

Post by throw-the-towel »

ajmurmann wrote: post #442
qurren wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

As much as a dislike the suburbs, they aren't "the boonies" and it won't be acceptable at all to go in the bush there.

Unfun fact: in Bogotá, it seems to be quite acceptable to piss in the bush everywhere, even in the centro histórico.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#453

Post by SchemaLoad »

ajmurmann wrote: post #418
mvdtnz wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We in the west have surrendered with weak punishments and lax enforcement for anti social behaviour. In many cases even abolishing laws or putting in place public policy that prevents the imprisonment of people who commit "low level" crimes. There's a certain segment of the population who will (largely unsuccessfully) try to shame you if you promote a tough on crime approach. In my country the entire justice system h…

As others have pointed out the US has a massive prison population. Our problem isn't insufficiently harsh punishment. Our problem is unlikely punishment. The US spends more on incarceration and less on policing and the justice system. You are less likely to get caught and punished in the US but if you get punished it's harsher. Yet studies have shown that a milder punishment that happens more swiftly and with higher…

This is what China has done. Aside from drug crimes it doesn't seem like they punish any harsher than the rest of the world, they just have an incredibly good ability to follow up. If you smash the window of a store, they will find you and you'll have to pay for it. Just the knowledge that there is an almost 100% chance of having to pay to restore anything you break seems all that's needed to stop the destruction of public spaces.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#454

Post by anon48293 »

ajmurmann wrote: post #439
anon48293 wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

So anyone who has LSD on them gets life in prison? Sounds expensive. Is that how other countries have avoided having this many visible homeless? Any concerns about police placing drugs on someone if punishment is this harsh?

Why is it expensive? Forced labor and for profit prisons exist.

And if there is a life sentence on hard drugs who would possibly have them on them?

You could also make it the 3rd offense or something, not that difficult.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#455

Post by dgoldstein0 »

anon48293 wrote: post #427
ajmurmann wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you suggest the solution is?

[flagged]

Prison isn't the right idea. But getting them into some sort of treatment would make sense. And that could be court mandated for repeat offenders for some crimes.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#456

Post by db48x »

vkou wrote: post #394
socalgal2 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

I assure you, if they stopped spending that money tomorrow, things would get dramatically worse, as all the people that money keeps off the streets would be on them.

Spending less money more efficiently would not make the problem worse.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#458

Post by ipaddr »

Gud wrote: post #385
worik wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Where I’m from, Sweden, typically it is the second and third generation immigrants who exhibit antisocial behaviour.

Its true im many places. First generation hard working. Second generation lives in the inprint of the first generation. Third generation has no connection to the original homeland and tries to find connection or it turns to antisocial behaviour.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#459

Post by ssl-3 »

jerlam wrote: post #307
ssl-3 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's really your take on this then I have no option but to accept it. Let's move forward. What incentivized them to provide the trash cans to begin with, might you suppose? They aren't cheap to buy, or to maintain, or to keep emptied daily (or as they fill up, or whatever). But yet: They were things that existed, and their existence was definitely deliberate. What motivates companies that still provide outdoor t…

It's probably part of the initial franchise standards, required and signed off by the fast food corporation. Or the shopping center design. We know as a society, that we need garbage cans, so they are budgeted for and installed. But owners are always looking for ways to save money. If the garbage can works fine, it gets maintained. But if it gets hit by a car, or the wind blows it away, it might not be at the top of…

Every single time we interact, it becomes increasingly clear that you aren't picking up my words at all.

I feel like I'm chatting with ChatGPT 3, as I was years ago when it would just articulately weasel its way around everything I asked with a profundity of deflective nonsense in response to any query.

Or at least: That's what it did when it wasn't confidently introducing hallucinations as rote facts.

> It's probably part of the initial franchise standards, required and signed off by the fast food corporation.

Why were they required? What motivated this requirement?

Someone, somewhere, at some point: They decided that there shall be trash cans. This is a thing that happened. What compelled them to make this decision, might you suppose?

(If you don't have an answer, then that's fine by me. It's a rhetorical question at this point. I've already internally rejected your reasoning for the trash cans becoming gone while outwardly accepting that your opinion is simply inflexibly the way that it is. It is unlikely that I can be further swayed by a lack of an opinion for why the trash cans originated to begin with.)

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#460

Post by dgoldstein0 »

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

SF - and probably much of the US homeless problem elsewhere - is largely cost of housing; rent and home prices are ridiculous enough that if you don't make big bucks, you are likely barely scraping by. Rents here are rising way faster than inflation, and it makes everything more expensive and means a lot more people are living that much closer to not being able to pay their rent. Way easier to end up homeless after losing your job when paying 3k/month in rent than 1k/month, as at the cheaper rent saving money is actually possible.

We've consistently built a tiny fraction of the new residential units needed for projected population growth for decades now. Supply has been barely growing while demand surged; what else should we expect?

Other parts of the country have not been as extreme, but this has played out in other cities too. We've had terrible housing policy, and increased homelessness is a direct consequence.

Post reply on HN