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Where did all the public bathrooms go?

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Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#461

Post by ytoawwhra92 »

ivell wrote: post #432
ytoawwhra92 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you're talking about software engineers, because in every office I've worked in the toilets have been absolutely filthy by mid-morning. At my current place there are boot marks on top of the toilet seat that have been there for weeks, put there by one of the 10 people in the company. I think we can just apply the broken windows theory here. If whoever's responsible for the toilet doesn't demonstrate that the…

> At my current place there are boot marks on top of the toilet seat that have been there for weeks, put there by one of the 10 people in the company. Are you complaining no one cleaned it up, including you? Or are you complaining that the company didn't get cleaning services?

I'm saying the presence of the boot marks make me less likely to clean up any mess I make in there.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#462

Post by mikelitoris »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #422
vkou wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do they spend $100,000 per homeless person in Europe and Asia? If not, why don't they have similar problems?

Closer familial ties + extremely harsh laws for drug sale and use. Asians realized how opium fucked China for a century and made sure none of that shit flies.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#463

Post by mmooss »

kraken_cult wrote: post #197
mmooss wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> massive population of antisocial people 'Social' isn't 'nobody annoys me '; it's empathy for, caring about, and helping others, especially those you don't like - otherwise it means nothing. I'm in the West, and I support liberty - the defining feature of the West - uber alles; it's their right. I'm not threatening others' freedom so you can feel more at ease. (You are more of a problem for them - they can't have yo…

There has to be a line draw somewhere. Generally people who say this don't actually have regular interactions with aggressive, hostile, homeless. Or are you just really cool with going to a coffee shop and have someone screaming in a pile of their own feces 20 or so feet away?

I see and interact with apparently unhoused people all the time, and I've never had a problem.

> someone screaming in a pile of their own feces 20 or so feet away?

This is a hypothetical, and follows a typical pattern of trying to box people into a response using a situation that effectively never happens. It's like people asking if you'd support torture 'if you knew there was a bomb in an elementary school somewhere in NY, but didn't know which one'. That's never happened.

I have had many apparently housed people yell at or even threaten me, and almost run me over.

So I've never seen it or anything like it, spending lots of time in many neighborhoods of many cities. Human shit, to provoke an emotional reaction (of disgust) at other humans, is a favorite of the anti-freedom crowd. It's not the unhoused people, generally the most vulnerable people I know and encounter, that disgust me.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#464

Post by mikelitoris »

annzabelle wrote: post #407
cortesoft wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US “locks people up” at a much higher rate, and for longer, than Japan does. About 1% of the adult population is in jail in the United States, and it’s about 0.03% of the population in Japan. The US puts people in jail at 30x the rate Japan does. It is not because the US doesn’t lock people up enough.

Japan has one of the highest numbers of psychiatric beds in the world. That's what I'm referring to. If you're experiencing psychosis in public in Japan, you will be removed from public spaces. This is not true in the US.

Thank “One flew over cuckoos nest” for that.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#465

Post by dyauspitr »

talon8635 wrote: post #115
mstaoru wrote: post #94

This really hits home. As a person with IBS I basically cannot peacefully go outside in EU. I lived for many years in China and Thailand, and toilets are free, clean, and plentiful there, and you can easily ask any place to use their toilet - there's no stigma. I even had to run into a police station in rural China once. They were 100% chill about it, though they had to unlock a gate for me. Xi Jinping really will be…

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. Not the worst thing in the world, but I do find it frustrating often to not have a bathroom available nearby (small bladder) But, while the toilets aren’t the worst sacrifice, the cumulative sacrifices made on the alter of our huge antisocial populati…

I don’t think we should put the homeless in forcible shelters like they do in east Asia.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#466

Post by ajmurmann »

SchemaLoad wrote: post #453
ajmurmann wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

On the less extreme end, Europe also has much higher rates of catching criminals and punishes then less. I understand the US is really the outlier.

I read an interesting article that laid out how that's ultimately rooted in what level of government pays for what. It's easier for local politicians to call for harsher punishment because prisons are run by state or federal but police is funded locally.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#467

Post by mmooss »

nradov wrote: post #319
fzeroracer wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living in Seattle, people focus a lot on the homeless because it's an obvious problem. The guy screaming at the corner, or the people sleeping on the sidewalk. But I personally think people miss that its a symptom of greater social rot. I've had more issues with antisocial car drivers than any homeless individual. People screaming profanities because I'm crossing the street with the walk signal active, people narrowl…

In a lot of large cities, local governments reacted to the 2020-2023 protests against police brutality by drastically reducing traffic enforcement. Aggressive drivers can get away with a lot more bad behavior now and have little fear of consequences. When voters elect leaders like Katie Wilson this is one of the inevitable consequences.

> drastically reducing traffic enforcement.

I haven't heard of that, other than laws banning pulling people over for minor mechanical issues like broken tailights (used sometimes as coverup for prejudice). Could you give examples?

> Aggressive drivers can get away with a lot more bad behavior now and have little fear of consequences.

I haven't noticed driving getting worse, except around the pandemic. Is there data?

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#468

Post by mmooss »

remarkEon wrote: post #437
alex43578 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are committing crimes, they should be imprisoned for an appropriate period of time as a deterrent to crime, a punishment for their actions, and to facilitate rehabilitation (even though evidence shows this doesn't really happen). If they are mentally ill and unable to care for themselves or pose a threat to the community because of their mental illness, they should be institutionalized and treated. If they ar…

The most important part of incarceration is removing what is a quantifiable risk to the public from the public square. Everything else is secondary. The point of a state having police powers is to ensure for the common good, it is not to continually indulge those who wish to damage that common good. To the extent that the state is responsible for e.g. punishment and rehabilitation, these are ancillary responsibilitie…

Lacking a house isn't a threat to others. I've rarely seen an unhoused people do harm. Annoying you isn't harm. Making rich people uncomfortable isn't a crime.

> common good

A term used to justify taking away liberty from people you don't like - 'it might take away their rights, but it's good for people in 'common''. The point of government, as Jefferson eloquently put it in the document that birthed the US, is to protect people's rights.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#469

Post by dyauspitr »

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

The problem is you can’t get people off the street if they don’t want to get off the street unless you do it forcibly. You can end the homeless problem overnight but SF is too empathetic. I’m not even saying this is a fault, I’d rather they fail on the side of empathy than succeed violently.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#470

Post by ssl-3 »

justonceokay wrote: post #298
ssl-3 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A reduction of public restrooms didn't stop the worst 10% of society from having public sex, shooting up drugs, or destroying an area with their lack of defacatory etiquette -- did it? In places where these things were problems with public restrooms, they remain problems without public restrooms. The 10%'ers are still doing their dastardly things. The remaining 90% of society still has the same messes to clean up (or…

You’re making the mistake of thinking there’s a top down process. That’s not what’s happening. It goes like this: “if I close my public restroom then all of the people asking for a public restroom will have to go across the street and they will not bother me anymore“ The problem of course then is the guy across the street is forced to make the same decision

I've made no such mistake.
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