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Where did all the public bathrooms go?

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Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#481
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Japan, I've seen attendants looking for some payment to use bathrooms in hotels.

Where? 11 years living in Japan and I've never seen this once, and never heard it from friends or family.

Kind of a loose interpretation of "hotel" - but on Mt. Fuji the huts charge to use toilets unless you're a guest. Not unreasonable, though, given the amount of people coming through and the lack of plumbing. And the last time I was there, most of the huts still worked on the honor system, with a little box at the toilet entrance to leave payment.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#482
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?

EU:

The social net prevents homelessness.

We don't get broke because of medical bills.

Labor laws prevent being fired without prévenance.

Being fired grants you employment benefits.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#483

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. 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 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…

It's not just homeless, mentally ill or drug addicts.

In Europe it's frequently teenagers (even those whom parents provide good lives), football fans, drunk people, etc.

Some people are antisocial and destroy public stuff just for laughs, not because they feel resentment towards society.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#484
post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the social contract fails you, why pay any regard to it at all? It's not a matter of pure, exogenous choice to do those things. It's not some abstract preference that surviving in the margins has afforded the freedom to exercise. It's a way to make sense out of the world and to have some shred of a sense of agency in a world where a person otherwise has no power.

Because you're a decent person. Or, put another way, if you choose to disregard the social contract, you show your lack of quality of character. Either way, it's still a choice and not forced upon people by their circumstances.

“You have nothing, sure, but you still better participate in this social contract that has actually offered you no security or even basic shelter, else we give you even less nothing.” Like... why? Why would that person care? It's called the social contract, not the social religion. A contract has terms that are supposed to be fulfilled by both parties. If one party isn't holding up their end, why would the other?

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#485

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…

in japan the homeless people clean up after themselves and don’t destroy everything what’s the difference here?

[flagged]

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#486

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

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.

Very few people want to be homeless. The alternatives offered to them just somehow manage to be even worse than homelessness.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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.

I kind of read the suggestion as a deterrent for dealers and people engaged in drug trafficking, which could lead to less addicts... Not as "jail the junkies!"

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#489
post #329

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.

> a common history going back to the Romans.

Native Americans are not related to Romans.

Slaves brought by force from Africa neither.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I kind of read the suggestion as a deterrent for dealers and people engaged in drug trafficking, which could lead to less addicts... Not as "jail the junkies!"

The biggest drug dealers are legitimate doctors. You can't solve the problem without first adressing the pipeline to addiction.

Want to get rid of drug addicts? Start by banning all pharma ads and stopping over-prescription.

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