Where did all the public bathrooms go? • Hacker News Board

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#631

Post by mym1990 » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 12:56 PM UTC

phendrenad2 wrote: post #291

mym1990 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I did this at 16 at a gas station and got paid 8.75 an hour, there are lots of people out there doing this type of work in the private sector. Its not glamorous thats for sure but supply/demand will dictate the labor market. The government doesn't deem it infeasible because hiring is difficult, its because they aren't willing to pay a reasonable wage for the work.

How many likely Heptitis-infected needles and excrement smears did you clean up? per week or per day? Try 10x that and see if 8.75/hour is still setting your 16 year old mind with visions of dancing Super Nintendos and Segas.

Go touch grass, you seem a little angry for a forum.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#632

Post by layer8 » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 12:56 PM UTC

F3nd0 wrote: post #380

LoganDark wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Antisocial people who destroy the public facility don't just come out of nowhere. People get driven to this. Not to say that you can simply ignore them when they're already everywhere, though.

What exactly (supposedly) drives someone to destroy public facilities?

Puberty.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#633

Post by 59percentmore » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 12:58 PM UTC

fallingbananna wrote: post #483

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…

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.

And sometimes it's not even active destruction, just neglect. Public use amenities are subject to large amounts of wear-and-tear. Sometimes a thing just breaks, from someone being careless or not knowing how to operate it. You have to have the wherewithal for follow-through with upkeep.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#634

Post by aninteger » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:01 PM UTC

detourdog wrote: post #628

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 think around 1986 Reagan cut the federal funding to the facilities that would house the mentally ill. This created the homeless situation in the USA. I remember the term homeless as newly formed at that time and remember the population exploding as I went through college in center city Philadelphia.

We've had homeless people forever (although less). I think we used "hobo", or "tramp" back in the 1960s.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#635

Post by account42 » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:05 PM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #544

crote wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how come incarceration in Asia is orders of magnitude lower than in the US?

The laws are enforced harshly and consistently, so people follow them. As a result, you have low crime and low total incarceration. Take auto theft. In California, we have 1 auto theft arrest per 15 stolen cars. Incarceration rate is 1 in 5 of those arrested, so 1 per 75 stolen cars. Japan has 1 arrest for every 2 stolen cars - A much higher rate of getting caught. Japan has about 5,000 stolen vehicles nationally per…

Be careful comparing such statistics between countries as the defintions of what counts at every step will be different and there are always contributing factors that skew the statistics.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#636

Post by 59percentmore » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:08 PM UTC

dgoldstein0 wrote: post #460

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

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 l…

Semi-related anecdotes:

After the Civil War, when many plantation properties became economically unsustainable, occasionally the main house would be abandoned by the owners, and the remaining sharecroppers would take up residence; one house that used to be for one extravagantly wealthy family, now occupied by a handful.

In Newport, RI, after the income tax made maintaining grand Gilded Age domiciles untenable, many were subdivided into multiple units. Again, a house for one family (and there servants) turned out to be decent housing for multiple.

People keep saying that America has a building deficit, and to some extent, we do. But we also have a lot of physically massive houses that house one family, because those families can currently afford it. Historically, that has not been a permanent state.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#637

Post by account42 » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:08 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #549

crote wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Want to get rid of drug addicts? Start by banning all pharma ads and stopping over-prescription. People don't go to their doctor and complain about pain for no reason.

And? Doctors are not supposed to be a pharma dispensary. Depending on motivational factors a doctor may either tell someone to suck it up, quickly fill out a standard subscription to cover up the symptoms or spends some time to diagnose and fix the root cause and then prescribe medication by taking into account but the patients immediate needs and the long-term health impacts.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#638

Post by mancerayder » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:08 PM UTC

NalNezumi wrote: post #617

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…

EU(or US) can't have public toilets because it's gonna get vandalized. For fun. One thing that perplexed me endlessly during my youth living in Sweden was seeing drunk teenagers go around vandalize things for... Fun. Breaking the glass at the buss station (designed to shatter in to million pieces so you don't hurt yourself), friends enjoying graffiti, littering, throwing beer bottles on the street for fun.... During…

How is that not connected to police enforcement, though? In Europe and now the US the new generations are anti-police, anti-enforcement and generally consider authority and rules to be proof of an unjust society (X group is N percent more likely to receive a criminal summons when ..).

In the US in slow motion we could see a world in which you could go to a big chain pharmacy and retrieve your own toothpaste and shampoo. Now it's considered entirely normal to put these behind plexiglass, and to hire a security guard to stand by the door, but the guard isn't legally allowed to stop anyone or engage in any physical altercation. Because homelessness, because mental illness, because drug addiction, etc are not to be 'criminalized.'

In NYC a decree stopped the police from issuing summonses for not paying the subway fare. Because it was said to be racist. Today, tons of people, especially normal professionals - happily do not pay the fare, while the system is said to be in financial deficit.

Yet here we're discussing comparisons with Asian cultures and how they are more respectful of public space.

So, my friends, is it a cultural difference, a legal enforcement difference, or an inevitable consequence of injustice? I'm dying to understand because it's at the crux of the political divide, and I'm seeing cities getting worse in front of my eyes.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#639

Post by mym1990 » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:09 PM UTC

mrngld wrote: post #606

mym1990 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I did this at 16 at a gas station and got paid 8.75 an hour, there are lots of people out there doing this type of work in the private sector. Its not glamorous thats for sure but supply/demand will dictate the labor market. The government doesn't deem it infeasible because hiring is difficult, its because they aren't willing to pay a reasonable wage for the work.

I won't do your homework for you but there's people that have done the work of reporting out the numbers it takes to operate a clean government bathroom. It's not just "reasonable wage" territory. It's "civilization can't afford this" level expensive, the type of problem you can't throw money at because it's so bad it's obvious that the real problem and solution exists elsewhere. And it's only in the West that public…

I don’t disagree that the problem is difficult and has various surface areas to address, but everyone can’t blame the drug users when even putting up the stall costs north of $500,000. That’s just governmental bureaucracy at play.

Additionally, not all areas of the country are infested with the “homeless and drug addicts”. People can spin that all they like but areas where people take care of their local services are plentiful.

Lastly, don’t talk to me about prohibitive pricing in government initiates. When we stop spending hundreds of billions bombing other countries, then come talk about things being too expensive.

Nice condescending comment about the homework though, you must have been pleased with that one.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#640

Post by dominicl » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:09 PM UTC

NalNezumi wrote: post #617

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…

EU(or US) can't have public toilets because it's gonna get vandalized. For fun. One thing that perplexed me endlessly during my youth living in Sweden was seeing drunk teenagers go around vandalize things for... Fun. Breaking the glass at the buss station (designed to shatter in to million pieces so you don't hurt yourself), friends enjoying graffiti, littering, throwing beer bottles on the street for fun.... During…

+1 Based on my perception of being raised in Germany but have lived in Asia for quite some time this is a deep cultural issue in the west. Concepts such as the German 1968 "Macht kaputt was euch kaputt macht" (break what breaks you), 'civil disobedience' but even "Sabotage" born during the industrial revolution as a workers uprising are all deeply embedded culturally. Not all of them I would like to give up, but it's hard to draw the line.

Finally Vandalism is the worst part of it, but mind you it's named after the Vandals a German tribe after they sacked and looted Rome their oppressors captial.

They say young animals learn survival through playful fights. Maybe western youth learns about freedom through throwing meatballs.

I really don't know but would love to read more about this topic.