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Where did all the public bathrooms go?

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Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#641

Post by pizzafeelsright »

latexr wrote: post #581
snvzz wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The worst 10% In reality, about 2% or even less. We could live in paradise if we just removed them from society. Put them in a box.

You’re suggesting imprisoning over 160 million people. That’s orders of magnitude higher than even the largest Holocaust estimates. It’s more than the population of Russia.

No. Not prison. Prison is inhumane.

Death.

Repeat offenders, those who are violent, rape, or murder are removed forever from society. There is no reason for a rapist or thief to be permitted to murder after their 2nd 3rd, or 4th offense.

Locking away someone for a large portion of their life to deny them employment, rob them of education, limit their positive contributions, and subjecting their families to the inability to bring wholeness is unjust and unkind.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#642

Post by mapt »

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…

Opsec permitting, how long ago was this?

While I'm sure The Youth as a group were never terribly respectful in these countries, social media clout (and the influencer's rise as the only apparently secure profession and for teens the only symbol of a social leadership caste) totally changed the equation regarding motivations. This culminated in the 2021-2022 school year "Devious Licks Challenge", a bathroom destruction tiktok trend which is straight out of Bruce Sterling's Zeitgeist.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#643

Post by Shog9 »

zhivota wrote: post #504
SchemaLoad wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The thing there that the West has not been able to accept to achieve this is the surveillance state. Just look at Flock. I'm not sure anyone has really cracked how to get it done without that part, though certainly tweaking the spending from prisons to police would help a lot. The trouble in the US at least is people (rightly) don't trust police, and don't want to give them more power, so it also needs to be paired w…

Because cameras alone do nothing useful, and there's precious little evidence these are being used to help address petty vandalism.

The UK already went down this road years ago - cameras everywhere, public restrooms nowhere, prompt and automatic ticketing for parking violations but precious little in the way of assistance from humans should you need it. The shut-in dotage of a former empire too afraid to leave its house.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#644

Post by detourdog »

aninteger wrote: post #634
detourdog wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There was always a population that preferred living on the margins of society. Hobo’s and tramps are different than the mentally ill and they were called hobos and tramps. My grandmother used to trade food for labor of these people as they passed through.

The homeless were people that could not care for themselves or be of use in some way. The grey area might be junkies.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#645

Post by stasomatic »

pjerem wrote: post #579
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…

> And EU is a freaking horror show. In many public toilets there's a used syringe compartment as well. Truly a 5-star service. What does that mean ? There are massive differences in EU between not only countries but even also regions of one country. How can you say that toilets are horrendous in 27 different countries with 27 different cultures ? edit : and disclaimer, I live in France and I'm not proud of our public…

edit : and disclaimer, I live in France and I'm not proud of our public toilets because we are clearly amongst the bad ones (even if again it really depends on where you go, that's still too random to be acceptable) but my experience have been pretty positive in most other EU countries I visited.

At least you have some. I've seen them. Public restrooms aren't a thing in the US, except for some beaches and parks. We don't even have trashcans at intersections besides bus stops. Speaking for LA, Miami, Charlotte and Las Vegas. Perhaps other municipalities do.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#646

Post by dessimus »

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 is one of the highest cost of living cities in the US. I'm guessing housing and utilities is going to chew up the majority of that $100K, before you even consider medical and mental health visits and transportation to and from those visits, and there is likely tons of resistance from surrounding localities to allowing the City to relocate those they are helping to suburbs where they might find cheaper and/or more accessible housing, food costs, improved access to healthcare, etc.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#647

Post by AlexandrB »

gjm11 wrote: post #293
black6 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are all at the mercy of the bottom quintile. The rules you follow (or are expected to follow) are based on the behavior of the bottom quintile, the taxes you pay are to support the bottom quintile, the greatest risks to your life and property come from the bottom quintile, the dearth of comfortable public spaces is because you have to allow the bottom quintile to be there, and our zoning laws (in the US) are devel…

Pretty much all of that is false. The rules I'm expected to follow based on the bottom quintile are generally rules that are no trouble for me to follow. The taxes I pay support way more than just the bottom quintile. I'm actually in the UK but I guess you're in the US, so here's a rough breakdown based on this infographic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending_in_the_Uni... . Much the biggest chunk of US…

> The rules I'm expected to follow based on the bottom quintile are generally rules that are no trouble for me to follow.

This is not just laws, but stores putting everything behind plastic barriers to stop theft. Or "customer only" rules for bathrooms. Literally the article in question is discussing this type of rule.

As someone else described, the bottom quintile decides the overall level of trust in a society.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#648

Post by tomrod »

mancerayder wrote: post #638
NalNezumi wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 shamp…

Enforcement is an external impetus. Internal impetus are better to cultivate. I can't answer how cultures tend to differ here from my limited vantage point, so what I'm really saying is respect doesn't come by itself typically.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#649

Post by Libcat99 »

59percentmore wrote: post #633
fallingbananna wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One day a bridge collapsed, and no one came to fix it.

This is how an empire dies. One toilet/park/swing at a time.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#650

Post by triceratops »

obelos wrote: post #231
SpecialistK wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have no choice but to smear feces on the wall and leave needles on the floor of public restrooms, or urinate inside a moving bus because housing is too expensive? Housing and wealth inequality is an undeniable issue. So is anti-social behaviour. You can be poor and even homeless without throwing self-respect out of the window. People are either responsible for their actions, in which case criminal and civil ch…

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.

> When the social contract fails you, why pay any regard to it at all?

That may be a valid defence when stealing a loaf of bread to feed your family. Doesn't apply to trashing public bathrooms.

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