191–200 of 243 posts
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Education. Some of which needs to happen through parenting, so this is a multi-generational concept. But to start with, properly fund an education system.
You think people are pooping on the sidewalk because they don’t know any better? Their first grade teacher failed them?
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Some people think that a dictatorship is OK as long as the trains all run on time. The right way to solve the problem is not to harden the gatekeeping, but to improve society so that gatekeeping becomes unnecessary. But that’s hard, and has no obvious point where someone can extract money.
Improving society without accountability is hardly possible. Humans are not dark matter, they interact with each other very intensely. It's of course ideal when everyone is so nice and civilized that you don't need to lock your door. The problem is that such a society is a great hunting ground for a rare breaker, because it does not have a mechanism to resist breaking the rules. Such a breaker can inflict disproporti…
There will always be a small amount of people who don’t obey the social niceties. Some are psychopaths, or have some other mental problems. Some may have extenuating circumstances. But I believe that society can be improved such that these people are rare and far between, and society can invest in picking up the remaining slack.
> Improving mores and living conditions should go hand in hand with protecting these improved mores and conditions from those who try to push the society back to the savage state for a minor benefit for themselves.
Sounds great, except whenever such things are actually implemented, it tends to be a lot of steadily increasing punishment; any improvements, whatever they were initially, will eventually be cut from the budget since they do not give immediate visible results, whereas harsh punishment get great ratings. People love a good public flogging.
This is a problem perpetuating itself. People don’t believe in the public spirit and goodwill of others, so they don’t want to invest in actually improving it, since they think it can’t be done. And so it goes.
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Train stations / bus terminals in major cities absolutely do have bathrooms. Union Station in DC, Grand Central / Penn Station in New York, similar stations in other cities, all have bathrooms. They’re usually open 24/7 too. Even places with locks on the bathrooms will usually let people use them if they ask. It is not unreasonable to imagine someone, no matter how destitute, getting something off the dollar menu at…
> similar stations in other cities, all have bathrooms. They’re usually open 24/7 too. Less than you think. I ride the bus all around the Seattle area and I can't think of a bus station here that has a bathroom. > Even places with locks on the bathrooms will usually let people use them if they ask. Not here. > It is not unreasonable to imagine someone, no matter how destitute, getting something off the dollar menu at…
Then when you find someone breaking that law, stop them. If they’re addicted to drugs, send them to rehab, whether they want to go or not. If they’re mentally ill, send them to an institution. If they’ve just decided they’d rather live that way, then jail, because it’s simply not allowed.
Yet when we try to make and enforce laws like that, people get told they’re “criminalizing poverty” and we end up with the situation we have now.
Yes, you can reasonably expect adults to function and take care of themselves, including finding shelter, food and appropriate restroom facilities, without a government agent holding their hand every step of the way. Indeed, the vast majority of people do and we depend on it.
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> similar stations in other cities, all have bathrooms. They’re usually open 24/7 too. Less than you think. I ride the bus all around the Seattle area and I can't think of a bus station here that has a bathroom. > Even places with locks on the bathrooms will usually let people use them if they ask. Not here. > It is not unreasonable to imagine someone, no matter how destitute, getting something off the dollar menu at…
What it comes down to is, if you want to have a society where there’s not people living in tents on every corner or shitting outdoors, you have to make and enforce a rule that people aren’t allowed to do that. Then when you find someone breaking that law, stop them. If they’re addicted to drugs, send them to rehab, whether they want to go or not. If they’re mentally ill, send them to an institution. If they’ve just d…
You can make all the rules you want and enforce it in whatever draconian manner you choose and there will still be tent cities etc as long as America keeps underbuilding adequate levels of the right kind of housing.
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> If getting banned for consistently making a mess is what it takes to get public bathrooms back, then so be it. we have similar system already in place. It is called "no-fly list". Interesting that most of the people on this site is against it while seem to support the proposed "no-bathroom list". I wonder why so. May be it is because the people here allow for non-zero possibility that they may be subjected to the f…
The no fly list is easy to end up on by simply having the wrong name. The “no bathroom” list blocks you if and only if you treat it poorly and make a mess. Not equivalent.
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Who makes a mess? People who don’t care, or who hate other people. How do we, as a society, make less of those? By investing in social programs, getting people out of poverty and drugs, civic education. Increasing the minimum wage. Eliminating wage theft. UBI. Will any of these work? I don’t know. But this is the way. Not stricter and stricter gatekeeping.
Or, people who smear shit on the walls of the loo, lose their shitting privileges. I'm good with that. It seems easier, and more important, it would work, and you're just singing Kumbaya.
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>"but to improve society so that gatekeeping becomes unnecessary." I understand the sentiment but I ultimately find such a stance unhelpful and counterproductive because it is essentially saying the problems we face would go away if we only just created a utopia. Like, what's stopping us? Trying to create better public restrooms with a new system seems far more achievable than implementing a new socioeconomic system…
It doesn't need to be a utopia. Apartheid regimes or extreme poverty lead to gated compounds for the rich with depressing predictability. Toilets that exclude the poor are great for ensuring the rich have access to nice private toilets. Doesn't help those who can't afford the subscription fee.
The problem is that people are using these labels for countries like America, which clearly do not have Apartheid or extreme poverty. When one is so extreme in their beliefs and hyperbole, they are effectively asking for total social restructure. Ignoring the fact that such unhinged people should be nowhere near any such responsibility, the user above is correct: this will never happen. While these extremists wait for the glorious revolution, people in need today are missing out on good but not perfect solutions.
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What are the options to "improve society" so people don't make a mess in shared bathrooms? PSAs? Public shaming? Collateral put down to use bathrooms? Do you have any better and specific ideas? I can't think of much more gentle and more likely to motivate people to change behavior than a public accountability system, although it is regrettable that it must be run through a for-profit entity and look like a social cre…
>What are the options to "improve society" so people don't make a mess in shared bathrooms? 300% public shaming. Japan is an example of this working, to an unbelievably ideal extent even. Public restrooms in Japan are *clean*, they are spotless and sanitary no matter what time of day you visit one. You can probably eat off of those toilet seats, for all I know. The reason for this is because individuals who do not cl…
This also works for obesity, and I've seen it in action in many nations apart from just Japan. Social pressure works. We've known it works for millennia. I'm not sure why we suddenly started believing that social pressure to not litter and eat less was ineffective and even immoral.
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My job for a long time involved digging up people's septic tanks and fixing them. I know other people who pump them for a living. I know others who buy the waste and dry it. And people of all stripes buy it after it's treated and mixed with mulch and put it on their lawn. This problem is much more minor than you think. Lots of us are not afraid of poop.
Cool. So we have these 3 public bathrooms around the city. How much do you charge to keep them clean and what is your SLA?
If a law is too expensive to enforce justly, maybe we need to reconsider that law.
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>What are the options to "improve society" so people don't make a mess in shared bathrooms? 300% public shaming. Japan is an example of this working, to an unbelievably ideal extent even. Public restrooms in Japan are *clean*, they are spotless and sanitary no matter what time of day you visit one. You can probably eat off of those toilet seats, for all I know. The reason for this is because individuals who do not cl…
> The reason for this is because individuals who do not clean up after themselves in public spaces are shamed and ridiculed by Japanese society at large with no holds barred. Not being from Japan, I’m curious: how does this work in practice? If I were to go into a bathroom in Japan and smear my own shit all over the walls and leave, 1. how does anyone know I did it, 2. if somehow someone actually knew I did it, how e…