| ▲ | xyzelement 4 hours ago |
| Lack of bathrooms has been called tragedy of the commons in this thread, but it's not the "commons" that are the problem. The worst 10% of society determine what we can and can't have. The "commons" aren't having public sex, shooting up drugs, or destroying the bathrooms with lack of... etiquette. The commons are victimized when these things happen and then there's eventually no choice but to shut them down unless there's willingness to crack down on the explicit problematic behavior. |
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| ▲ | ssl-3 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| 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 to willfully ignore). Nothing has been improved in this process. |
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| ▲ | xyzelement 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Agreed. However it becomes unstable and a massive liability for society to maintain public restrooms. So yes the 10% fuck it up for everyone unless cracked down on. | | |
| ▲ | mym1990 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | How is maintaining public restrooms a "massive liability"? Surely its an inconvenience but massive liability seems a bit of a hyperbole. | | |
| ▲ | lotsofpulp 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Try hiring someone for a job where the job could sometimes be cleaning up bodily fluids and odors in a bathroom. Even the government deems it infeasible. Or, think about how much someone would have to pay you to do that job. | | |
| ▲ | leviathant an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | My first job was "stockboy" at Kmart in 1996, at 1996 American minimum wage, and part of the job involved cleaning toilets. And, honestly? If more people had to clean toilets in use by other people, maybe we wouldn't have so many folks expecting other people to clean up after them. I see countless posts in my Facebook group about trash on the street. In the time it took to take a photo and post it to social media, they could have picked up the trash and taken it to a nearby bin. But I suppose that experience goes two ways. Some people think they're above the human condition, to the point where they won't even clean up after themselves, even in their own homes. And other people recognize that it's actually not that hard to clean things up, if you just do it. We all have good and bad days. | | |
| ▲ | lotsofpulp an hour ago | parent [-] | | Cleaning up trash, wiping tables, mopping the floor is one thing. Cleaning up bodily fluids, which likely come from drug users, is a whole other thing. |
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| ▲ | mym1990 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | lotsofpulp an hour ago | parent [-] | | Obviously there exists a price at which people will do it. But if the government isn't willing to pay it, it seems unfair to expect businesses to pay it. |
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| ▲ | lovich 36 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Was a cart pusher at target and was frequently shanghaid into cleaning toilets. I think you might be giving away the class you were raised in if you think it’s infeasible to pay people to clean toilets. | |
| ▲ | notact an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Also: the liability of getting stuck with a needle. | |
| ▲ | miltonlost an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Even the government deems it infeasible. Because they are underfunded often. | | |
| ▲ | mym1990 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Funny how the government is "underfunded", yet can spend billions and trillions on plenty of things. | |
| ▲ | lotsofpulp an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | If the government is underfunded enough to not be able to hire bathroom cleaners, how can anyone expect a barely surviving retail business to afford it? |
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| ▲ | ssl-3 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The same liability exists without them. The problem was not eliminated. If anything, the effects were amplified. It just moved the poop mess and dirty needles from one defined space back to everywhere else. In this way, they're easier to accidentally encounter while out-and-about, and yet simultaneously harder to intentionally find and clean up. I think this kind of result has strong resemblance to what is colloquially known as a footgun. |
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| ▲ | x0x0 22 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | A friend owns pizza restaurants. They leapt at the opportunity during covid to shut their bathrooms to the public, and have continued to (illegally) keep the bathrooms closed as much as possible. People made horrific messes in them. Employees and/or owners had to clean them. They don't wish to do so. Public messes; private employees and/or owners being made to clean them is pretty much the story. | |
| ▲ | hackable_sand an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | This is wrong and you both know it. Grow up. |
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| ▲ | arjie 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| You're right about who is causing the damage etc. but the 'commons' does not refer to the people; it refers to the shared resource. So a public park is the commons. And when it gets polluted with plastic rubbish etc. because externalities are not internalized that's a tragedy of the commons. |
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| ▲ | Exoristos 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The fallacy in "the tragedy of the commons" is that there's something inherent in having a shared resource that dooms the shared resource. At least this is the popular understanding. And I'll add that if we look at shared resources both with more breadth -- e.g. across history and cultures -- and in more depth -- e.g. cross-analysis, they come out looking much more successful than you'd think. | |
| ▲ | xyzelement 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Thanks for both teaching me and not losing the forest for the trees of my point. |
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| ▲ | jiscariot 31 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| And people with means, move from common to private spaces. Others will not have the same choice and things become more stratified, because a subset of society decided to cede public spaces. |
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| ▲ | 8f2ab37a-ed6c 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I tried to find a good term for this trend and the best I could do is "defining deviancy down" defined as "the tendency of societies to respond to destructive behaviors by lowering standards for what is permissible." It's like a behavioral Overton window that grows downwards. |
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| ▲ | floro 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| We are experiencing "changing consumer habits" |
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| ▲ | slig an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Ten percent is way too optimistic, I'd say 20% are destroying everything for the majority. |
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| ▲ | black6 41 minutes ago | parent [-] | | 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 developed for fear of the bottom quintile. |
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| ▲ | paulpauper an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Homelessness and the post-2008 wave of poverty ruined it. A few people who need to use a public bathroom everyday is fine, but when you have 100x of ppl who are desuetude, on drugs, mentally ill etc. emptying their medications and needles and so on it becomes a public health hazard, attracts crime, and overwhelms staff. Better to just shut it down altogether or limit to staff only. . |
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| ▲ | deadbunny an hour ago | parent [-] | | Good thing that stops the "destitute, on drugs, mentally ill etc" from doing this simply by removing the public toilets right? | | |
| ▲ | skinfaxi 17 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Well it becomes someone else's problem, right? That kind of short-term thinking is in vogue at the moment. |
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