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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   8536 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025

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I feel like a lot of this could be avoided if we had paid public toilets, like they do in Europe. But those are illegal in America, so we rely on private businesses to offer bathrooms as a weird public service, and that trust can easily be broken.

But those are illegal in America

Is there a list of perfectly normal stuff that is illegal in the US? Today I learned that adaptive and matrix headlights are illegal there as well.

Paid public toilets were banned under anti-discrimination law- urinals were free(there is, after all, no practical way to charge for them) and so it was thought to be discrimination against women.

I’m sure that checking American building codes and construction permitting regimes will give you plenty of examples.

there is, after all, no practical way to charge for them

These did actually exist in the before-fore time. I can distinctly remember a pay restroom in a convenience store in the middle of Bumfuck when I was a teenager. I forget if it was 50 or 75 cents but it was entirely self-service. The mechanism was similar to the old-school washers and dryers in laundromats, IE, a lever on the door latch with two or three quarter slots that one pushed inwards to operate the latch and allow one to use the restroom. Comparatively speaking, a 16 oz bottle of soda would have been $1.25-$1.50 at the time.

At some point in North American history they cost ten cents, so my guess would be this goes back quite a ways.

Citation:

Here I sit, broken-hearted,
paid my dime and only farted

Next time when I take a chance,
save a dime and shit my pants

I picture the first two lines sung to the tune of Dixie.

This is what Turkey has. I found it basically fine, it took about once for me to notice that I needed to carry a certain amount of change.

The convenience store at one of the major public transit hubs in San Diego still has a pay-to-use toilet that works precisely this way.

And I was wondering if I just missed the boats on pay toilets being outlawed-TIL!

there is, after all, no practical way to charge for them

Surely there is, unless you consider nearby bushes a urinal. You pay at the door that says "Men" or 🚹, before you reach the room with the sinks and the urinals.

Scott mentioned this in a links post years ago. A bunch of people campaigned to ban paid toilets, working on the dubious assumption that it would result in toilets being made available for free. Instead the only alternative was restaurants and cafés where the toilets were for paying customers only, and the cheapest thing on the menu is usually significantly more expensive than whatever the fee was for the paid toilets.

That doesn't help the issue of people with empty wallets and full bladders/large intestines. If there is no legitimate place in public where people can relieve themselves without spending any money, everyone else will have to navigate a bio-hazardous obstacle course on the side-walk.

My recommendation:

  1. Tax businesses who do not offer public bathrooms (defined as allowing anyone to come in, use the toilet, and leave without buying anything).
  2. Use the revenue from the tax to fund (a.) subsidies for businesses who do offer public restrooms (as defined above), or (b.) construction and maintenance of free-at-point-of-use public toilets.
  3. Once there are plenty of places where one can empty one's excretory organs without spending anything, it will be much more justifiable to take strong measures against those who continue to No. 1 on walls or No. 2 on the pavement.

Once there are plenty of places where one can empty one's excretory organs without spending anything, it will be much more justifiable to take strong measures

If it turns out that political considerations keep you from doing those strong measures, will you give the businesses a refund on their taxes? My guess is no.

"Part one: hurt people by making them do X, part 2: ameloriate the harm from part 1" is a terrible idea because it's easy to say you'll do part 2 without actually doing it. The most charitable scenario is that you're too optimistic, but in the real world sometimes people just lie about part 2 so they can get part 1,

If it turns out that political considerations keep you from doing those strong measures

...there will still be less excreta on the pavement, because some of the people previously doing their business there will now be using toilets. Even if it isn't a complete solution, we're still better off.

Part one: hurt people by making them do X, part 2: ameloriate the harm from part 1

My proposal isn't making anyone do anything. If you want to reserve your business's toilets to paying customers, I am not proposing to forbid that course of action!

Under the status quo, businesses are in a position isomorphic to the prisoners' dilemma:

  • if all businesses offer public toilets, I am better off than if none of them do, because there are fewer bowel movements on the ground.
  • However, if all the other businesses offer public toilets, it is in my financial interest to reserve the toilets in my business to paying customers, and thus spend less on maintenance.
  • If none of the other businesses offer public toilets, it is also in my financial interest to reserve the toilets in my business to paying customers.

Under my proposal, the extra taxes paid by businesses not offering public WCs would be reserved for the exclusive purpose of either directly providing facilities, or subsidising other businesses' provision thereof. (I apologise if that part wasn't clear.)

it's easy to say you'll do part 2 without actually doing it.

Hence the specific tax, from which businesses can make themselves exempt if they provide restrooms one can use without spending anything.

My proposal isn't making anyone do anything.

"If you don't do this, we will take some money from you at gunpoint" is making people do it.

All I see here is the Road to Serfdom. The further growth of the State by involving itself in all matters to solve issues it has created itself.

Why not simply relinquish the silly ban on paid public toilets and enforce the law as it exists? I'm sure

I guess that doesn't create thousands of jobs in the bureaucracy to manage the whole situation. But then if that's what we want we might as well get the benefit of that approach and empower the State to intern vagrants. Using state capacity to manage the results of not using it to actually solve problems is silly.

Why not simply relinquish the silly ban on paid public toilets and enforce the law as it exists?

Because I am trying to come up with a solution for the problem of 'providing restroom facilities to people who cannot pay for them'.

It is generally considered unacceptable (at least in the West) to put someone in a position in which they have no choice but to violate the law, and then punish them for doing so. As people do not cease to have bodily functions when they cannot legally perform them, there needs to exist places in which someone can exercise the Greater and Lesser Conveniences, even if they cannot pay to do so.

(I suppose one could allow private businesses to operate paid toilets, subject to taxation used to fund the free-at-point-of-use facilities....)

If you care so much about it, you're free to set up a donation fund and/or shelters that include such conveniences.

I don't see why the price couldn't be made so low as to be trivial even for vagrants, since, well, I've lived in places where that was the case. In the third world.

I really don't understand what makes people think it's okay to use violence to use other people's ressources to solve the problems they care about instead of just solving them with their own ressources.

Without arguing on the merits of this particular case, surely the answer is often "because I want the problem meaningfully improved, and I don't have enough personal resources for that". Or on the less morally pure side, "I don't see why I should have to bankrupt myself because everyone else selfishly refuses to do the right thing which would only cost them pennies each". Some pro-taxation people are idiots or hypocrites, yes, but trying to compel other people to use their resources in a way that you approve of is not in itself mad. I wish the Right were more open to it, they might achieve something.

Why not simply relinquish the silly ban on paid public toilets and enforce the law as it exists?

Because political forces that want to accommodate vagrants won't let you enforce the law as it exists.

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