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Comment by gregwtmtno | Hacker News Reader

Where I live, we don't have pay toilets, but when I was on vacation last I thought they were great. I was happy to pay a little bit for a clean bathroom instead of having to go at a coffee shop or restaurant.

Stallman has a point, but it's easily addressable. The government could give the indigent vouchers to use the pay toilets. I'd even be happy to pay more to use the bathrooms to subsidize such a program.

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There are quite a few countries like Australia and Japan where public toilets are free, reasonably ubiquitous and generally clean.

I had the opportunity to use public bidets with heated seats in Osaka. It felt very fancy, and my only complaint was that the previous user had left the seat on "extremely warm". I wasn't expecting anything in particular, but it was a very nice public bathroom.

If the only complaint about a public toilet is the setting of the seat warmer, then there is definitely something done right there :)

That sounds a bit awkward. How about just having the government pay for them?

Those pay toilets are private owned

>The government could give the indigent vouchers to use the pay toilets.

Wouldn't work in Europe - Art. 18 TFEU.

Hence BREXIT, and why all EU countries should consider exiting from the EU!

Leave the EU to get toilet vouchers? Sounds like a bad deal to me.

Do you know what Article 18 of TFEU says?

> Within the scope of application of the Treaties, and without prejudice to any special provisions contained therein, any discrimination on grounds of nationality shall be prohibited.

> The European Parliament and the Council, acting in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure, may adopt rules designed to prohibit such discrimination.

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:120...

Except that "any discrimination on grounds of nationality" is clearly NOT prohibited, the obvious example being Scottish University Tuition Fees.

These are free for Scots, free for other residents of the EU, reduced rate (not Free) for Welsh and Northern Irish, and a special higher rate is applied solely to students from England, i.e. those with English nationality.

What was that about discrimination on grounds of nationality again?

Strictly, yes, I know, it's discrimination on nation of residence rather than individual nationality. Nice trick. Guess where the English tend to be resident? Yup. England.

I don't buy it. For that to be discriminatory, progressive taxes would be, too.

Wait, how does giving free tickets to indigent people relates to segregation based on nationality?

Btw, here in France, we give a lot of free stuff to people in need, and we certainly won't allow this to be prohibited by European treaties. So yeah, providing free tickets for toilet is indeed a solution that can be considered.

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