Comment by Sir_Substance | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Sir_Substance | Hacker News Reader

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>Stallman explicitly demands that public toilets should be free to everyone, independent of their financial situation. Using his logic, we should boycot food until food is available to everyone free of charge. Of course I'm not arguing against feeding the needy, or against social nets in general.

I actually don't see how you could unironically argue against providing essential foods (think bread, beans and chicken/fish[whichever is local]) free of charge, basic income style.

If that's affordable, we should totally do it. Of course, affordability is a key part of the equation. I don't know if a basic sustenance program is affordable. I do know that basic sanitation is /totally/ affordable.

Also, I feel compelled to point out that there's a public health interest in making sure everyone has a sanitary place to defecate. Societies that failed to provide this were regularly ravaged by cholera.

How do you know sanitation's affordable? How much do you have to pay workers to clean those public toilets?(anecdotally, these toilets have always been dirtier than the private ones I've used) Will those cleaners be unionized or require full-time benefits? How do you analyze toilet usage and concentrate cleaning resources on those toilets which are used more? How much funding do you dedicate to these analysts? How do you budget for future expenditures? Can you tell me how it is more efficient do this with a bureaucracy rather than a paid system?

As for the public health interest - how many homeless/low income/cheap people will be forced to shit in the streets as a result of pay toilets? Will it realistically lead to cholera?

It's completely reasonable to use pay toilets in some locales and public toilets in others. Believing in a definitive answer without analysis is not going to lead to good policy.

> Also, I feel compelled to point out that there's a public health interest in making sure everyone has a sanitary place to defecate. Societies that failed to provide this were regularly ravaged by cholera.

Here in Germany, there are very few free-of-charge, public toilets, and yet we aren't "ravaged by cholera", or anything close to it. In fact, there are very few public toilets, free or otherwise, and we don't drown in feces. Apparently public toilets are a nice thing to have, but not on the same level as not letting people starve.

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