A lot of amenities "worked" before because of aggressive social norm enforcement.

For example, people experiencing persistent mental health issues would literally be locked up "for the common good".

I think what we are seeing is people trying to use technology to replace earlier (primarily social) technologies of control like shaming, religious instruction, tighter communities, aggressive policing etc.

It's not the amenities themselves being reinvented, it's new techniques of social control to uphold good behaviour and care for shared resources.

I am ok with startups attempting to innovate in products that meet the needs of humans beyond wealthy tech workers; sure they deserve criticism when being discriminatory or having bad societal effects, but can we really rely on the public sector to build and deploy new technology?

I’d much rather see brainpower being spent on thinking about innovation in cleanliness than on the next “open source DataDog clone”. Let’s encourage people to go after hard but important problems (but not shy away from valid criticism, of course).

Paid public toilets are banned in large parts of the US.