Posted by herbertl 4 hours ago
Xi Jinping really will be remembered as the Toilet King, he did issue a few decrees early on, and now in every Tier-88 rural Chinese village road you can find a modern toilet (yes, squat), clean, with water. Paper is hit and miss still though. Cross to Hong Kong and it's the same, but paper is reliable. Hong Kong is definitely richer.
Then take any shopping mall in Bangkok, that's an absolutely next level experience, clean, smells good, relaxing music. Mmm...
And EU is a freaking horror show. In many public toilets there's a used syringe compartment as well. Truly a 5-star service.
But, while the toilets aren’t the worst sacrifice, the cumulative sacrifices made on the alter of our huge antisocial populations are profound
> toilets are... clean
Okay I'm going to have to say that this _really_ depends on where you are. Sometimes, yes, especially newer buildings, but man I have seen some horrors there in the past few years when it comes to bathrooms in terms of cleanliness and smell (the frequent smoking in a lot of bathrooms doesn't help). This is coming from someone primarily experiencing Canadian and American bathrooms, for reference, and a lot of those are pretty nasty. I think it's getting better at least...
Just to be clear though I agree generally, at least from my experience with East Asia. Hong Kong often has really good bathrooms now IMO (I feel like it improved a lot between 2018 to 2023?). Japan is also really good from my experience (fancy-ass bidets). Taiwan was fine too from my recollection.
That was such an awesome trip circa 2005.
That kinda applies to anywhere in the world. On the average, I've seen much cleaner toilets in first-tier China cities than first-tier US cities.
And much more accessible as well. Free public toilets literally everywhere. All over the city, in every shopping center, in every coffee shop. And you don't need to buy a coffee and trash it to use them.
That definitely tracks. LA has a massive unhoused person issue, many of whom with severe mental disorders. You feel a lot that in the commons, especially as you get near DTLA. New York is shabby and dirty in general. More so than a big city usually is. And it's not really a charming shabbiness from an extreme subtropical climate as you get in Taiwan.
The relationship China has with its tier 1 cities is more similar to other Asian countries, like Japan and Korea, than it is to the US.
I don't know about China but this was the opposite of my experience in Thailand. The majority of public toilets I encountered had an attendant you had to pay for access. Shopping malls / hotels / other places were you were already paying to be there were the exception of course.
If a place has tornado drills and tornado shelters, it's a safe bet that tornados are at least somewhat likely.
Some safety and security measures have the effect of making a place feel unsafe and insecure, for this reason.
Ask yourself if that's truly what motivated those being installed...
> And even if a drug addict uses it, still better than throwing to the trash
The problem is they still throw their needles all over the ground. As is typical, the intentions are noble, but what ends up happening is people who can't even be bothered to not shoot up their gutter heroin in public are given society's tacit approval to do what they're doing, thus accelerating the societal rot.
> society's tacit approval to do what they're doing, thus accelerating the societal rot.
This argument could be made about providing drugs themselves but fails under the faintest scrutiny for sharps containers because said containers have wide uses beyond shooting up heroin.
It is observed that you have junkies shooting up in bathrooms, evidenced by needles strewn on the ground. So the solution from the authorities is to install syringe disposal containers.
But this was in the time when Xi had just taken office, so it is probably better now. I didn't see any issues on my trip to Chengdu this summer. I have a lot bigger problems in downtown Seattle today, which is just really bad (either the toilets don't exist, or there is some homeless guy doing drugs in the only stall they have). Sigh.
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.
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.
So yes the 10% fuck it up for everyone unless cracked down on.
Or, think about how much someone would have to pay you to do that job.
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.
It's like a behavioral Overton window that grows downwards.
Similarly, free public bath/shower disappeared in SF. Some wealthy person (forgot his name) built some free public showers in the 1900, but they eventually got all closed. Paris still have about ~20 free public bath/shower running. Wondering if we should also bring those back. This is a basic human need (after restrooms and food).
I had no choice. The businesses had a choice. The parks manager had a choice.
And now I understand why SF stinks.
Japan seems to be just about a best-case scenario, due to the ubiquity of convenience stores, the government's seemingly high prioritization of building and maintaining public toilets, and a culture which places a high value on cleanliness.
It seems like it would be hard to replicate elsewhere without changing the culture first. But reading another comment it sounds like China has made great strides in improving the state of their public toilets due to a strong push from leadership.
Restrooms are unique in that they are available to the public but, due to their inherently private nature, are a place where it is difficult to enforce social norms. Because of this, within the confines of the restroom itself, the authorities are all but irrelevant.
I was scrolling through the addictive and easy to stumble into YouTube reels feature and came upon a livestream of a gentleman having some sort of 'public restroom party' in a stall. By this, I mean he had collected every roll of toilet paper available, shredded them into confetti, and was throwing the confetti up into the air while blasting music at full volume out of his bluetooth speaker. He had a few thousand viewers and people appeared to be donating money for supercomments. I didn't stay to watch the end of the livestream, but I don't imagine he cleaned up.
By the time the private-but-livestreamed confetti party is over, the damage is done. You can try to anticipate every single unwanted activity in a restroom and try to prevent it beforehand (e.g. tinted lights to prevent IV drug use), but someone, somewhere will find a way to creatively make the owners decide a few frustrated customers who are told "no public restroom" is a small price to pay for the alternative.
https://cartes.app/?cat=toilettes&perspective=non#14.58/48.8...
There are countries were public bathrooms are everywhere - New Zealand is a good example. As a tourist, you're never too far from one. Which is good, since quite often that may be the only human made thing, surrounded by beautiful nature.
Thankfully I found one in a cinema.
LavSeeker - shows toilets listed in OpenStreetMap.
The incentive to do the right thing that a coin-deposit shopping cart ("trolley") adds is the ultimate return of that coin. It's not much money, but it is nonetheless returned when the cart is put back where it belongs.
If a cart always costs 50 cents and there is no hope of ever getting that money back, then: The monetary incentive to return the cart doesn't exist.
The grandparent post is just talking about incentives.
I guess what you're saying is that if you pay 50 cents for the bathroom then there's no actual incentive to keep it clean because the 50 cents is gone either way, unlike a cart deposit?
You're probably right about that, but I also don't think most people actually need an incentive not to make a huge mess. I would put money that most messes in public bathrooms are caused by the people that the 50 cent charge filters out. The rest experience some social pressure from the attendant to keep things clean. If all else fails, the attendant can clean up a mess before the next person uses it
The alternative would be social workers, more psychotherapists, free healthcare, ...
Also even the most messed up people would use a urinal, if avaiable.
But I'm sure there still exist quite a few, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were especially found in right-wing cities like Nice.