It's too late for this comment to be seen and make a difference, it will sink to the bottom of the thread without a trace, but in case anyone is interested in reading more HN comments about this, it was submitted and discussed just 2 days ago:
I'm not sure if this was put here to ridicule Stallman or as a coda to his comments about Skype but this is a simple well-explained argument that I happen to agree with.
If local government can't use local taxes to provide shared toilet facilities to stop us all having to defecate in the streets then what are they (and taxes) for?
Community toilets (and streets clear of shit & piss) are, in my opinion, a fundamental and should be the basis of all civilised society. The fact that so many modern cities seem to have forgotten this is beyond me.
Coming from Spain and having lived in Japan, I have come to believe that the US is really far away from what can be considered a civilized society. There's a huge mismatch between the public opinion (best country) and the reality that you can see through smaller things like this. Some of these things are better even in the so-called "third world countries".
Note: Spain was named for the smaller things like this; public toilets are not widely available here (even though there are some).
Not many, I was talking more about Japan for public toilets, which I certainly consider more advanced than Spain. I named Spain because of other basic things to expect in civilized countries (public and good quality health/education among others).
People don't (normally) die on the street of preventable diseases because they cannot afford a doctor. We also take care of our elders and have mostly free quality education for everyone. Our streets are clean and we have public infrastructure/services.
But job opportunities do suck, that's why most of the good people go abroad to get better jobs.
"If local government can't use local taxes to provide shared toilet facilities to stop us all having to defecate in the streets then what are they (and taxes) for?"
Well, there are many different ways to tax things. This is a pretty big area of study in e.g. economics and public polciy.
Certainly, one way to tax is to e.g. collect income taxes from everyone and then use it to maintain public toilets. But another way to tax things is to directly tax the thing itself - like in this case, taxing the use of the toilet.
This has some drawbacks and some benefits. One of the benefits is that you're making the toilet more akin to a regular, private good - people pay for what they use, which works pretty well in most cases.
Of course you can appeal to emotion and say "what, we'll make poor people not able to use restrooms"? Clever as that is, what about the alternative appeal - are you really comfortable with a poor person's taxes going to support the public toilets of the 1%? The areas they live have public restrooms too, and I'm sure they cost a hell of a lot more to maintain than most public restrooms.
I have no idea how this actually works in the real world - do rich 1%'ers public toilets cost a lot? Are they supported by taxes (at least, not on the municipal level)? Is there any amount of poor people unable to find access to restrooms that this is even a problem?
I don't know. I'm just saying, the view expressed by Stallman is not nuanced, doesn't provide any data to back him up, only goes for a totally surface-level idea of the morality, and supports it with emotion.
NOT everything in the world is a totally clear black & white moral issue, and not everyone that disagrees with you is necessarily morally wrong! When you make every issue a moral & emotional one, you lose out on actual thoughtful intelligence, or on the idea that smart people can think of different ways of cooperating that might make sense to them.
I can't believe you're making an argument against public toilets.
> But another way to tax things is to directly tax the thing itself - like in this case, taxing the use of the toilet.
That is not really Tax, but more so a Fee.
> Of course you can appeal to emotion and say "what, we'll make poor people not able to use restrooms"? Clever as that is, what about the alternative appeal - are you really comfortable with a poor person's taxes going to support the public toilets of the 1%? The areas they live have public restrooms too, and I'm sure they cost a hell of a lot more to maintain than most public restrooms.
I find it hard to think how the poor would use public restrooms less often than people who are more well off, considering the work environment, public transport dependency, and other factors.
> I don't know. I'm just saying, the view expressed by Stallman is not nuanced, doesn't provide any data to back him up, only goes for a totally surface-level idea of the morality, and supports it with emotion.
Access to public toilet in a civilized society is a matter of dignity and should not be only afford to those who can pay for it. Period.
"I can't believe you're making an argument against public toilets."
Err, where exactly did I do that? Seriously, point out where - I certainly didn't mean to. (Unless by public toilets you are specifically referring to free public toilets).
I was only discussing the question of how to pay for public toilets, a direct response to parent's statement about how to use tax resources. I was in no way saying anything against public toilets, only saying that there are reasonable disagreements about how to tax things, with costs and benefits associated with them, and there's no one-size-fits-all solution, especially not a one-size-is-more-moral solution.
"I find it hard to think how the poor would use public restrooms less often than people who are more well off, considering the work environment, public transport dependency, and other factors."
So do I. But I also don't think a lack of access to public toilets is a big problem among poor people in e.g. the US. I could totally be wrong about this though - I'd be happy to learn something new. But just relying on emotion to make me imagine a problem doesn't persuade me.
"Access to public toilet in a civilized society is a matter of dignity and should not be only afford to those who can pay for it. Period."
I agree, but emphatically wanting something to be available to everyone doesn't change the basic economic reality - there are different ways to pay for things, different ways of distributing things, different ways to collet taxes, each with costs and benefits, and it's worthwhile trying to find the right solution.
And don't get me wrong - in places like the US, there is certainly enough money to make sure everyone gets access to public toilets. That still doesn't mean there is only one possible moral way to do things! And it still doesn't absolve anyone making an argument against a certain way of doing things from at least demonstrating there is a problem, instead of simply attacking the current way with emotional appeals.
Note: Just to be clear, I hate pay restrooms too, and try to avoid using them if I can. I just don't think that my beliefs about things are necessarily morally superior, and I certainly don't think it's in general morally correct to force others how to do things. And I think it's worth looking at all sides of an issue and understanding cause and effect - this is the essence of science.
> If local government can't use local taxes to provide shared toilet facilities to stop us all having to defecate in the streets then what are they (and taxes) for?
If local government can't use local taxes to provide free food to everyone to stop us all having to starve in the streets then what are they (and taxes) for?
Is access to toilets a more fundamental human right than access to food?
Edit: 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.
>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.
> Edit: 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.
Food is something we spend a significant amount of money on, and have wildly different preferences in purchasing. Toilets are something we spend very little on, and all are purchasing something extremely similar. Needing to prove you require hundreds of pounds of assistance for is different from having to prove you require a few quid occasionally to not have to go and shit in an alley.
The key difference here is that to give free basic food to the wealthy would be wasteful (they don't need it and it's not what they might want) as well as expensive. Giving the wealthy access to a public toilet for free is not a huge incidental cost and is likely far cheaper and easier than any kind of tokens or voucher schemes (really, how well is that going to work for the homeless?).
You also cannot boycott food. Boycotting paid for toilets means those who can go somewhere else, such as at home. Boycotting food means you die.
If you accept that government letting people starve to death is ok, the only thing I have left to point out is that toilets tend to be more of an immediate need.
You appeared to be saying "government can't feed those in need, it shouldn't provide toilets for those in need either". Apologies for misreading you; I certainly wasn't the only one!
Wrt your edit: as I mentioned in my original comment, going to the toilet is usually a much more pressing need. How would you efficiently ensure 'the right people' are using the free toilet? I would contend that it's better all round to just have a free toilet, paid for out of taxes, that anyone can use.
That's the point of welfare programmes: to provide the basic life-sustaining means to those who don't have them. Food, housing, warmth, and sanitation.
So yes, many societies do use taxes to provide free food (or food-stamps, or a welfare cheque) to those in need, to stop us having to starve in the streets.
>Of course I'm not arguing against feeding the needy, or against social nets in general.
Of course you do. You just concat a nice relativizing clause to the end, to not feel like a monster.
Sorry, but in a world where people are starving, because the likes of you want to shirk responsibilities, noone could ever be not on guard. What a nightmare.
To constantly have to live with your back to the wall. And the irony, is that after you paid for the gated community guard, for the area to be exclusive, for the medicine and for the weapons- you paid more then European taxes for a "welfare" state - and got less.
> Of course you do [argue against feeding the needy, or against social nets in general].
No, I really don't.
> And the irony, is that after you paid for the gated community guard, for the area to be exclusive, for the medicine and for the weapons- you paid more then European taxes for a "welfare" state - and got less.
You're incorrectly assuming that I'm not European. I'm also not living in a gated community, and there is no one guarding me personally.
> [...] to not feel like a monster [...] the likes of you want to shirk responsibilities [...] What a nightmare [...]
You're seriously overreacting, and you're making extreme, unfounded assumptions about my opinions and motivations. That's not the way to have a factual debate. I won't continue this discussion under these conditions.
You are right this posting was a bit tongue in cheek with regards to the multiple Stallman posts already on the frontpage. But I do genuinely agree with him and this shows his uncompromising viewpoints and how he applies his ideals to topics outside of tech.
> Community toilets (and streets clear of shit & piss) are, in my opinion, a fundamental and should be the basis of all civilised society. The fact that so many modern cities seem to have forgotten this is beyond me.
Totally agree with that and Japan and many countries in Asia really get that.
I know at least in my city the removal of public bathrooms is due to homeless and drug problem. If you have 24 hour public toilets they just become homeless houses. It is frustrating though to be on the train through a less-than-great neighborhood and having to go to the bathroom... knowing that there are no available public ones and all of the commercial entities either try and refuse or force you to purchase something. Bit of a nightmare when you're in that I NEED TO GO NOW emergency mode.
Somewhat off topic, but UK law means any toilet in a licensed establishment is available for free. The law requires licensed establishment to provide free tap water to anyone requesting it. A separate law requires somewhere that serves drinks to someone to give them access to toilets. So if you ask for free tap water, you can use the toilet.
You might think it's funny, but plenty of us agree with his stance and I'm sure we could have a decent discussion about it. Whether or not the fact that it's stallman makes it suitable for HN is another matter.
I still am not a fan of Stallman and still have to agree. Stallman sadly is right about most of the things he says. He has rather extremist stances sometimes, but that doesn't mean he is wrong.
Maybe I'll stop using some of those services. I actually have a resolution going on about not buying books off Amazon anymore. I just came across too many authors and bookshop saying that Amazon has the practice of saying "either give us specical/exclusive rights or we won't sell your book". I used to like Amazon, and heck, I also was understanding about them trying to avoid taxes, because most companies start doing that at some point, but extorting authors of books is way too horrible.
Also here there are counter examples. There is many games you can get from the developers, from Steam and from GoG for example, so why can't Amazon not be horrible?
Sorry, got a bit distracted about the Amazon link also being up there.
Calls for boycotting companies somehow aren't as popular anymore, despite having the internet and topics like the NDAP going viral. I think most people agree that in our society money has a lot of power and phrases like "vote with your money" have a point. Yet looking at the 60s till 80s those things were way more popular, which is a bit odd.
Be it Skype, Uber or Amazon. You don't have to hate them, but calling out bad practices and acting upon that information with not using their services seems to be a reasonable way to have a positive impact.
In other words it seems odd that certain minor design improvements can justify paying a lot more for a product or service, while that barely seems to be true for the ethics of a product - outside of the food sector that is.
> "either give us specical/exclusive rights or we won't sell your book"
Amazon thinks of themselves as a publisher now, so when you put your book on Amazon without publishing via them they view you as 'the competition' using their hard won resources.
As a publisher, they view asking for exclusive rights to be a normal course of doing business.
The problem is that some people still think they're just a book store.
Is using the toilet a human right then, and if so, whose duty is it to volunteer to clean it up? Why are paid toilets nastier than paid food? Why not give poor people money instead of spending time (and in this case, a certain effort you can't even brag about in polite society) on yet another boycott? Is there any social institution that is not boycotted by Stallman?
> "[...] whose duty is it to volunteer to clean it up?"
While this isn't applicable in all areas, a rule of thumb could be "those who making money with the people which have to use toilets".
Anecdotal example: I'm living in an amusement district of a big German City. There are very few public toilets and most of the few are paid ones. So every weekend the whole district is smelling like a big bowl of piss, except in winter when the frozen pee of multiple weekends accumulate until there is the big pee-melt.
Why not making all those bars, clubs and liqor stores pay for the maintanance of free public toilets?
Or better yet, why not enact laws that say bars, clubs, gas stations, liquor stores, restaurants and cafés have to have free toilets? Give them some compensation, e.g. government pays for putting in or upgrading the bathroom and the restaurant just has to keep it clean and open. It solves most of the problems with public toilets out on the street, such as them being nasty and occupied by homeless people, because the owner of the establishment wants to keep it nice and clean.
In the US, there's a law that says all places that serve food and aren't on a public street (e.g. a food truck), have to have a public toilet.
At least in my jurisdiction, gas station don't have public toilets because they want to---they have it because since they serve reheated hot dogs, they are required to have a toilet.
Same thing in Russia. It doesn't always work well, but in most cases it does. As for mass public events - usually there are free street portable toilets provided as well. In most office buildings there are free toilets as well, and in all shopping malls, of course. Cinemas, theatres, medical institutions... All of those are publicly accessible without any questions asked.
To be honest, I can name only 2 places where the toilets are paid in Russia - train and some bus stations and there are paid toilets near metro stations in Moscow.
It's a question of property right. In particular, the shared property of the common parts of a city.
For the private parts of a city (eg. apartments), they usually include toilets, and you expect your guest to use them instead of shitting in your kitchen or living room.
Similarly, as _owner_ of a share of the common parts of your city, you have the choice of providing public toilets, so that guests, visitors, or just citizen far from their home can be expected to use them, instead of shitting in the public space, thus degrading the bacteriological common space (feces can transmit some bad illnesses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecal–oral_route ).
The right is with you and I to not have to step in someone else's shit when walking down the road. Therefor it is our responsibility to provide toilets for those who have none, those who need them more often and for those who are far away from their own. This is what tax is for.
Indeed, it effectively used to be - they typically are and were paid for with property taxes, which is a proxy for LVT. The political decisions to decline property tax revenue is the reason why many closed.
Landlords' entitlement to an ever larger stream of rental income that includes the value of land which they had no hand in creating or making valuable is largely why state/city budgets are in such a mess, why the 1% steadily gets richer and why property values keep going up.
> Sure, if you are paying taxes is the government cannot track you, but if you have to pay for the toilets, the government can suddenly track you.
If I pay taxes, the government knows I live in the country.
If I pay for the toilets, someone can create a full and detailed movement profile of where I am when, and track me – and predict where I will be on what day at what time.
Paying separately, with each payment tracked by location, creates a rough, but still usable geolocation system. Which can be abused in the same way as giving everyone an ankle monitor, or as having location tracking active on your phone.
> Free stuff looses from quality quickly, and the poor, the homeless and the druggies usually do not honor public property and it is quickly degraded.
The government knows where you live, where you work, and who are your relatives, and the same data about them. They will not track you by the toilets.
So the only opportunity you give those who wish to track you is the use of public toilets, because you never pay for any other kind of goods or services, you are invisible to CCTV cameras, but for some reason you can only use public loos. (not one at your workplace, at home, or one at a restaurant you are given an untrackable meal. Also there are no other means to create a movement profile about you.
I have used public toilets less than 10 times last year, and paid for it each time. What a profile the evil toilet-trackers have about me now!
>> Free stuff looses from quality quickly, and the poor, the homeless and the druggies usually do not honor public property and it is quickly degraded.
>That mentality is quite troubling to see.
I agree that that mentality is troubling to see, yet they still stick to it. I know no ethical way to solve it.
> Pay toilets are nasty, and ought to be illegal. Those of us who are not poor can afford the price, if we accept the practice; poor people can't.
Can't this be applied to basically anything? Food, water, electricity, pubic transport. Let's refuse to pay for all of these otherwise the poor can't afford it. Is this a parody webpage?
You don't think society has a duty to feed people who would otherwise starve to death? Who do you think should pay to clean up the rotting corpse they leave behind?
It comes down to values. Our values have been shaped by stories that on average yield a high reward for a lot of people and they are based on aesthetics, empathy, social stability, food, peace, absence of pain and chaos and so on.
But it also has more direct causal motivation: If you don't fight for basic human rights, taxes, plurality etc., you will likely erode the stability of your own life unless you are completely emotionally, economically and technologically independent (which I doubt you are). There is always the possibility of an unexpected economic decline which a rational agent should take into account for maximizing their reward signals.
Because I'd rather live in a world where a few pennies out of my pocket results in everyone living a decent life, sans street corpses. Seriously, even if you're an extreme individualist, is there NO price you would pay to not have dead bodies strewn about the streets?
Food and water are already largely covered as a basic need in modern countries. Electricity and pubic transport have nothing directly humiliating or existential about them, but people are also negotiating to introduce a basic right for these commodities. Payed toilets in some sense do occupy a special spot in this space because they are such a basic and often very immediate and unpredictable need. This is different from e.g. the need for water, because you can typically suppress it for several hours or even days in an emergency situation.
I understand why toilets aren't free. Free public toilets in urban areas are almost invariably dens of filth and crime. Unfortunately, pay toilets are invariably filthy themselves.
It boggles the mind that rich "western" countries aren't able to keep public infrastructre clean and free.
In my experience, it's a function of the environment in which the toilet lies. A toilet in a quiet underground car park is almost guaranteed to be more disgusting than a toilet in a well-lit, busy concourse. I've used pay toilets that are pretty disgusting, too; never thought to ask for a refund, though...
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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 think the German idea of paying businesses to allow the public to use their toilets, is brilliant. It's cheaper for the government than running their own toilets.
I don't want to be "that guy" but, here in Italy, I have heard of several accounts of Stallmans visiting local Linux User Groups (full of his "fans"), and he would have them pay for his dinner or he wouldn't go.
Although I understand his point:
- I find pay toilets cleaner and I am not sure it is worth delving into changing the national policy of better maintained free clean toilets with all the problem we want to see addressed first;
- I am starting to think his addressing to "proprietary" stuff is more related to "avoid paying" than defending what is free.
> I don't want to be "that guy" but, here in Italy, I have heard of several accounts of Stallmans visiting local Linux User Groups (full of his "fans"), and he would have them pay for his dinner or he wouldn't go.
So just like any touring speaker?
> - I am starting to think his addressing to "proprietary" stuff is more related to "avoid paying" than defending what is free.
This view is false. You should read more of what he has written, especially in regard to 'free' services that are only financially free.
> he would have them pay for his dinner or he wouldn't go
I assume this means he was not paid for his intervention otherwise? That sounds perfectly reasonable to me. In my city, there is a big punk squat/concert room which does not pay bands for playing, but they provide them with shelter and food. That's like, the minimum when you ask someone to come.
Also, I wouldn't see myself inviting friends to my place and ask them to pay for their food.
> I don't want to be "that guy" but, here in Italy, I have heard of several accounts of Stallmans visiting local Linux User Groups (full of his "fans"), and he would have them pay for his dinner or he wouldn't go.
That doesn't sound unreasonable to me -- it's probably the least "fans" could do to have a celebrity at their event, which he's going out of his way to attend.
I wonder how he feels about using a toilet in a restaurant/cafe that is "For customers only". Should he stop using any bathroom in these commercial places?
Many things are necessary in life. Most of those things cost money. If you think poor people should be able to afford them too, then give them money (direct or through government) and let them spend it how they want. I suspect they may find pay toilets convenient as well.
I'm ok with government run/subsidized pay toilets, if no private company is willing to provide service in an area.
But if something is free, usually the service quality is also such, and many people, who would not use it if it was not free are not taking care and ruining these services.
Some years ago the first time I saw a pay toilet I thought the same way, but later on one day I was stomach sick, I appreciated so much that just paying 0.5€ it was ensuring me a perfectly clean and hygienical toilet to spend a sick moment of my life, I'm not against public toilets, I'm neither against pay ones.
Taking this view to its logical conclusion will be that all private businesses should be illegal. Such experiments were tried in large parts of the world in the 20th century. We all know how they turned out.
In the UK the majority of public toilets have been removed over the past few decades, and some of them have been replaced by paid toilets run by private companies where you pay a small fee (<£1). The removal and ofttimes poor maintenance of the public loos by local government and then privatisation was actually quite political at the time! Now people are just resigned to the fact that public loos don't really exist, and you just need to get a coffee at Starbucks if you really need to go.
I'm not sure where do you live. It is cheap even by Hungarian standards, where average wages are around 800 euros.
You must see that public toilets are seldom used by the individual, usually one can serve such needs at home, at school, at work or at a restaurant, where it is usually free (for guests at restaurants). When one is in the (usually unexpected) need, then prefers cleanliness to freeness.
So you can pay for toilets, but you choose to use free toilets. You're making these free toilets worse by your usage and creating incentive for them to become paid, only making things worse for those who cannot pay.
That initially sounds like it makes sense, but in reality it doesn't.
For any bathroom facility there is already a relatively fixed regular cost being applied to maintain them. As free bathrooms are nearly always funded by community purses their existence is justified by usage, whereas paid bathrooms are nearly always funded by commercial entities which justify their existence with profit.
Basically this was the mechanism the USA won the cold war against the USSR. Now almost all former socialist states are capitalist, because they went bankrupt.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13322288 (56 comments)