Woke San Francisco Liberal meets reality. Amazing.

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[–]StillLessons 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

I've been a lot of places in the US - and in the world generally including genuinely poor third-world countries - where toilets are not easily accessible. It's only in a very small subset of those places where this complete level of breakdown occurs. Most places, people figure out how to work around the inconvenience without public shitting. People don't shit in front of other people. It's a powerful and near-universal social norm. While San Francisco is not alone in this, it is the only place in the US or Europe where I've seen it happen, and it's not about toilet availability; it's a segment of the population being so thoroughly de-moralized (drug addicts and mentally ill) that they've completely lost touch with social norms. Rather than bring them back within the social norms, however, the city (as several others are also doing to a lesser level - L.A., NYC, Seattle, etc) is accommodating every decline in social function so these people never have to learn responsibility. If you keep letting a subset of your population do whatever the fuck they want while giving them only 100% positive feedback, this is one of your endpoints.

[–]Hematomato 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

The way I see it, you can train a dog not to shit in the house, and you can scold a dog for shitting in the house. But if you leave your dog locked in the house for 48 hours while you go camping, and you come back and there's shit in your house, there's no point in yelling "GODDAMN IT OSCAR YOU SHAT IN THE HOUSE." What, did you think you bought one of those non-shitting dogs?

You're absolutely right: not shitting in front of other people is a basic social norm. Not only that, it's probably instinctive. It didn't break down because people just woke up one day and said "to Hell with social norms." It broke down because there was nowhere to shit.

And we're not going to solve it by going "GODDAMN IT OSCAR YOU SHAT ON THE SIDEWALK." You can take Oscar to jail forty times; you can tase him and beat him with a billy club; in the end, nothing will do any good until Oscar has access to a fucking toilet.

[–]StillLessons 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

If it's about nowhere to shit, why did you and I not shit in the streets when we were in SF?

You're overemphasizing the secondary problem. The primary problem is that the "social services" system which is supposed to rehabilitate people who end up on the bottom is profoundly dysfunctional.

There are two groups: the addicts and treatable mentally ill, and the mentally ill for whom treatment on an outpatient basis is ineffective. For the first group, social services needs to be re-oriented away from "affirming the person no matter what" to "having the person learn the behaviors required to live in less squalid conditions as a requisite of receiving benefits". For the second group, we need to accept that involuntary institutionalization is an unfortunate and sad necessity for these people, preferable to them imposing their unacceptable (and far too often dangerous) lifestyles upon the broader population. Them wandering the streets is not helpful for them any more than it is for the rest of us living and working around them.

[–]Hematomato 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

If it's about nowhere to shit, why did you and I not shit in the streets when we were in SF?

Well obviously there are plenty of places to shit if you have money. Just pop into any bar or restaurant, buy a beer, take a dump, and then either drink the beer or don't.

If you don't have money, you pretty much have one option. The sidewalk.

Like I said, if you're talking about "teaching the behaviors required to live in less squalid conditions," well, you're putting the cart before the horse. It doesn't do anyone any good to be "taught" to use a toilet if they can't find a toilet.

[–]ID10T 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Personally I think if you can’t afford to take a shit in private you shouldn’t be allowed to live in that place. Options should be, leave the city, or go to jail or an institution. The latter two options are expensive, but undesirable enough that most will take the first option.

[–]ActuallyNot 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Expensive to enforce.