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People don't want to “abuse” commons like public restrooms, parks, buses, and so on. They do so because they have no choice, having been displaced out of having
by obelos 23d ago
People don't want to “abuse” commons like public restrooms, parks, buses, and so on. They do so because they have no choice, having been displaced out of having a private place to do the things they're now forced to do in public places. This is all just an outcropping of the housing crisis, which is itself an outcropping of the billionaire crisis. End billionaires, and we have the resources to de-gild this age.
- zer0x4d 23d agoI disagree. A lot of people do not care about public facilities. They do not believe in leaving things better than they found them. You've seen these people around, you know who they are. These are the same people that don't rerack weights at the gym or don't put the cart back at the supermarket. That attitude has nothing to do with income, housing, race, or activity they are interested in. It's simply a result of narcissism. The only way is stopping excuses and enforcing the public etiquette. The world will be much better off.
- obelos 23d agoSure, and thankfully there aren't nearly as many of them out and about abusing more things if they have a private place always available to spend their time. Conscientiousness is one of the handful of measurable personality traits, and there's a scale to it because some people have more of it than others. That's not going to change. What we can change is the degree to which less conscientious people are forced to lean on the conscientiousness of others around them in order to live every moment of their lives. The collapse of social safety net—pilfered in order to pay for mega yachts and renting entire cities for a wedding receiption—in the West and particularly the US pushes those less conscientious people out into the world all the time.
- zer0x4d 23d agoI've personally never paid for a yacht or someone else's wedding, I'm not sure what you're talking about...
- SpecialistK 23d agoPeople have no choice but to smear feces on the wall and leave needles on the floor of public restrooms, or urinate inside a moving bus because housing is too expensive? Housing and wealth inequality is an undeniable issue. So is anti-social behaviour. You can be poor and even homeless without throwing self-respect out of the window. People are either responsible for their actions, in which case criminal and civil charges are on the cards, or they are not (due to mental illness and/or substance abuse) and need to be institutionalized.
- obelos 23d agoWhen the social contract fails you, why pay any regard to it at all? It's not a matter of pure, exogenous choice to do those things. It's not some abstract preference that surviving in the margins has afforded the freedom to exercise. It's a way to make sense out of the world and to have some shred of a sense of agency in a world where a person otherwise has no power.
- SpecialistK 23d agoNo, it's mostly severe drug addiction and mental illness.
- obelos 23d agoFar and away the strongest predictor of homelessness is not mental illness or drug addiction, it's housing costs. Housing cost and the subsequent increase in homelessness is the precipitator that promotes addiction and exacerbates manageable mental health issues into mental health crises.
- 9x39 23d ago>It's a way to make sense out of the world and to have some shred of a sense of agency in a world where a person otherwise has no power. Wouldn't poo-cassos be better framed in an institution cell away from the other 90% of society? That way they can get the mental support they need and rebuild their agency. If you don't have agency, you need conservators to help you address it. For children, those are parents. For adults, that's the state. Otherwise we're admitting participation in a society is pure benefit without any responsibilities.
- obelos 22d agoApparently a lot of “temporarily embarrassed billionaires” on here defending their future legacies with downvoting.