While it’s certainly possible to evade some of that spending, it’s not easy, and not possible for everyone all the time. After I have commuted, worked all day, and then commuted again, I sometimes must make a trade-off between preparing a meal for the next day—and sacrificing sleep or time with my children—or just buying it from a restaurant.

And, to the greatest extent possible, our rentier capital class is trying to make even those small possibilities of evasion impossible. In many places, your ability to engage in the basic human functions of urination and defecation are contingent on making purchases—“toilets are for customers only.”

In our ever-darkening dystopia, we’re now given the choice to relieve ourselves “for free” in public toilets, as long as we first pay the sellers of smartphones for access.

https://futurism.com/public-toilet-requires-qr-code-tracks-cleanliness-score

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#PublicSanitation #BoringDystopia

When archeologists and historians talk about ancient “civilization,” they often highlight the presence of public sanitation—plumbing, sewers, baths, aqueducts, etc—as a particularly noteworthy achievement.

We in the “rich” world of course, have entirely privatized the basic human functions of urination and defecation.

But people need to pee and poop! Now matter how much we try to criminalize being poor while having a human body, piss and shit are going to exit those bodies, no matter what. That can happen in a toilet or on the street, but it will happen, regardless of a person’s ability to pay.

And so, somehow, we managed to bully a private firm into assuming responsibility for this public utility and reopened this commons. Can we do it for others? I feel like we need to study this case more closely for replicable lessons.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/nov/18/starbucks-under-pressure-restrooms-open-public

#commons #starbucks #publicsanitation