Man, lotta vague libertarian energy here, but to answer your question:
Why nickel and dime everyone that is probably never going to even see the fountain instead of letting the people that want/need pay for it?
In general, the answer to this usually boils down to one of two answers:
choosing instead to directly nickel and dime people at the point of service comes with overhead and is wildly inefficient. You want to add an internet connection to every public water fountain? Or at the very least wire them with electricity to power some kind of vending machine system? Or perhaps have a person standing there to charge people? Someone will have to pay extra for any additional steps in what could otherwise just be, well, a simple faucet.
More often than not, the people that need things the most are not the people who can pay for them. These people still need to survive, because letting the poor suffer and die will still cost you and everyone else money.
And study after study shows that when we all pay a little to help people in general, we can all save a lot in, say, street sanitization, law enforcement, healthcare services, etc. Things that you have to provide especially if people can’t afford it.
Man, lotta vague libertarian energy here, but to answer your question:
In general, the answer to this usually boils down to one of two answers:
choosing instead to directly nickel and dime people at the point of service comes with overhead and is wildly inefficient. You want to add an internet connection to every public water fountain? Or at the very least wire them with electricity to power some kind of vending machine system? Or perhaps have a person standing there to charge people? Someone will have to pay extra for any additional steps in what could otherwise just be, well, a simple faucet.
More often than not, the people that need things the most are not the people who can pay for them. These people still need to survive, because letting the poor suffer and die will still cost you and everyone else money.
And study after study shows that when we all pay a little to help people in general, we can all save a lot in, say, street sanitization, law enforcement, healthcare services, etc. Things that you have to provide especially if people can’t afford it.