Clean Neighborhoods ๐ Fine or Incentivize?
Remember when I had posted about the governments' intention to implement Value Added Tax (VAT)? Not that far yet; don't even know the status. What I do know, is that the current government is busy raising prices of relatively a lot of services, like electricity for example, fee rates, concession rights, etc., to get out of the financial mess we're in at the moment.
And today it hit me, after reading @flaxz's post and seeing how clean the parks look in his part of the world. I commented that although a lot of governments, NGO's, schools, television programs, etc. have tried to "educate" the public in being more environmentally conscious and how healthy it it is to have a clean neighborhood and that it could indirectly stimulate tourism, it hasn't had the effect they had hoped it would have.
That the streets in the capital flood during rainy season, is partly also because of clogged sewage systems, so a mind shift really needs to come. Especially the public spaces, like parks and/or (free) public sporting grounds should be kept clean. I'm not saying that all those places are dirty though, but most of the clean ones are/were adopted by NGO's, who see to it that they stay clean and the apparatuses are in good condition.
Back to why I had mentioned the government raising prices of services earlier. It juts came to me "What if the government introduces fines? So those who litter literally have to pay for it?" This way the government gets to cash in on undesirable behavior and maybe the (wider) public will start to think twice or thrice before littering and hopefully change its behavior as a whole. It worked for some places like Singapore and Hong Kong.
And I know, I know punishing doesn't always work. Maybe give out incentives for those who are more environmentally friendly? Tax reduction perhaps or better yet crypto tokens? Yes, defeats the purpose of cashing in, but this could indirectly have a positive impact on the economy: healthy public/workers, bring value to the workforce and clean cities could indirectly attract tourists. And places like Taipei and Kigali (Rwanda) have shown that it is possible without fines. It's a sense of community, responsibility and accountability that help keep their neighborhoods clean.
