The original note, as written at the time
Everyone has a basic amount on a personal account that is actuated at the end of the month. If you behave well without engaging in any infractions, all is well and you get your full amount. If you engage in bad behaviour like overspending, public urination, public spitting, not recycling, noise making, trespassing, misuse of public property, misuse of road lanes, traffic malpractice etc., you get monthly account deductions.
Ongoing development
Everyone holds a basic amount in a personal account, paid at the end of the month. Behave well and you receive the full amount. Commit infractions — overspending, public urination, spitting, not recycling, noise, trespassing, misuse of public property, misuse of a road lane, traffic malpractice — and the monthly payment is reduced.
The list is the argument. Every item on it is a small antisocial act that is currently unpunished, not because nobody objects but because prosecution is disproportionate and a fine requires an encounter with an officer. So the behaviour continues and the street absorbs the cost.
A monthly account changes the mechanism rather than the morality. It does not punish an act; it maintains a standing relationship in which small acts matter. That is closer to how a household works than to how a court works.
The objections are serious. A payment conditioned on conduct is a lever any government can use, and the definition of bad behaviour is exactly where such a scheme becomes political. Overspending is on your own list, which is a judgement about a person’s private choices that no civic scheme has a right to make.
Then there is the problem of who is punished. A deduction is a fine by another name, and a fine falls hardest on the poorest, who are also the most visible on the street. Public urination is a crime of missing infrastructure, not of character.
The defensible version is narrow and it exists: a scheme that pays for verifiable civic contribution — sorting waste, keeping a frontage clean — rather than docking for misbehaviour, with no moral list attached.
Pay people for what they add. The moment you deduct for what they are, you have built a different instrument.