vs "I never understood why the company would not pay taxes to improve the environment around its chosen home"?

I don't think SF is an example of the place where the link between paying a lot of taxes and get the environment around improved is as obvious as you seem to imply.

Like paying $2m for a public bathroom?

*300k in reality: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/san-francisco/san-fran...

Note though the reduction didn't come from anything getting in fact more efficient, but from "two companies donated materials and installation" - probably to quell the bad press. And it looks like $1.7m is still going to get spent, just maybe on two toilets instead of one.

The donated services and material was worth $425,000 [1]. The project costs came down on their own, meaning they never needed to be that high. It was an overestimate. If there wasn’t bad publicity then who knows if grift would have allowed it to stay too high or not, we’ll never know.

Where are you seeing the $1.7m is still getting spent?

[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/noe-valley-s-pricey-p...

Yeah, because that works...

the most dangerous thing the average N American does every day is drive...

This is peak HN - "stop putting me in danger be making me leave my house"

Go ahead and complete the thought in the context of the comment I was replying to and review if your "dunk" is conflicting with the point I'm making...

Companies inconvenience and put their employees in danger (of varying levels) at the whims of management. They will sign a lease in a high-crime neighborhood to get a tax break, they will force you to come to the office because the CEO loves and misses the "energy" of having butts in seats and the employees will be forced to take on the non-zero probability of being involved in a traffic accident - its not nothing; auto insurance companies sent refunds during lockdowns because of this.

Imagine they had to work on a field or something,