Today as I was trying to think of what to write about for my first blog post I found myself struggling with finding a topic. Every idea I came up with felt a bit forced and implausible. I was also having a hard time concentrating because my friend was playing an online game on their xbox. And then it hit me. The subject matter for my post was literally right in front of me. My friend was producing a negative externality with the amount of noise they were emitting while shouting at the tv and I wanted them to quiet down so that I could do my work. Now I just had to figure out how to fix the externality so that I could focus on my homework and have a happy ending for my blog post.
The living room is a public space with the seating and communal tv being public goods that I could not exclude my friend from using. So I had to think of another solution. I could just go do my homework in my room and that would be that but I know I work better outside of my bedroom. I landed on looking to Coase to find an answer. Coase says that I need to first see if the person producing the externality is liable for it. If they are then I can choose to force them to stop or I can accept payment from them that equates to what I have lost because of the externality being produced. If I couldn’t hold my friend liable then I would have to decide if I was willing to pay them to stop producing the externality. I started by determining if I had rights to a certain level of noise pollution in a public space. I found an article that stated that people do have rights to a certain level of noise pollution and that government agencies are responsible for regulating noise in workplaces. I had some legal standing to force my friend to quiet down but I certainly wasn't going to involve the state or local government in my little issue and I wasn't sure if I could argue that my living room constituted a workplace. If I couldn’t hold my friend liable for the externality then I would have to find a way to pay them to keep their voice down. I wasn’t just going to offer my friend money to quiet down because I’m a broke college student. What I do know is that my friend loves tea but they hate the work that goes into making it. Therefore I took it upon myself to make my friend some tea with the condition that they would lower their voice for the remainder of the time that I was using the living room. And might I just say that it worked beautifully. Ten minutes of work out of my day provided me with the perfect environment to work in, a happy friend, and an extra cup of tea for myself to get me through my homework.
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