Growing up, very few things caused major fights between my sisters and me, but one thing that was a sure kickstarter was one of us chewing loudly. I have multiple vivid memories of sitting at the barstools in our kitchen eating cereal, my favorite afternoon snack, while my older sister was attempting to read a book. Sure enough, a few minutes later a fight would break out because apparently she couldn’t do her reading with my chewing in the background. Ironically, after years of not understanding her annoyance in this situation, I became aware of it myself a few years ago, and it is now one of my biggest pet peeves. I even read about a disorder called Misophonia that causes this harsh reaction, although a lot of psychologists do not consider it super legit.
With my present knowledge after taking some economics classes, I now see that my consumption of my after school cereal was causing a negative consumption externality, as it was impairing my sisters ability to read her book. In all those years of fighting, a Coasian solution never came about between us. I think the main thing that prohibited a Coasian solution is that we had no defined property rights. Neither of us had property rights to the counter, so therefore she could not demand I pay her to compensate for my chewing because I could’ve argued that she had no right over me to enjoy the common space. Ultimately our solution was the intervention of a “government”, which in this case was my mom who would simply tell us to stop arguing and just deal with it! In the end, I guess mother knows best!
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