Averting the Tragedy of the Common(s) Room

  The living room in my 5-person apartment is constantly spotless.  However, the only roommate I have EVER SEEN deep cleaning the living room— wiping, vacuuming, Lysol-ing, etc— is Margaret Shuffler. I think that this “cleanliness” in Unit 12 may constitute an externality: though “cleanliness” is the intended outcome of Shuffler’s cleaning (and not a byproduct like smoke/donut smell), us other four roommates benefit from the “cleanliness” without paying, and this isn’t reflected in Shuffler's private “marginal cost of producing cleanliness” curve. Regardless, I know that this “cleanliness” qualifies as public good, since it is nonrival (I experience the same pleasant scents as Shuffler) and non-exclusive (we must all walk through the common room to enter our bedrooms). However, even though only one person privately provides the public good, the entire apartment receives the same amount of  "cleanliness" that we would aim to produce via public provisioning, or (in other words) at least as much “cleanliness” as we would individually demand in a private, one-unit apartment. Remarkably, the private market (i.e. Margaret Shuffler) provides the optimal quantity of the public good EVEN THOUGH she KNOWS that 80% of the population (Kat, Grace, Mary, and I) FREE RIDES. 

I think Grueber explores this odd situation— the private market providing a near-optimal amount of a public good— in Chapter 7. Grueber explains that, when “some individuals care more than others,” then “enjoyment net costs get very large for any one individual” and “the provision of the public good starts to approximate private good provision.” In the case of our apartment, Margaret Shuffler despises “dirtiness,” whereas our other roommates only moderately dislike dirtiness. In fact, she prefers “cleanliness” so much that she is willing to completely provision her high, optimal amount of cleanliness with complete knowledge of our preferences & free riding... we free riders should at least thank Margaret Shuffler and appreciate her remarkable housekeeping tendencies.