Cleaning a House of 17 Dudes

     After living in a house with 17 guys your standards of cleanliness plummet. One starts to see forks as “clean enough,” and never wears just socks, or God forbid go barefoot, inside the house. So an opportunity for collective action presents itself; equally divide up the work and whip out the Swiffers. But, there is a reason the house is never clean. Similar to Mueller 2.1 both public goods and a prisoner’s dilemma matrix are at play. A clean house is a public good, it’s nonexcludable to any resident and non-rivalrous because my enjoyment (utility) of the clean sink does not diminish my housemate’ enjoyment. Therefore when we decide on a time to clean the house an individual can either contribute or flake. For simplicity's sake consider only 2 residents (JB and I) in the following game even though this is happening with 17 people: 

    The Nash Equilibrium is both players flaking thus identifying a reluctance to contribute to the cost of goods that bestow group benefits. In other words, the thought of a freerider is far more disgusting than black mold in the shower. However, this equilibrium is not Pareto efficient because if we both contribute then we have higher payoffs. Yet, at the end of the day it's just easier to walk around the house in your sneakers than to make everyone accountable. 

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. 

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Dress

     Recently, my friend group decided to all pitch in to get my friend Charlotte an Outdoor Voices exercise dress for her upcoming birthday. Unfortunately, the package was lost by the mail, and we were sent a replacement dress. Much to our surprise, the dress showed up a few days later. Our friend group now had two exercise dresses, but we had only paid for one. (While this may sound immoral), our group kept both dresses. Now, we all equally share the extra dress coined the "Traveling Dress," and we rotate who has possession/wearing privileges week by week. 

    After our discussion about Buchanan's continuum of private versus public goods, I have come to the conclusion that this shared private good amongst friends falls somewhere along that continuum. The degree of publicness shifts as the optimal number of consumers may no longer be just one because it makes everyone happy to share and everyone financially contributed equally. Now, the personal marginal benefits may differ amongst us similar to the levee example from class concerning Chase vs. Sampson, but no one was willing to disclose that information/preference (an issue involving preference revelation). In theory, we created our own club by limiting it to the original contributors to Charlotte's gift (even though we didn't actually pay into it a second time...). 

Downtown Busking

On Tuesday night, my girlfriend and I celebrated our two years of dating by going downtown and eating at C&O (the braised lamb was great). After dinner, we were walking to Kilroy’s when we passed a man busking on the street with his guitar. 

As we walked by, I contemplated leaving cash in his guitar case, which he conveniently left open to allow for payment. Unfortunately, I do not actually carry cash, so that idea quickly dissipated. While we enjoyed his performance of a Maroon 5 song, I was struck by the realization that I was free-riding. The music he was playing was being enjoyed by many people walking downtown and those seated nearby, enhancing their experience of downtown, but without any feasible way to exclude anyone from consuming it nor rivalry between those consuming.

Despite this fact, the public good was being provided without any government intervention, as the man was playing there voluntarily. While he may have had some expectation of payment, it was obvious that his perceived utility-maximizing option was to produce in a public space nonetheless. Although I did not ask him, I believe that he would be producing music regardless of any audience, perhaps for his own enjoyment. As such, it must have been rational to play downtown whether for the opportunity to receive some compensation, to be noticed by employers and find market opportunities, or merely his own altruism to see strangers smile (as Gruber defines in chapter 7).

Bathroom Blues

  Have you ever had to share a bathroom with 24 first-year college boys? No? Well, I have had to do it for 2 straight years, and it's a mostly awful experience. You get used to it, but it's still not optimal. Last year, my hall's bathroom looked atrocious all year. It was so bad sometimes that I would go to the other halls to shower or even just pee. The negative externalities posed by my residents deeply affected me, so I decided to make a change for the better with my hall's bathroom this year. To reduce the marginal social cost imposed by differences in hygiene, I decided to keep paper towels in the bathroom this year because UVA chose to replace them with hand dryers in all dorms at the beginning of my 2nd year. While it may seem that the true story here is about paper towels, it isn't. The true story is about a government action undertaken for reasons that benefit said government but negatively impact those who must face the consequences of the government's actions. UVA removed paper towels for "sustainability reasons," but eliminating paper towels and implementing hand dryers has a negligible impact on UVA's overall carbon footprint. 

Furthermore, other things like hygiene, noise, and, most importantly, the spread of pathogens must be considered. Hand dryers are nasty. Plain and simple. Total bacterial levels on hand dryers can be up to 30x more bacteria-infested than paper towel dispensers. In fact, UVA knows this, which is why they said paper towels were just a temporary measure to reduce disease transmission during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Does disease and germ transmission not matter during non-pandemic times?

In addition, paper towels clean up messes, so my hall's bathroom has been much cleaner this year than last. UVA should also consider the effect of having no paper towels on their custodians. Messes that were once cleaned up in bathrooms are now there to stay because residents are not bringing paper towels to the bathrooms every time they use them, and they are not using toilet paper to clean up their messes. This means that custodians are exposed to more pathogens and nasty chemicals, potentially affecting their health. Paper towels are the best way to keep restrooms clean and residents safe. Still, UVA's self-interest in maintaining and propping up its image as environmentally conscious prevents it from doing what's right for its students and faculty.

We at the hotel, motel, Hatch sound machine

If you’ve lived on Chancellor St., you’ve experienced the lovely bedtime music including, “Hotel Room Service” by Pitbull and “No Hands” by Roscoe Dash and Waka Flocka Flame. Just what you want to be listening to as you fall asleep before your 9:00am Public Choice class, right? 

Well, when my roommate and I moved out of dorms and onto Chancellor St., we immediately decided that this was not what we wanted to listen to as we fell asleep. My roommate was set on a Hatch sound machine. I, however, thought we should first try ear plugs or even just playing sound from our phones to save money. She was convinced these methods would not work and begged me for a week to go in on the sound machine with her, but I held out, determined that she would break before me. And eventually, she did. One night I came home to our room with a brand new, wonderful, Hatch sound machine (which I really wanted all along). But this way I didn’t have to pay for it, and I would still reap the benefits. 

The music from the bars was a negative externality. The bars have the property rights to play their music late into the night on any night. My roommate and I had the choice to internalize the negative externality into lack of sleep or buy a sound machine, opting to spend money rather than hours of sleep to internalize the externality. I opted for a third option: my roommate spends the money, and I free ride.