Why do we need more public bathrooms? I’m skeptical because if there was demand for more bathrooms, then I’d expect the market to produce them.
The fact that the market demonstrably hasn’t provided this good is little (in fact, practically no) evidence regarding its desirability because the topic of discussion is public bathrooms, meaning precisely the types of goods/services that are created, funded, and taken care of by the government as opposed to private entities.
I disagree. My reasoning is as follows. I believe that (P1) there is a high correlation between demand for additional bathrooms owned-operated by private businesses (ie, private bathrooms) and demand for additional bathrooms owned-operated by a government (ie, public bathrooms), and that (P2) there is little demand for additional private bathrooms. So, I infer that (C1) there is little demand for additional public bathrooms.
Do you then object to (P1), (P2) or my inference?
In particular, these are built on public land (where private developers do not have property rights) for public use (with no excludability) and with little-to-no rivalry, at least across mid-to-long-term timeframes (past the point where another person is physically occupying the bathroom or dirtying it). As such, they fit the frame of public goods to a reasonable extent.
I’m not sure why you are arguing that bathrooms are public goods (or are you arguing that just public bathrooms are public goods?). Is it because you are implicitly making this argument?
P3: Free markets do not do a good job of supplying public goods.
P4: Bathrooms are public goods.
C2: So, free markets do not do a good job of supplying bathrooms.
(Sorry for my awkward usage of the term “good job”, my economic knowledge is weak.)
I suspect the argument that it is ridiculous comes from an intuition that the need to go to the bathroom is such a human universal that we are all accustomed to, and the knowledge that having to hold in your urine is seriously unpleasant is so universal, that it becomes a matter of basic consideration for your fellow human beings to provide them with the ability to access the bathroom in an establishment when they clearly need to.
Are you describing a heuristic here? Specifically that, if some need is (i) universal among humans, (ii) widely understood and (iii) unpleasant, then often one should immediately act to accommodate anyone who reports that they currently have that need.
And taking a step back, I suspect that I made a mistake and should have initially asked “What do you mean by the term ‘ridiculous’ here?” As I’m not sure if @dr_s is just reporting that he doesn’t like the current situation, or that it makes him laugh, or that it causes harm, or that it could be easily improved, or something else entirely.
But thanks for trying to explain the reasoning to me.
There is probably some connection to be drawn here with the debates and intuitions people have over/regarding price gouging, since the person needing to go to the bathroom is in a position of such a temporarily increased demand that it becomes massively unpleasant for them to even make it to other establishments, putting the current establishment owner in a position of power (benefitting from a restricted supply, from the perspective of the customer) that they are “abusing” by compelling the customer to buy something they did not care about in order to gain access to the toilet.
Interesting. I do not share the intuition that price gouging ought to be made illegal, so maybe you are on to something.
I think (P2) has a somewhat strange framing, particularly given the fact that ‘private bathrooms’ can refer to either bathrooms in the homes/dwellings of people, which does not really have much to do with the conversation here, or to auxiliary goods in private establishments, in which case they satisfy the demand from the costumers that are there to purchase the main goods being offered (such as coffee or breakfast etc) but not from the revolving cast of people who are not interested in the main goods (but, as a result, in the current system their ‘demand’ for the bathrooms does not causally impact the creation of such bathrooms).
In any case, going from (P1) and (P2) to (C1) does seem locally valid to a reasonable extent.
Are you describing a heuristic here? Specifically that, if some need is (i) universal among humans, (ii) widely understood and (iii) unpleasant, then often one should immediately act to accommodate anyone who reports that they currently have that need.
Yes, that is the general heuristic I am describing, perhaps with the following added requirement: (iv) the person reporting they need it appears genuine and doesn’t appear to try to exploit you in a bad-faith manner.
As I’m not sure if @dr_s is just reporting that he doesn’t like the current situation, or that it makes him laugh, or that it causes harm, or that it could be easily improved, or something else entirely.
I would suspect it means he thinks it is bad in such a clear and manifest manner that it is an instance and a signal of general civilizational inadequacy and insanity.
Interesting. I do not share the intuition that price gouging ought to be made illegal, so maybe you are on to something.
Neither do I, although I suppose I implicitly did back before I studied enough economics to change my view on it.
Why do you disagree with (P1)? Do you explain it here: “in which case they satisfy the demand from the costumers that are there to purchase the main goods being offered (such as coffee or breakfast etc) but not from the revolving cast of people who are not interested in the main goods (but, as a result, in the current system their ‘demand’ for the bathrooms does not causally impact the creation of such bathrooms).”?
And I completely grant that I might be mistaken about (P1). I haven’t spent many cycles investigating this topic.
I think (P2) has a somewhat strange framing, particularly given the fact that ‘private bathrooms’ can refer to either bathrooms in the homes/dwellings of people, which does not really have much to do with the conversation here, or to auxiliary goods in private establishments
I tried to give a definition of “private bathrooms” in my previous comment, specifically, ”… bathrooms owned-operated by private businesses (ie, private bathrooms)...”. But to be more explicit, by “private bathrooms” I mean the auxiliary goods in private business establishments (eg, cafes) and the primary goods offered by just-bathroom businesses.
Does that clear up the strangeness?
in which case they satisfy the demand from the costumers that are there to purchase the main goods being offered (such as coffee or breakfast etc) but not from the revolving cast of people who are not interested in the main goods (but, as a result, in the current system their ‘demand’ for the bathrooms does not causally impact the creation of such bathrooms).
Why is the demand of the people only interested in using the bathroom not being satisfied? I expect them to buy the cheapest thing and then use the bathroom. But maybe I’m confused.
And why is their demand not causally impacting the creation of such bathrooms?
In any case, going from (P1) and (P2) to (C1) does seem locally valid to a reasonable extent.
So given that you find the inference to be of good-ish quality and assuming that we can clear up the strangeness with (P2), then does it follow that you would accept (C1) if you became convinced that (P1) was likely true?
Are you describing a heuristic here? Specifically that, if some need is (i) universal among humans, (ii) widely understood and (iii) unpleasant, then often one should immediately act to accommodate anyone who reports that they currently have that need.
Yes, that is the general heuristic I am describing, perhaps with the following added requirement: (iv) the person reporting they need it appears genuine and doesn’t appear to try to exploit you in a bad-faith manner.
Okay. AFAICT I try to avoid using heuristics that call for me to drop whatever I’m doing and act to assist someone else. I also roughly prefer that other people avoid using such heuristics. But I do understand that if someone were using that heuristic, then they might be outraged or upset that people are being turned away from bathrooms.
(I’m also open to the possibility that there are some good heuristics of this type.)
I would suspect it means he thinks it is bad in such a clear and manifest manner that it is an instance and a signal of general civilizational inadequacy and insanity.
Yes, I suspect this is a good guess as to what @dr_s meant. And thanks for the interesting-to-me link.
Are you done discussing the matter of bathrooms as public goods? I’m not sure if that line of discussion is worth continuing or not.
Why do you disagree with (P1)? Do you explain it here: “in which case they satisfy the demand from the costumers that are there to purchase the main goods being offered (such as coffee or breakfast etc) but not from the revolving cast of people who are not interested in the main goods (but, as a result, in the current system their ‘demand’ for the bathrooms does not causally impact the creation of such bathrooms).”?
Yes. I believe there is significant (and currently unmet) demand for publicly-accessible bathrooms that do not require the users to purchase some other good or service (such as coffee) that they are not interested in (which a private establishment could, and in many cases does, require).
Why is the demand of the people only interested in using the bathroom not being satisfied? I expect them to buy the cheapest thing and then use the bathroom. But maybe I’m confused.
For the reasons mentioned in my paragraph above, I model these as two different types of goods for our discussion. It seems to carve reality at the joints in a meaningful way.
I also roughly prefer that other people avoid using such heuristics.
This preference, valid as it may be, cannot be met in practice, at least at a large scale (in terms of number of people).
While individualized assessments contain benefits (such as the use of discretion to take into account specific situations that are not taken care of well by rigid and context-independent rules and heuristics), they also impose significant costs on those who engage in them, namely the increased expenditures of time and mental energy needed to analyze situations on their individual merits (as compared to placing them in one of many mental “boxes” that you had already conceptualized and that you know how to dispose of quickly). Humans have a limited amount of fucks to give, so to say, and (en masse) they won’t spend them on topics like these, which are less important from a subjective perspective than stuff like familial relationships, boss-to-underling interactions etc.
Are you done discussing the matter of bathrooms as public goods? I’m not sure if that line of discussion is worth continuing or not.
Well, public bathrooms are approximately public goods, for the reasons I mentioned at the beginning (I said only ‘approximately’ because there is a small level of short-term rivalry involved due to the fact that someone occupying a bathroom stall physically prevents you from going in during the time they are inside and because such users can temporarily damage the structures there in such a way as to prevent future users from accessing the facilities, until the damages are fixed).
Why do you disagree with (P1)? Do you explain it here: …
Yes. I believe there is significant (and currently unmet) demand for publicly-accessible bathrooms that do not require the users to purchase some other good or service (such as coffee) that they are not interested in (which a private establishment could, and in many cases does, require).
Okay. I don’t understand your reasoning. Are you specifically suggesting that there are people who would pay some $X to use the bathroom, but the cheapest item on the cafe menu is $Y where X < Y, and so those people are unable to access a bathroom? Otherwise I’m not sure why someone who needed to use the bathroom would be unwilling to spend $ on some unrelated good in order to use the bathroom.
Why is the demand of the people only interested in using the bathroom not being satisfied? I expect them to buy the cheapest thing and then use the bathroom. But maybe I’m confused.
For the reasons mentioned in my paragraph above, I model these as two different types of goods for our discussion. It seems to carve reality at the joints in a meaningful way.
Okay, you may be right to do so, but from my perspective your reasoning is still opaque.
I also roughly prefer that other people avoid using such heuristics.
This preference, valid as it may be, cannot be met in practice, at least at a large scale (in terms of number of people).
While individualized assessments contain benefits, they also impose significant costs on those who engage in them, namely the increased expenditures of time and mental energy needed to analyze situations on their individual merits.
I want to be clear that I am specifically opposing the use of heuristics that call for one to immediately render aid to someone else. I am not opposing the use of all heuristics. I agree that it would be a mistake for someone to never use heuristics, because as you say, humans have limited time and mental energy.
Are we talking past one another here?
Are you done discussing the matter of bathrooms as public goods? I’m not sure if that line of discussion is worth continuing or not.
Well, public bathrooms are approximately public goods, for the reasons I mentioned at the beginning
That seems plausible to me, but I still don’t understand why you are pointing out that bathrooms are approximately public goods. (I speculated as to why in my initial response to you.)
Are you specifically suggesting that there are people who would pay some $X to use the bathroom, but the cheapest item on the cafe menu is $Y where X < Y, and so those people are unable to access a bathroom?
This is part of the dynamic, yes. But it is not the only relevant consideration: often times, people do not reason on the basis of stand-alone monetary considerations, but also in terms of other, more ineffable concepts, such as principles or values. In this specific case, I believe there are a lot of people that would hate the idea of having to pay for something they don’t care about (again, like coffee) in order to access the bathroom, independently (and in addition to) the fact that they must part with some of their cash. It would be more of a principled, i.e. deontological, objection of sorts, and would increase their desire to be able to access public bathrooms.
Are we talking past one another here?
Well, I don’t see what evidence or reasoning we have to single out “heuristics that call for one to immediately render aid to someone else” as worthy of specialized treatment as compared to just “heuristics” more broadly.
That seems plausible to me, but I still don’t understand why you are pointing out that bathrooms are approximately public goods
Public goods are (broadly speaking) better served through intervention by a central authority such as a government. As such, correctly identifying something as a public good helps explain why the (private) market has not provided a socially optimal quantity of that good.
I’m following up here after doing some reading about public goods.
Public goods are (broadly speaking) better served through intervention by a central authority such as a government. As such, correctly identifying something as a public good helps explain why the (private) market has not provided a socially optimal quantity of that good.
I’m inclined to believe that bathrooms are excludable (because, for example, an entrepreneur can just put a lock on the bathroom that will only open after a credit card swipe/payment) and so are not public goods. Am I getting this wrong?
But it is not the only relevant consideration: often times, people do not reason on the basis of stand-alone monetary considerations, but also in terms of other, more ineffable concepts, such as principles or values.
I roughly agree. (Although, values are always involved in decision making, right? Or maybe you believe that value, as in, don’t steal, and value, as in, I’d rather spend money on XBox games than a jet ski, are different sorts of things and you just mean the first sort here.)
In this specific case, I believe there are a lot of people that would hate the idea of having to pay for something they don’t care about (again, like coffee) in order to access the bathroom, independently (and in addition to) the fact that they must part with some of their cash.
You might be right about this, I’m not sure. That isn’t how I think about the situation so I might be committing a typical mind fallacy. I’m interested in why you believe that to be the case, but I recognize that it might be quite a bit of work for you to try to nail down an explanation.
I don’t see what evidence or reasoning we have to single out “heuristics that call for one to immediately render aid to someone else” as worthy of specialized treatment as compared to just “heuristics” more broadly.
My intuition is that it’s usually neutral to pretty bad to rush off and offer someone else assistance without thinking it over carefully. I believe this because (i) most people do a bad job of modeling other people, and, (ii) people are generally quite good at helping themselves, (iii) it sometimes triggers a wasteful arms race of people competing to appear to be the most caring, (iv) people straightforwardly pursuing their own interests is a good recipe for improving the world.
Public goods are (broadly speaking) better served through intervention by a central authority such as a government. As such, correctly identifying something as a public good helps explain why the (private) market has not provided a socially optimal quantity of that good.
Okay, I now understand your reasoning, but I will have to think about it more before offering a substantive response.
I disagree. My reasoning is as follows. I believe that (P1) there is a high correlation between demand for additional bathrooms owned-operated by private businesses (ie, private bathrooms) and demand for additional bathrooms owned-operated by a government (ie, public bathrooms), and that (P2) there is little demand for additional private bathrooms. So, I infer that (C1) there is little demand for additional public bathrooms.
Do you then object to (P1), (P2) or my inference?
I’m not sure why you are arguing that bathrooms are public goods (or are you arguing that just public bathrooms are public goods?). Is it because you are implicitly making this argument?
P3: Free markets do not do a good job of supplying public goods.
P4: Bathrooms are public goods.
C2: So, free markets do not do a good job of supplying bathrooms.
(Sorry for my awkward usage of the term “good job”, my economic knowledge is weak.)
Are you describing a heuristic here? Specifically that, if some need is (i) universal among humans, (ii) widely understood and (iii) unpleasant, then often one should immediately act to accommodate anyone who reports that they currently have that need.
And taking a step back, I suspect that I made a mistake and should have initially asked “What do you mean by the term ‘ridiculous’ here?” As I’m not sure if @dr_s is just reporting that he doesn’t like the current situation, or that it makes him laugh, or that it causes harm, or that it could be easily improved, or something else entirely.
But thanks for trying to explain the reasoning to me.
Interesting. I do not share the intuition that price gouging ought to be made illegal, so maybe you are on to something.
I completely disagree with (P1).
I think (P2) has a somewhat strange framing, particularly given the fact that ‘private bathrooms’ can refer to either bathrooms in the homes/dwellings of people, which does not really have much to do with the conversation here, or to auxiliary goods in private establishments, in which case they satisfy the demand from the costumers that are there to purchase the main goods being offered (such as coffee or breakfast etc) but not from the revolving cast of people who are not interested in the main goods (but, as a result, in the current system their ‘demand’ for the bathrooms does not causally impact the creation of such bathrooms).
In any case, going from (P1) and (P2) to (C1) does seem locally valid to a reasonable extent.
Yes, that is the general heuristic I am describing, perhaps with the following added requirement: (iv) the person reporting they need it appears genuine and doesn’t appear to try to exploit you in a bad-faith manner.
I would suspect it means he thinks it is bad in such a clear and manifest manner that it is an instance and a signal of general civilizational inadequacy and insanity.
Neither do I, although I suppose I implicitly did back before I studied enough economics to change my view on it.
Why do you disagree with (P1)? Do you explain it here: “in which case they satisfy the demand from the costumers that are there to purchase the main goods being offered (such as coffee or breakfast etc) but not from the revolving cast of people who are not interested in the main goods (but, as a result, in the current system their ‘demand’ for the bathrooms does not causally impact the creation of such bathrooms).”?
And I completely grant that I might be mistaken about (P1). I haven’t spent many cycles investigating this topic.
I tried to give a definition of “private bathrooms” in my previous comment, specifically, ”… bathrooms owned-operated by private businesses (ie, private bathrooms)...”. But to be more explicit, by “private bathrooms” I mean the auxiliary goods in private business establishments (eg, cafes) and the primary goods offered by just-bathroom businesses.
Does that clear up the strangeness?
Why is the demand of the people only interested in using the bathroom not being satisfied? I expect them to buy the cheapest thing and then use the bathroom. But maybe I’m confused.
And why is their demand not causally impacting the creation of such bathrooms?
So given that you find the inference to be of good-ish quality and assuming that we can clear up the strangeness with (P2), then does it follow that you would accept (C1) if you became convinced that (P1) was likely true?
Okay. AFAICT I try to avoid using heuristics that call for me to drop whatever I’m doing and act to assist someone else. I also roughly prefer that other people avoid using such heuristics. But I do understand that if someone were using that heuristic, then they might be outraged or upset that people are being turned away from bathrooms.
(I’m also open to the possibility that there are some good heuristics of this type.)
Yes, I suspect this is a good guess as to what @dr_s meant. And thanks for the interesting-to-me link.
Are you done discussing the matter of bathrooms as public goods? I’m not sure if that line of discussion is worth continuing or not.
Yes. I believe there is significant (and currently unmet) demand for publicly-accessible bathrooms that do not require the users to purchase some other good or service (such as coffee) that they are not interested in (which a private establishment could, and in many cases does, require).
For the reasons mentioned in my paragraph above, I model these as two different types of goods for our discussion. It seems to carve reality at the joints in a meaningful way.
This preference, valid as it may be, cannot be met in practice, at least at a large scale (in terms of number of people).
While individualized assessments contain benefits (such as the use of discretion to take into account specific situations that are not taken care of well by rigid and context-independent rules and heuristics), they also impose significant costs on those who engage in them, namely the increased expenditures of time and mental energy needed to analyze situations on their individual merits (as compared to placing them in one of many mental “boxes” that you had already conceptualized and that you know how to dispose of quickly). Humans have a limited amount of fucks to give, so to say, and (en masse) they won’t spend them on topics like these, which are less important from a subjective perspective than stuff like familial relationships, boss-to-underling interactions etc.
Well, public bathrooms are approximately public goods, for the reasons I mentioned at the beginning (I said only ‘approximately’ because there is a small level of short-term rivalry involved due to the fact that someone occupying a bathroom stall physically prevents you from going in during the time they are inside and because such users can temporarily damage the structures there in such a way as to prevent future users from accessing the facilities, until the damages are fixed).
Okay. I don’t understand your reasoning. Are you specifically suggesting that there are people who would pay some $X to use the bathroom, but the cheapest item on the cafe menu is $Y where X < Y, and so those people are unable to access a bathroom? Otherwise I’m not sure why someone who needed to use the bathroom would be unwilling to spend $ on some unrelated good in order to use the bathroom.
Okay, you may be right to do so, but from my perspective your reasoning is still opaque.
I want to be clear that I am specifically opposing the use of heuristics that call for one to immediately render aid to someone else. I am not opposing the use of all heuristics. I agree that it would be a mistake for someone to never use heuristics, because as you say, humans have limited time and mental energy.
Are we talking past one another here?
That seems plausible to me, but I still don’t understand why you are pointing out that bathrooms are approximately public goods. (I speculated as to why in my initial response to you.)
This is part of the dynamic, yes. But it is not the only relevant consideration: often times, people do not reason on the basis of stand-alone monetary considerations, but also in terms of other, more ineffable concepts, such as principles or values. In this specific case, I believe there are a lot of people that would hate the idea of having to pay for something they don’t care about (again, like coffee) in order to access the bathroom, independently (and in addition to) the fact that they must part with some of their cash. It would be more of a principled, i.e. deontological, objection of sorts, and would increase their desire to be able to access public bathrooms.
Well, I don’t see what evidence or reasoning we have to single out “heuristics that call for one to immediately render aid to someone else” as worthy of specialized treatment as compared to just “heuristics” more broadly.
Public goods are (broadly speaking) better served through intervention by a central authority such as a government. As such, correctly identifying something as a public good helps explain why the (private) market has not provided a socially optimal quantity of that good.
I’m following up here after doing some reading about public goods.
I’m inclined to believe that bathrooms are excludable (because, for example, an entrepreneur can just put a lock on the bathroom that will only open after a credit card swipe/payment) and so are not public goods. Am I getting this wrong?
I roughly agree. (Although, values are always involved in decision making, right? Or maybe you believe that value, as in, don’t steal, and value, as in, I’d rather spend money on XBox games than a jet ski, are different sorts of things and you just mean the first sort here.)
You might be right about this, I’m not sure. That isn’t how I think about the situation so I might be committing a typical mind fallacy. I’m interested in why you believe that to be the case, but I recognize that it might be quite a bit of work for you to try to nail down an explanation.
My intuition is that it’s usually neutral to pretty bad to rush off and offer someone else assistance without thinking it over carefully. I believe this because (i) most people do a bad job of modeling other people, and, (ii) people are generally quite good at helping themselves, (iii) it sometimes triggers a wasteful arms race of people competing to appear to be the most caring, (iv) people straightforwardly pursuing their own interests is a good recipe for improving the world.
Okay, I now understand your reasoning, but I will have to think about it more before offering a substantive response.