Second, in my previous post I was trying to ask about whether or not there were any genuine differences as a user when paying $X for a cup of coffee to a cafe in order to use the bathroom versus paying $X to a just bathroom business to use the bathroom. (I was responding to @dr_s saying this: “This, and how completely unrelated specifically the “buy a coffee” thing is. It makes no sense that to satisfy need A I have to do unrelated thing B.”)
Even bracketing out all other concerns, I think there is. You don’t know what the setup is at any given cafe so you might go to the wrong one or do it wrong, social interactions are awkward, you have to decide what to buy, there is deadweight loss from the $5 of coffee you didn’t want (and might not even drink and just throw away), the pay bathroom probably wouldn’t’ve cost $5 (when I paid for that toilet in Paris, it cost a lot less than just about anything I could’ve bought from a walk-in cafe with a bathroom), you may have to wait in a line for who knows how long (and if you have to go, you have to go!) to wait for your order to be called instead of plunking in a coin and going right in, you might have to ask for the key in many places (which is always a bit humiliating, to make it a stranger’s business that you have to go wee or potty), and return the key too… The cafe version of the interaction is many times worse than such a simple trivial task like ‘use a restroom’ has to be.
Okay, I think you’ve convinced me that there are important ways in which pay toilets might offer a better service than cafe bathrooms.
(I suspect that I was getting myself confused by sort of insisting/thinking “But if everything is exactly the same (, except one of the buildings also sells coffee), then everything is exactly the same!” Which is maybe nearby to some true-ish statements, but gets in the way of thinking about the differences between using a pay toilet and a cafe bathroom.)
(Also, Ishare your view that bathrooms are excludable and therefore not public goods. And I’m curious as to why @sunwillrise and @jmh believe that they are in fact public goods.)
Even bracketing out all other concerns, I think there is. You don’t know what the setup is at any given cafe so you might go to the wrong one or do it wrong, social interactions are awkward, you have to decide what to buy, there is deadweight loss from the $5 of coffee you didn’t want (and might not even drink and just throw away), the pay bathroom probably wouldn’t’ve cost $5 (when I paid for that toilet in Paris, it cost a lot less than just about anything I could’ve bought from a walk-in cafe with a bathroom), you may have to wait in a line for who knows how long (and if you have to go, you have to go!) to wait for your order to be called instead of plunking in a coin and going right in, you might have to ask for the key in many places (which is always a bit humiliating, to make it a stranger’s business that you have to go wee or potty), and return the key too… The cafe version of the interaction is many times worse than such a simple trivial task like ‘use a restroom’ has to be.
Okay, I think you’ve convinced me that there are important ways in which pay toilets might offer a better service than cafe bathrooms.
(I suspect that I was getting myself confused by sort of insisting/thinking “But if everything is exactly the same (, except one of the buildings also sells coffee), then everything is exactly the same!” Which is maybe nearby to some true-ish statements, but gets in the way of thinking about the differences between using a pay toilet and a cafe bathroom.)
(Also, I share your view that bathrooms are excludable and therefore not public goods. And I’m curious as to why @sunwillrise and @jmh believe that they are in fact public goods.)