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.
Why is it better to pay an explicit bathroom providing business, then to pay a cafe (in the form of buying a cup of coffee)? It strikes me as a distinction without real difference, but maybe I’m confused.
The private version of the solution would be bathrooms I can pay to use, and those happen sometimes, but they’re not a particularly common business model so I guess maybe the economics don’t work out to it being a good use of capital or land.
Maybe bathroom services are just one of a cafe’s offerings, but for whatever reason aren’t explicitly put on the menu. Similarly, bars sell access to people interested in hooking up, but it’s not explicitly on their menu of products.
Why is it better to pay an explicit bathroom providing business, then to pay a cafe (in the form of buying a cup of coffee)? It strikes me as a distinction without real difference, but maybe I’m confused.
Most obviously, so someone can provide just a bathroom, rather than wrapping an entire cafe around it as a pretext to avoid being illegal—a cafe which almost certainly operates only part of the time rather than 24/7/365, one might note, as merely among the many benefits of severing the two. As for another example of the benefits, recall Starbucks’s experiences with bathrooms...
‘A bathroom’ is quite a different thing from ‘an entire cafe plus a bathroom’. ‘A bathroom’ prefab fits into many more places than ‘a successful cafe so big it has an attached bathroom for patrons’. Which is probably why there were apparently >50,000 pay bathrooms in the USA before some activists got them outlawed, and you see pay toilets commonly in other countries. (I remember being quite fascinated by a pay toilet in Paris, which had a built-in cleaning cycle, and considering it well worth the euro coin.)
Which is probably why there were apparently >50,000 pay bathrooms in the USA before some activists got them outlawed
Oh, I didn’t know this story. Seems like a prime example of “be careful what economic incentives you’re setting up”. All that banning paid toilets has done is… less toilets, not more free toilets.
Though wonder if now you could run a public toilet merely by plastering it with ads.
Most obviously, so someone can provide just a bathroom, rather than wrapping an entire cafe around it as a pretext to avoid being illegal—a cafe which almost certainly operates only part of the time rather than 24/7/365, one might note, as merely among the many benefits of severing the two. As for another example of the benefits, recall Starbucks’s experiences with bathrooms...
First, I want to note some points of agreement. I agree that there are differences between a just bathrooms business and a cafe with bathrooms. And I agree that having longer hours is a potential benefit of just bathroom businesses. And I prefer (as I infer that you do as well) that just bathroom businesses not be illegal.
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.”)
And in an effort to avoid being a weasel, let me clearly state that insofar that just bathroom businesses would remain open 24⁄7, or have very clean bathrooms, or be cheap, then they would offer benefits to people which are unavailable from cafes.
‘A bathroom’ is quite a different thing from ‘an entire cafe plus a bathroom’. ‘A bathroom’ prefab fits into many more places than ‘a successful cafe so big it has an attached bathroom for patrons’.
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.)
Why is it better to pay an explicit bathroom providing business, then to pay a cafe (in the form of buying a cup of coffee)? It strikes me as a distinction without real difference, but maybe I’m confused.
Economically speaking, if to acquire good A (which I need) I also have to acquire good B (which I don’t need and is more expensive), thus paying more than I would pay for good A alone, using up resources and labor I didn’t need and that were surely better employed elsewhere, that seems to me like a huge market inefficiency.
Imagine this happening with anything else. “I want a USB cable.” “Oh we don’t sell USB cables on their own, that would be ridiculous. But we do include them as part of the chargers in smartphones, so if you want a USB cable, you can buy a smartphone.” Would that make sense?
Economically speaking, if to acquire good A (which I need) I also have to acquire good B (which I don’t need and is more expensive), thus paying more than I would pay for good A alone, using up resources and labor I didn’t need and that were surely better employed elsewhere, that seems to me like a huge market inefficiency.
I had not thought of this until you and gwern pointed it out, so thanks.
I agree that this is a good candidate for a way in which buying-a-cup-of-coffee-that-one-doesn’t-want-in-order-to-use-the-bathroom as a common activity within a society causes harm (via resource misallocation) to most members of that society.
But I do insist that this isn’t a way in which the particular act of giving $X to a cafe for a cup of coffee in order to use their bathroom is worse for the particular consumer than giving $X to a just-bathrooms business. (I’m not sure what the appropriate words are for distinguishing these two different types of concerns, maybe, “on-going & systematic” and “one shot”.)
(Have you considered just tipping the barista half the amount of the cup of coffee instead of buying the coffee? This would at least save you some $ and you wouldn’t be contributing to the resource misallocation problem. And I realize that just you and I tipping instead of buying is entirely insufficient for solving the resource misallocation problem.)
Tipping the barista is not really sticking to the rules of the business, though. It’s bribing the watchman to close an eye, and the watchman must take the bribe (and deem it worthy its risks).
I agree that such a tip is roughly a bribe. But why is that a problem? Maybe you believe it is a problem because many people are inclined not to accept bribes, and so such a move would frequently not work.
We’re discussing whether this is a systemic problem, not whether there are possible individual solutions. We can come up with solutions just fine, in fact most of the times you can just waltz in, go to the bathroom, and no one will notice. But “everyone pays bribes to the barista to go to the bathroom” absolutely makes no sense as a universal rule over “we finally acknowledge this is an issue and thus incorporate it squarely in our ordinary services instead of making up weird and unnecessary work-arounds”.
warning meta: I am genuinely curious (as I don’t get much feedback in day to day life), have you found my comments to be unclear and/or disorganized in this thread? I’d love to improve my writing so would appreciate any critique, thanks.
No, sorry, it’s not that I didn’t find it clear, but I thought it was kind of an irrelevant aside—it’s obviously true (though IMO going to a barista and passing a bill while whispering “you didn’t see anything” might not necessarily work that well either), but my original comment was about the absurdity of the lack of systemic solutions, so saying there are individual ones doesn’t really address the main claim.
By “original comment” are you referring to “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.”? I actually took that as to be about the individual problem, so that may explain some of our failure to get on the same page. But, looking at the comment again now, the rest of it does seem to me to be more about the systematic problem, “The private version of the solution would be bathrooms I can pay to use, and those happen sometimes, but they’re not a particularly common business model so I guess maybe the economics don’t work out to it being a good use of capital or land.”.
This comment of yours on the other hand struck me as being more about the systematic problem.
Why is it better to pay an explicit bathroom providing business, then to pay a cafe (in the form of buying a cup of coffee)? It strikes me as a distinction without real difference, but maybe I’m confused.
Maybe bathroom services are just one of a cafe’s offerings, but for whatever reason aren’t explicitly put on the menu. Similarly, bars sell access to people interested in hooking up, but it’s not explicitly on their menu of products.
Most obviously, so someone can provide just a bathroom, rather than wrapping an entire cafe around it as a pretext to avoid being illegal—a cafe which almost certainly operates only part of the time rather than 24/7/365, one might note, as merely among the many benefits of severing the two. As for another example of the benefits, recall Starbucks’s experiences with bathrooms...
‘A bathroom’ is quite a different thing from ‘an entire cafe plus a bathroom’. ‘A bathroom’ prefab fits into many more places than ‘a successful cafe so big it has an attached bathroom for patrons’. Which is probably why there were apparently >50,000 pay bathrooms in the USA before some activists got them outlawed, and you see pay toilets commonly in other countries. (I remember being quite fascinated by a pay toilet in Paris, which had a built-in cleaning cycle, and considering it well worth the euro coin.)
Oh, I didn’t know this story. Seems like a prime example of “be careful what economic incentives you’re setting up”. All that banning paid toilets has done is… less toilets, not more free toilets.
Though wonder if now you could run a public toilet merely by plastering it with ads.
First, I want to note some points of agreement. I agree that there are differences between a just bathrooms business and a cafe with bathrooms. And I agree that having longer hours is a potential benefit of just bathroom businesses. And I prefer (as I infer that you do as well) that just bathroom businesses not be illegal.
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.”)
And in an effort to avoid being a weasel, let me clearly state that insofar that just bathroom businesses would remain open 24⁄7, or have very clean bathrooms, or be cheap, then they would offer benefits to people which are unavailable from cafes.
Yes, you are right.
Thanks for the relevant historical information.
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.)
Economically speaking, if to acquire good A (which I need) I also have to acquire good B (which I don’t need and is more expensive), thus paying more than I would pay for good A alone, using up resources and labor I didn’t need and that were surely better employed elsewhere, that seems to me like a huge market inefficiency.
Imagine this happening with anything else. “I want a USB cable.” “Oh we don’t sell USB cables on their own, that would be ridiculous. But we do include them as part of the chargers in smartphones, so if you want a USB cable, you can buy a smartphone.” Would that make sense?
I had not thought of this until you and gwern pointed it out, so thanks.
I agree that this is a good candidate for a way in which buying-a-cup-of-coffee-that-one-doesn’t-want-in-order-to-use-the-bathroom as a common activity within a society causes harm (via resource misallocation) to most members of that society.
But I do insist that this isn’t a way in which the particular act of giving $X to a cafe for a cup of coffee in order to use their bathroom is worse for the particular consumer than giving $X to a just-bathrooms business. (I’m not sure what the appropriate words are for distinguishing these two different types of concerns, maybe, “on-going & systematic” and “one shot”.)
(Have you considered just tipping the barista half the amount of the cup of coffee instead of buying the coffee? This would at least save you some $ and you wouldn’t be contributing to the resource misallocation problem. And I realize that just you and I tipping instead of buying is entirely insufficient for solving the resource misallocation problem.)
Tipping the barista is not really sticking to the rules of the business, though. It’s bribing the watchman to close an eye, and the watchman must take the bribe (and deem it worthy its risks).
I agree that such a tip is roughly a bribe. But why is that a problem? Maybe you believe it is a problem because many people are inclined not to accept bribes, and so such a move would frequently not work.
We’re discussing whether this is a systemic problem, not whether there are possible individual solutions. We can come up with solutions just fine, in fact most of the times you can just waltz in, go to the bathroom, and no one will notice. But “everyone pays bribes to the barista to go to the bathroom” absolutely makes no sense as a universal rule over “we finally acknowledge this is an issue and thus incorporate it squarely in our ordinary services instead of making up weird and unnecessary work-arounds”.
I tried to stipulate that I was not proposing barista tips as a solution to the “on-going and systematic” problem, specifically I said, “And I realize that just you and I tipping instead of buying is entirely insufficient for solving the resource misallocation problem.”
warning meta: I am genuinely curious (as I don’t get much feedback in day to day life), have you found my comments to be unclear and/or disorganized in this thread? I’d love to improve my writing so would appreciate any critique, thanks.
No, sorry, it’s not that I didn’t find it clear, but I thought it was kind of an irrelevant aside—it’s obviously true (though IMO going to a barista and passing a bill while whispering “you didn’t see anything” might not necessarily work that well either), but my original comment was about the absurdity of the lack of systemic solutions, so saying there are individual ones doesn’t really address the main claim.
By “original comment” are you referring to “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.”? I actually took that as to be about the individual problem, so that may explain some of our failure to get on the same page. But, looking at the comment again now, the rest of it does seem to me to be more about the systematic problem, “The private version of the solution would be bathrooms I can pay to use, and those happen sometimes, but they’re not a particularly common business model so I guess maybe the economics don’t work out to it being a good use of capital or land.”.
This comment of yours on the other hand struck me as being more about the systematic problem.
Sorry for any misinterpretation of your comments.