Why Sh*tting in Public Restrooms Sucks -- A Commons Tragedy

I hate taking a sh*t in public restrooms. Granted, I can only speak for men’s restrooms and assume (or perhaps rather hope) that women don’t run into the same problem. But anyway, I think the problem with men and public restrooms is a commons tragedy—everyone acting momentarily rational brings about a sub-optimal collective outcome. Let me briefly explain what a commons tragedy is and show why I think public men’s restrooms fit the bill.

Classic examples of commons tragedies are fishing and farming in communal contexts. Here, the population of fish and the farmland are held “in common” and individual use of them is unregulated. This means individuals are allowed to fish and farm however they please. What usually happens in such scenarios is simple. Because it’s in the private interest of each individual fisherman and farmer to fish and farm as much as possible, without making sure the fish aren’t overfished and the land isn’t destroyed by lack of maintenance, a group of rational, and economically thus profit-seeking, fishermen and farmers will eventually overfish and destroy the farmland. Thus, by rationally responding to short-term incentives, the fishermen and farmers will effectuate a collectively bad outcome—they’ll be forced to go out of business or move to another place because there aren’t enough fish and the farmland has become infertile. That is the classic picture of a commons tragedy—simple and compelling.

Defecating in public men’s restrooms can be construed in the same way. For a variety of reasons, some men decide to use the stalls with seated toilets, as opposed to urinals, to urinate. Out of sheer laziness or else, they often don’t lift up the toilet seat before going about their business. More often than not, this will result in liberal amounts of their urine being distributed on the toilet seat. The civil bathroom visitor would, recognizing he is harming the common good, wipe the seat clean and flush the toilet. More commonly, however, visitors will not wipe the seat (and sometimes even fail to flush the toilet…gross!). In effect, the toilet looks disgusting and has been turned into a serious biochemical weapon against any potential defecator—the commonly held resource of clean toilet seats has been degenerated. The next determined, or perhaps option-less, defecator must then clean the seat covered in some stranger’s urine—a serious cost that some may not be willing to incur at all. We thus get a commonly held and unregulated resource being tragically degenerated by the seemingly rational pursuit of private interest—urinating with the least amount of energy expended.

In this way, public men’s restrooms in absence of strong social norms, or other forms of regulation, are a commons tragedy—a scenario where a commonly held resource is degenerated by the rational pursuit of private interest.