Bathrooms and the Commons

Today we were talking to my dad's cousin at a family lunch. She has a 15-month-old baby boy and lives in New York City. She was complaining that, at the park she likes to go to, the bathrooms are disgusting. She asked if anyone had any idea of who she could complain to.

A few people made half-hearted suggestions but no one had any great ideas.

The real problem, as we began discussing it, is lack of incentive. There is no person who has an incentive to keep the public bathrooms clean.

What do you mean? The city has an incentive to keep them clean.

'The city' is not a person. Who exactly has an incentive to keep them clean?

In airports, the airlines as well as the stores want clean bathrooms to keep their customers happy. Malls have the same incentive: if they don't have clean bathrooms, customers are might want to shop somewhere else.

But no one realizes any penalties when bathrooms in public parks are disgusting.

In the course of this conversation, I was remined of an anecdote from John Stossel's Give Me a Break:

Start reading page 62 at TOO MANY RULES,
continue on page 63,
and finish on page 64,

for an explanation of how, through red tape and lack on incentive, self-cleaning, individual, inexpensive (25 cents), privately-owned bathrooms that would be available to the public, were kept out of NYC.