Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Private vs. Commons Property

SPEA microwave edition. It would be fair to say that in general, the faculty and staff of SPEA are very in favor of more public goods. Therefore, commons property would stand a better chance of being well maintained in SPEA than a random sampling of the population.

Here is a picture of the microwave in my lounge area, which probably gets traffic of about 5 or 6 people per day:

Here is a picture of the microwave in the main lobby area, which is maintained by a private food vendor selling microwavable pizzas, hamburgers, etc. This vendor is also generous enough to let non-customers use his microwave. I would estimate that in its hours of operation (8-3, M-F), the microwave gets daily traffic of 20-30:



And that is the difference between private and commons property.

6 comments:

David said...

That is AWESOME!

KipEsquire said...

Where are the grazing cows? ;-)

Gabriel M said...

Wow, wait... where's the rotating table thingy?

Unknown said...

Yes! Great post, Justin :)

Justin M Ross said...

Re: Gabriel "Wow, wait... where's the rotating table thingy?"

There isn't one in the private microwave. The glass spinner broke in the public microwave, so a few grad students broke off the rest of the spinning mechanism so that their food would be level when in the center of the microwave.

Anonymous said...

But could it be because the janitor of the dept. is less responsible about his/her work, instead of private and public ownership?