1. Indoor plumbing. How and why did people change from outhouses to indoor plumbing? Yeah, it is easier to shit indoors especially in winter, but it had to be expensive to change. I also do not trust early septic tanks. We used to have one when I was a kid that smelled everytime it rained. Now there has to be some public health benefits to city/county sewers, but who paid? I just cannot imagine my Granddad or great-grandfather shelling out money for "fancy and flushable" toilets. "Shit belongs outside."
2. I do not think rechargeable batteries are worth it. Sam left me a charger and four AAA batteries. My MP3 player takes one AAA battery. I lost one of the AAA batteries. It takes two batteries for the charger to work, so as long as I keep three batteries everything is fine. But I went to get a few extras for my mouse and remote controls. They were four or five times the cost of a regular battery. I just cannot imagine it being worth it. I lose too many batteries, but I really think this is the problem with a lot of green innovations. The institutions and practices that surround the product could be more important than the product itself. When Sam was here, the charger looked more economically feasible as there were benefits to sharing.
3. The internet is not fast or reliable enough yet to replace DVDs. It will be, but not yet. Plus, the computer is not the focus of enough people's living rooms. I like to plop down in front of the TV not my computer. There is too much incriminating evidence on my computer for it to be in a "public" room. I also like a real live person telling me a movie is good. I do not like to waste two hours on a bad movie.
4. The spell checker will not work on blogspot. This makes me worry. I do not trust my spelling. If I cannot trust my spelling, how can I trust my writing or my ideas?
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3 comments:
When was the last time you heard of someone getting dysentery or cholera? Both diseases are caused by poor sanitation, specifically drinking water fouled by having outhouses and latrines too close to wells. Maybe if every one had really great city water it wouldn't be an issue, but many people still use well water. Maybe, with advancements in technology, you could have outhouses with huge tanks underneath that would have to be pumped every few years. It would make houses cheaper to build.
This thought actually has to do with my dissertation. My orginial thought concerned the adoption of indoor plumbing. It seems to me that the major benefits (disease prevention) are public. But the decision to adopt indoor toilets must have been private, right? There is still a house in my neighborhood that uses an outhouse. I bet there were mandates that all new house had to have indoor plumbing. But did older houses convert?
Now when the county sewer came through, the neighborhood had to collectively agree to hook up to it. I am just curious about the private versus public dynamics of new technologies.
Really this whole post was about network effects and the social dimensions of consumption.
I think the health benefits are probably a club good. People don't like to travel far to go to the bathroom or to get water. The person most likely to contaminate your well is probably you... unless you live next to a refinery or something.
You have a good question about the private adoption of public utilities. Especially one with large fixed costs like running sewer lines. When everyone has to do, marginal analysis isn't quite as useful. I agree that the failure of the spell checker is a problem. I am glad that its not just me.
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