Dishes and Why I don't do them

Free Riding and (Not) Functioning as a Human Being

The Free Rider problem has often been analyzed in terms of institutions and in government, however where the free riding problem has the greatest influence, and sequentially problems in my life, is in everyday life. Although, one could propose that my living situation, which is sharing a house with seven other people, is in essence an institution. By analyzing it, as though it was an institution, can provided a keen insight to how the free rider problem affects most individuals more than they think. Simple structures, in the household, can eliminate most of the transaction costs which enable the possibility of the free rider problem from occurring.

The free riding problem at my house runs rampant. Despite the popularity and efforts of MTV’s “Real Life” to display the problems of 20-somethings functioning together in a large house, my house has few contentions. This may be a good thing, but the relaxed nature of most people living in my house nurtures the free riding problem. The most obvious example of the free riding problem in my house is dishes. Seemingly a very benign topic, it is by far the largest contentious issue in my house. Even today, one member of my household declared that Person X is “a lazy asshole.”

Every person in my house is responsible for washing their own dishes. Some members of the house declare that it must be done right after eating. Being raised where I’ve never had to wash my own dishes (I had other cleaning responsibilities growing up), this is a difficult problem for myself personally. I enjoy spending time relaxing after a good meal, and it is hard for me to be motivated after the meal. So, I simply don’t do them right after I eat. My housemates understand and guilty of these crimes as well, so they do not chastise me for it. After, I often become distracted and forget about the dishes in the sink for a long period of time. Mind you, I am not the only one who does this. Sequentially, the more responsible members of the household end up doing the dishes for those who are enabled by the free rider problem. Thus, the problem has been created.

It is proposed that within smaller groups, social ramifications occur against the offender if certain individuals free ride. I can see how this can be argued, due to the fact that I only do my dishes when my roommates yell at me enough, but I have witnessed the opposite as true in some instances. Even as I write this right now, we have a sink full of dishes, some of them my own, but most of them from the others. The failures of the free riding problem are still a problem in small “institutions” where intimacy, in the non-romantic sense, is a large aspect of the institution’s dynamic.

Along with the free rider problem, other transaction costs exist such as monitoring costs and commitment problems which exacerbate the problem. Anonymity, or imperfect information, could be used to explain this, in that we all use the same dishes, but it is some what transparent by observing the remnants of the food left on the dish and what the person previously ate. This is a prime example of monitoring costs and how it has enabled the free rider problem. Also, as a housemate has said before, “it’s a good thing I like you, or I’d be really rude about the dishes.” This allowance for free riding is not based on ability to recognize the deviants, but is due to the pressures on those who do their dishes appropriately to maintain a healthy friendship with the deviants. This particular problem would not occur if all of the housemates weren’t friends.

To help this situation, a few things could occur. By better understanding the free rider problem, I proposed to my housemates, with little success, to create a system where a person is responsible for doing the dishes one night of the week. This would make it much more apparent who was not fulfilling their duties in a blatant way. It would be obvious the following morning that the person responsible for the previous night’s dishes did not follow the rules, and would be reprimanded by having to do them that day. This would allow for a structured process of applying ramifications and limit the amount of social reprimanding the person and eliminate the allowance to occur due to defined terms of the system.

Large externalities are also very much a part of living in a household with many people. The free rider problem extends to most responsibilities of running a household, such as toilette paper purchasing, bathroom maintenance, vacuuming, yard maintenance, and more. Until I lived in a house where it was easy to free ride, I didn’t understand how encompassing it can be. It could be argued that free riding could be the function of your personal responsibilities and how well you fulfill your personal responsibilities; essentially it occurs when you are not a functioning member of society. Structured regulation, rather then periodical scolding, may provide tools to eliminate the transaction costs that allow for the free rider problem to occur. The elimination of transaction costs makes it easier to fulfill your role as a functioning member of society, whether society be defined as the seven people you live with or the city you reside in.