The other day, my boyfriend Ben, his roommate Steve, and I went to CMU's campus to play some badminton. Steve and Ben picked up the racquets and net--because, strictly speaking, I'm not a student, per se, so I needed to fly under the radar if I could--and then we tromped around the athletic facilities looking for a suitable place to set up and play.
I don't know much about CMU's athletic facilities, and I was just following the guys around, going through doors they opened and up stairs they gestured to, but there are evidently only two areas outfitted for badminton play. The first place we went to was also outfitted for volleyball, and was evidently outfitted so well that the official volleyball team was scheduled to practice there, therefor we had to leave. So we went to another place (which, as I recall, was referred to by a set of letters that stood for some words, but I can't remember the letters or the words right now) that happened to be swarming with eager basketball players. They were just playing pick-up games, and there were four hoops, but evidently, one of the courts was designated for badminton-specific use. It wasn't being used as one; someone had taken down the net and a bunch of people were playing full-court basketball.
As I am, strictly speaking, not a student, I let Ben and Steve handle the court situation. Since the badminton-ness of the gym was officially sanctioned, both Ben and Steve felt that it was within their rights to ask the basketball people to split into half court and let them set up the net for play. They promised we'd only be there for an hour at maximum, and gave them ten minutes to wrap up their game.
Needless to say, it was an awkward arrangement; forgetting the fact that both halves of the basketball court remained in use throughout our little badminton match so that we kept nearly beaming people with our racquets, I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that we had just inconvenienced a bunch of people, not to mention that those people were all generally bigger and sweatier than Ben, Steve, or I. As my Girl Scout training helped tie the knots to secure the net, my escapist tendencies imagined a wonderful world in which such socially awkward situations could be avoided. "Maybe I could buy a badminton net..." I mused. "If I owned a badminton net, we'd never inconvenience big basketball guys again, and we could play whenever we wanted. That would be great."
Obviously, the thought was short-lived. I am not going to buy a badminton net. CMU has them, and I'm even allowed to use them as a guest of Ben and Steve (though I didn't, strictly speaking, follow protocol on this particular visit) and then I don't have to pay for any damages, I wouldn't have to find a place to store them, and I always have a place to play, even when it's raining or when I don't own a yard.
The longer we played, the less I cared about how we'd inconvenienced the basketball guys. I mean, yeah, I still felt bad about getting in their way, and I couldn't help but think how ridiculous it must have looked to them: three people pushing out ten people just to play some vaguely old-fashioned game with pathetic-looking skinny racquets and a dinky little birdie. But when they stumbled into our part of the court, they apologized and one of us would say, "No worries," and when we hit one of them with one of our gaming instruments, we apologized and they would say, "No worries." And at the end of 40 minutes, Ben was too tired to keep going (playing single to Steve's and my doubles) and we packed up and left, giving them their court back. The rules set down by the CMU athletic facility authorities did their work, the compromise was struck between us, and everyone survived and got to enjoy a bit of physical exertion.
Public goods tend to do this, I think. Public parks, public schools, public hospitals, public sidewalks...they force us to interact with each other, to practice compromise, tact, and civility. They may not explicitly teach us the inherent value of the people around us, but when fair rules are in place, they implicitly teach us to acknowledge other people's rights as designated by those rules. Public goods give us access to thoughts and feelings that are not natively our own, but that might help shape, redefine, or strengthen those thoughts and feelings that are.
Private goods are nice: I like owning a car, in large part because it means I am not at the mercy of the bus routes and schedules, and I don't have to worry so much about the size or shape of the things I need to carry from point A to point B, as long as they fit somewhere in my trunk or backseat. My car does probably cost me significantly more than bus fare would, between gas, insurance, maintenance, and depreciation, so I always have to make sure I'm getting what I pay for, that my car remains a better option than the public transportation system.
But sometimes I pass a bus stop where people stand waiting, or I watch people climbing on or off the sectional behemoths as they stop on the side of the road, and I wonder if I'd feel more connected to the people around me if I were forced to get that close to them every day. I live alone, I don't have a job, and my neighborhood is pretty quiet, so I can avoid human contact for days if I want to. Add my car into that, and the isolation only deepens.
For me, for now, this isolation is primarily just a sort of depressing reality. I don't see many people, and most people don't see or talk to me. But over time, such separation from society could conceivably become something more sinister. If public places teach us compromise and tactfulness, over-privatization could cause those skills to atrophy, perhaps to the point where not only am I not explicitly seeing the value in the lives of other human beings, but I start denying those human beings' rights as human beings. If I were to become completely self-sufficient, without need or desire for any public goods, that sufficiency might become my only goal, the only thing I fight for, in which case, the needs of others seem of little consequence to me. Suddenly, I don't care about the other people on the road, their convenience, or their safety; I only care that I have someplace to be and I've got to get there, so I'm going to do what it takes to get me there, no matter the cost to others.
I'm fairly certain this hypothetical is an exaggeration, an extreme form of isolationism that probably only occurs in concurrence with some form of serious social or mental deficiency. Nonetheless, as I played badminton that day, I wondered if, perhaps, there might be a connection between a person's consumption of public goods and their political leanings. Could someone who frequents their public library ever consider school vouchers to be a socially responsible response to the decline in public education? Would someone who only ever drank water out of a Brita filter think that Social Security needed to be completely revised, not just privatized?
Obviously, someone who uses public transportation has a vested interest in that transportation's funding and subsequent quality, but does habitual use of public goods and services influence a person's outlook on public goods more generally?
What about you? What public goods and services to you rely on most heavily, and how do you think they've influenced your understanding of the value of the public? I really want to know.
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