Let the Free Market Take Over the Line for the Loo
Why you should care
Because everyone wants the VIPee treatment.
It’s almost midnight and your friends are ready to head to the next bar. But first you’ve got to go; you’ve really got to go. “Be right back!” you say, but you’ve spoken too soon: The line is 15 women deep and there’s just one stall. Is this the lot of woman, who must consign hundreds of hours of her lifetime waiting to relieve her bladder?...MORE
Nonsense, we say: It’s time to disrupt this business of doing your business. Rethink the stall tactic. Find a shortcut to the porcelain throne. In fact, a solution has been deployed to less urgent ends: At Disneyland, you can buy a Fastpass, and TSA pre-check is basically a $75 tax for impatient rich people to skip the line. So why not apply free-market principles to one of the most universally irksome lines in places like football stadiums, concert venues and bars? Let people pay to skip the bathroom line.
It’s not as far-fetched as it might sound. After all, restaurants in some parts of Europe already charge customers to use their golden thrones. In our conception, a hired bathroom attendant could inquire “cash or card?” Prices could be set on an Uber model, with surge pricing during peak hours. Those who couldn’t or choose not to pay can wait in a separate line. Voilà — public accommodations enter our postcapitalist world! Happier patrons, more jobs and an extra source of income for venues.
Some find the notion of privatizing the privy line offensive. After all, waiting for the water closet is one of the few great levelers remaining in the United States. In venues like the San Francisco Giants stadium, the loo line is the last remaining bastion of “free,” says Shana Daum, its VP of communications. The bathroom line is “one of the few things that’s equal opportunity for all,” she adds. Then there’s the nagging fact that “some people don’t have money,” points out Robert Dekle, an economist at the University of Southern California. Do they get stuck in bathroom purgatory, at the end of the line? Would we segregate bathrooms based on the ability to pay?...