Chapter 27 The Litterer
The Litterer today will find few defenders.
He is beset on all sides, bearing the brunt of the barbs of do-gooder groups.
Radio and television stations beam anti-litter messages as a public service.
Neighborhood and parent-teacher associations, church groups and civic organizations
are in agreement on the issue of littering.
The film industry, which must pass over many topics as too controversial, is united in its hatred for litter. Litter is a great unifier.
There is, however, one small, seemingly insignificant detail which destroys the case against litter and the litterer.
Litter can only take place in the public domain, never in the private domain.
The ads showing the supposed evils of litter take place on highways, beaches, streets,
parks, subways or public bathrooms.
All public areas.
This is not because most littering occurs in public places.
It is definitional.
If something resembling littering in all other aspects were to occur in a private place,
it would not be considered littering.
When large crowds leave a ballpark, movie theater, concert, or circus, what remains
among the seats and aisles is not and cannot be litter.
It is garbage, dirt, or waste, but not litter.
After normal working hours in the downtown area of our cities, a horde of cleaners descend
upon the privately owned banks, stores, restaurants, office buildings, factories, etc.
What they do is clean, and under no circumstances do they pick up litter.
Concurrent with this, the Department of Sanitation cleans the public streets and sidewalks, picking
up litter.
Now there is no real distinction to be drawn between leaving garbage in public places and
leaving garbage in private places.
There is no reason to call the former and not the latter littering, since what is being
done in both cases is the same.
In both cases, the creation of garbage is a concomitant of the process of producing
or of consuming.
In some instances, leaving garbage to be picked up later is the optimal solution.
For example, it is too time consuming for a carpenter to clean up the wood shavings
is as he works. It is easier and cheaper to allow the litter, wood shavings, to accumulate
and be swept away at the end of the day or at periodic intervals. The factory manager
could institute an anti-litter campaign and force the carpenters to keep their work area
free of any accumulation of wood shavings. He might even enforce this edict with the
The Threat of a $50 Fine. However, with these rules, his workforce might quit, or if they
did not quit, the costs of production would rise inordinately, and he would lose business
to competitive factories. In the medical practice, on the other hand,
littering cannot be tolerated. Operating, consulting or treatment rooms must be sanitary, well
All Scrubbed and Free of Debris Failure to adopt a strong anti-litter campaign
here would involve the administrator of the hospital in financial failure, as it became
known that his institution was unsanitary.
In the case of consumption, most restaurants, for example, do not pursue anti-litter campaigns.
There are no signs on restaurant walls forbidding the dropping of forks, napkins or breadcrumbs.
A restaurant could prohibit litter, but it would lose its customers to other establishments.
What these seemingly disparate examples have in common is to illustrate that in the market,
the decision of whether and how much litter to allow is based ultimately on the wishes
and desires of the consumers.
The question is not treated simplistically, and there is no general outcry to get rid
of litter bugs.
There is, rather, a careful weighing of the costs and benefits of allowing waste materials
to accumulate.
To the extent that the costs of garbage collection are low and the harm caused by garbage accumulating
is high, there tend to be frequent collections and severe penalties for leaving garbage around,
as in the example given of littering in a medical facility.
If the costs of garbage collections are high and the harm caused by the accumulation is
low, there tend to be less frequent collections and no penalties for littering.
These differences in policy are not the result of any governmental law, but are a result
of the market process.
Entrepreneurs who do not act in accordance with an accurate cost-benefit analysis lose
A system which is based on the needs and desires of the people involved is very flexible.
In each example, a policy on littering was tailored to the requirements of the specific
situation.
Moreover, such a system is capable of responding quickly to changes, whether they be in the costs of litter collection or in the harm caused by uncollected litter.
If, for instance, a system were installed in hospitals enabling litter to be taken out at very little cost, or if consumer desires regarding litter underwent a marked change,
Hospital administrators would have to relax their stringent anti-litter stance.
The hospitals which failed to adjust to the new technology and tastes would tend to lose patience to competing institutions.
These are private, profit-making hospitals.
Public hospitals, which obtain their funds through compulsory taxation, have no such incentives to please customers.
On the other hand, if it were discovered that soda cans and popcorn boxes left under the seats at baseball stadiums were disease carriers or interfered with the viewing of the game, the stadium rules concerning litter would be changed automatically by stadium owners, without any government edict.
In considering litter in the public domain, there is no finely attuned system responding to the needs and desires of the people.
Rather, the public domain is the ward of the government, and the government treats consumer demands in a rather cavalier manner, virtually ignoring them.
Government enterprise is the only enterprise that will deal with an increased desire to
litter with a steadfast determination to eliminate it, thereby refusing to adapt to either consumer
desires or changing technology.
Only a non-profit government agency could react to increased consumer desires for road
use, traffic tie-ups, with the threat to ban cars.
Only a government agency free from the necessity of earning profits could react to increased
consumer desires for park use by forbidding people to enter parks after dark.
The law is the law.
The government can function this way because it is outside the market.
It does not obtain its revenues from the market process of voluntary trade.
It obtains its revenues through taxation, a process completely unrelated to its ability
to satisfy customers.
The governmental argument against litter is that it is done out of disrespect for others'
rights.
But this argument is without merit.
The whole concept of private litter is a case in point.
If litter were a violation of rights and a refusal to consider the comfort of others,
what of the litter in restaurants, ballparks, factories, etc.?
Litter comes about in the private market precisely as a means of satisfying the desires of consumers
for comfort.
One no more violates the restaurant owner's rights by littering than by eating, since
both are paid for.
How is the government's failure to maintain a flexible litterbug policy in the public
sector to be interpreted?
It is not entirely due to indifference, although it is far simpler to totally prohibit something
than to deal with it in a reasonable manner.
The explanation is that no government, no matter how interested or beneficent, could
maintain a flexible litterbug policy.
Such a policy must be supported by a price system, a profit and loss system, to measure
the cost and benefits of littering and to automatically penalize managers who failed
to adjust accordingly.
If the government enacted a system of this type, it would no longer be a governmental
system, for it could not rely on the bet noir of government, a tax system completely unrelated
to Success in Satisfying the Wants of Consumers.
The inability of the government to be flexible can occasionally take strange turns.
For many years there was no effective restriction in New York City of dog owners who allowed
their dogs to defecate on the streets and sidewalks.
Presently there is a movement afoot to prohibit dog defecation on any street or sidewalk
launched by citizens groups organized under the banner of children before dogs.
The flexibility of the market is completely ignored by both of these factions.
Nowhere is it realized that dog litter can be restricted to certain places.
The issue is seen as a choice between prohibiting it altogether or allowing it everywhere.
Imagine the beneficent results that would ensue if the streets and sidewalks were privately owned.
A greater flexibility would result because of the rewards entrepreneurs would gain for devising methods of satisfying both groups.
Some might object to the private ownership of the sidewalks on the grounds that dog owners would have to pay for the use of a dog lot,
which they now use free, assuming there is no prohibition of dog defecation.
But this is incorrect, because no individual, including the dog owner, has the free use
of the sidewalks.
The sidewalks, as all other goods and services provided by the government, are paid for by
the citizens through taxes.
Citizens pay not only for the original cost of the sidewalks, but also for upkeep, maintenance,
Policing and Cleaning Services.
It is difficult to anticipate the exact way a free market would function in this area,
but some guesses may be hazarded.
Perhaps several enterprising entrepreneurs could set up fenced-in, sandy areas which
dogs could use.
These entrepreneurs could have two separate contracts, one with the dog owners, which
Each would specify the fee for use of the area, the other with garbage truck owners,
specifying the cost of maintaining the areas.
The exact location and number of these areas would, as with any service, be determined
by the needs of the people involved.
In the light of the inflexibility of the government and its apparent lack of interest in accommodating
public tastes, how is the litter bug to be viewed?
The litterbug treats public property in much the same way he would treat private property
if he were but free to.
Namely, he leaves garbage around on it.
It has been demonstrated that there is nothing intrinsically evil about this activity, and
that but for government calcification it would be as widely accepted in the public arena
as it is in the private.
It is an activity which should be regulated by people's needs, not by government fiat.
We must conclude, therefore, that far from being a public enemy, the litterer is actually
a hero.
The courage exhibited by the litterer, given the intense campaign of vilification directed
against him, is considerable.
Even more important, the behavior of the litterer, who purposefully takes the law into his own
in Hands can serve as a protest against an unjust system.