Club good solutions

As a bit of a foodie, I find that one can get the best taste of a new city by visiting a local bakery at dawn, and its something I try to do in every one that I visit. A few years ago I was in Istanbul and despite seeing delicous looking baked goods a plenty being shuffled around town by young children, I couldn't for the life of me find a bakery! After a bit of asking arund I found out that there were no commercial bakeries and that the young boys shuffling bread around town were taking uncooked dough prepared by the family to the central communal bakery in the evening, and picking up the freshly baked loaf in the morning. In a situation where there are large up front costs and space premiums, economies of scale dictate that such club good arrangements make a heck of a lot of sense, although they might dissapoint some foodies.

Recently I read about a simalar club good arranglement that focused on reducing environmental impact. In Japan, a small town (led by a young public official with the title "snow use specialist") uses the massive amounts of winter snow to create a natural refrigeration system. The town piles enough snow into one side of a bunker to last all year round and gives each resident space in the collective refrigeration unit created on the other side. This allows some families to do away with refrigerators altogether, and others to cut back on its size and use. Genious.

And last night I was speaking to a Macquarie employee here in Abu Dhabi, who pointed out that despite the relatively low cooling costs, each city block makes use of a centralized cooling unit. This makes economic and environmental sense because the cooling process is ultra efficient. All of these club good examples seem, to me, to suggest that the dominant private property perspective that dominates in the West may be leading us astray when thinking creatively about environmental and economic solutions to problems. Perhaps there are many more ground-breaking solutions out there that require a collective or club good perspective.