I realized that I was becoming a stuffy economist just recently, when I was listening to one of my NoFX CD’s. Their song “Eat the Meek,” decries the culture of mass-production/comsumption in which we live, and point out the dangers of us allowing everything to be commoditized. I don’t know why after years of not only listening to this song, but studying economics, that these lyrics didn’t synch in my mind, but a few weeks ago I was driving home from work and the two finally met.

“You know there’s always gonna be pedigree
One own the air, one pay to breathe”

And the first words out of my mouth were, “Good luck trying to establish sound and enforcable property rights for oxygen.”

And then I realized that I was becoming more like my father. And I openly wept.

However, it is an argument that I have heard from those who are anti-captialist and anti-market. I grew up in the Bay Area, known for being a very liberal demographic, and in discussion with peers and teachers I would be told that if we left markets and businesses up to their own devices, we would reach a point where we would have to pay for breathing. I understand the fear of allowing things in life to be avaliable for purchase and profit…but oxygen? Really? Arguments like these are based completely off of emotion, and what I believe to be a fundamental ignorance to basic economic and business principles. There is no way, on a large scale (I will explain later), for a person or entity to make oxygen a private good.

First off, what is a good? And how do economists’ classify them? A good is…well a good. It’s one of those things that you know what it is, but it’s difficult to explain. A word you use in conversation all the time, but when asked its meaning, you stutter and cannot articulate. A good, essentially, is anything consumable. This includes tangible and intangible items, free and for profit, and even services and ideas. The product of a factory line you buy at the store, a drink of water from the stream behind your house, a lawyer or even a social networking site.

In Economics, we place these goods into 4 categories; public, private, club, and common. They are all relatable in two regards; their excludability, and rivalry. By excludability, we mean that someone can be barred from consumption. By rivalry, we mean that one person’s consumption affects all other’s ability for consumption. In either case, the presence of exclusiveness or rivalry imply a finite amount of whatever good is being consumed.

A private good is any good which is both exclusive and rivalrous. My house is a private good. I can exclude your use of my house, and my consumption of the house and the land denies your ability to use the land for your own purposes. Most commodities fit into this category; food, clothing, consumer electronics, etc.

A club good is any good which is exclusive, but non-rivalrous. An example here is like a country club, or a lawyer’s services. My consumption of a country club memership does not take away from anyone elses, but the membership is exclusive in the fact that only paying members, or sometimes legacies, can join.

With private and club goods, there is an owner or group who has established clear property rights for their good or services. A product available only for purchase, an idea trademarked, a pool enclosed behind a gate, all establish property rights for their owners, and allow them to seek legal action against those who infringe on their property rights. The next two types of goods, common and public, do not have these clear property rights, because they are non-exclusive, or simply, nobody owns them, sonobody can take legal action against another party based on use.

A common good is any good that is non-exclusive, but rivalrous in consumption. The most famous example of this type of good is illustrated in a theory called “the tragedy of the commons.” There is a parcel of land in an agrarian society, where all the farmers are allowed to let their animals graze. However, because this parcel is free to the public and no one is barred from using it, there is no incentive for its users to limit their use of it despite the fact that the parcel is in a limited supply. In a large group, this is called the diffusion of responsibility; I will let my animals graze and take their fill, but it’s up to the other guy to limit their animals intake. If everyone thinks like that, then the land is soon over-grazed, and nothing is left to consume.

Lastly, a public good is any good that is non-exclusive and non-rivalrous. Oxygen falls under this type of good. Short of someone forcing their hands over your nose and mouth, there is no way to exclude anybody’s consumption of oxygen. Second, it is in limitless supply, therefore there is no rivalry in consumption. My breathing, no matter how deep or how often I breathe, does not affect anyone else’s ability to do the same.

Now earlier in this post, I said that oxygen, on a large scale, is impossible to be made a private good. I said on a large scale, because for the most part, people will not pay for something they can get for free. But, then again, some will. There is a subset of the aroma therapy industry that caters to consumer’s demand for “cleaner, fresher” oxygen. The first “offical” oxygen bar was opened in Toronto CAN in the mid 1990’s, and from there the fledgling industry spread, offering citizens a “richer” oxygen percentage than what we breath regularly from the atmosphere. They market it as a way to excape from breathing the particulate and polluted air from the industrialized world, and you can even pay for the oxygen to come with different scents.

Come. On.

I think it’s stupid, and someone who pays for what they can get for free (if you want to smell apples, then, I don’t know, why not cut up an apple and sniff?) may be at a questionable level of intelligence, but…damned if I won’t defend it. This is consumer demand. If people want to blow their money on oxygen bars, they should be able to. Breathing to live is a neccesity, but paying to breathe is a luxury.

In sum, it is impossible for there to be corporate take-over of the atmosphere. Zero. There would be no way to enforce it. You cannot fence off oxygen. You cannot build a room and hoard it all inside. You cannot have half of the populaiton put their hands on the throats of the other half and refuse to let them breathe until they pay.

Or maybe I shouldn’t take the song so seriously…