A story I may have told before: On opening day of a PDC, the venue was
kind enough to put out mugs, each with a participant's name on it. They
asked that each person be responsible for rinsing and putting away their
own mug. The system worked beautifully; the classroom stayed free of
scattered mugs; each was back in the rack at the end of the day. Then,
come our mid-class day off, the mugs were put through an industrial
sterilizer and the labels were removed. They went back to the classroom
unlabeled. Within a few days, mugs were everywhere--under chairs, on
shelves, left outside, many full of molding tea leaves, and another
couple of dozen mugs had been commandeered from elsewhere since no one
could find a clean mug and it was easier to grab another from the stash.
Soon almost every mug the place had was in our classroom, dirty and
haphazardly stuck anywhere.
I was pretty surprised, since the participants seemed like decent folks.
The lesson I took home was twofold: private ownership is one way to
encourage responsibility toward resources, and, a culture that is used
to private ownership is liable to behave irresponsibly toward resources
held in common.