SGO: Dog Poop

This leg of the Small Government Odyssey was suggested by an article in yesterday’s New York Times. Here’s the article, but the dilemma itself doesn’t require a lot of thought. Local dog owners are thoughtlessly leaving their dog’s excrement on your lawn or sidewalk.
I call it a dilemma because, in the context of the SGO—in which the game is to retain conflicts within the society or the economy and not let them bleed over into the polity—you must make a choice of solutions. The social sector solution would include things like caring about your neighbors or anticipating that if you do that to them, they will do it to you. From the standpoint of keeping the issue safely within the social sector, the one is as good as the other.

This might be the time to do away with the alternative that is superior to all others: character. If you lived in a neighborhood where people simply wouldn’t do that kind of thing to their neighbors, the issue would be resolved without any further fuss. Except that you have to ask where people of that character would come from. They come from families that teach good behavior toward the neighbors; and the families live where what they teach is generalized and amplified by the community. And, of course, the neighborhood takes steps to keep “outsiders” safely “out” because who knows whether the ethics of passersby match up with the ethics of locals.


The rules of SGO have, to this point, precluded an appeal to character so that the focus will be on keeping the conflicts at home, rather than allowing them to drift toward national government. Theoretically, there would be nothing wrong with passing an ordinance against allowing your dog to poop on your neighbor’s property and providing the necessary enforcement. I’m thinking of Poop Police (local police: I’m not thinking of adding another task to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) and maybe a culture of snitching, so that the police could be assured that the dogs who were not caught in the act would nevertheless be apprehended by vigilant neighbors.

That passes muster technically, because it doesn’t engage the national government. It does require local governments to use the law and its enforcement to prevent canine crime, however, and that really isn’t in the spirit of the Odyssey.

There is a way, though, to solve this problem without vigilant neighbors and without political interference. It is to export it to the economy. Here’s how it works.

Everyone who owns a dog in her complex, Timberwood Commons in Lebanon, N.H., must submit a sample of its DNA, taken by rubbing a cotton swab around inside the animal’s mouth. The swab is sent to BioPet Vet Lab, a Knoxville, Tenn., company that enters it into a worldwide database. If Ms. Violette finds an unscooped pile, she can take a sample, mail it to Knoxville and use a DNA match to identify the offending owner
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Called PooPrints, the system costs $29.99 for the swabbing kit, $10 for a vial to hold the samples and $50 to analyze them, which usually takes a week or two. The company says that about two dozen apartment complexes around the country have signed up for the service.


Now, no one has to live at Timberwood Commons. But it you do and if you have a pet, you do have to have the pet’s DNA registered. Ms. Violette finds the offending pile, sends the sample in, determines the culprit, and fines the culprit’s owner. Unless the culprit’s owner sues (juridifying the issue, if you recall Frank Heard’s categories from the first SGO post), there is no governmental involvement at all. There are no neighborhood vigilantes because there is no need to catch the offending pet in the act. Well after the act is still plenty of time for PooPrints.

The angry neighbors are transmuted into knowledgeable onlookers. They need only wait for justice to be done. The “bad neighborliness” is turned into an economic opportunity for the BioPet Vet Lab. The offending pet’s owner knows he has only himself to blame and in order to avoid future penalties will comply with the rule. The hope of getting away unidentified is now a forlorn hope.

Again, good character is a better solution in every way except adding to the Gross Domestic Product (such an apt name in this instance). Good character would have the residents at Timberwood Commons take care of their animal’s scat because it is the right thing to do. It is but one instance of a robust regard for the good opinion of the neighbors and a willingness to be a community-affirming member rather than a limits-testing member. But failing “good character,” there is PooPrints.