Some years ago, I bought a watch that uses sunlight instead of electricity. Supposedly, it should bring more convenience to me as my past experience is that electric watch stops working every year and I have to seek watch shops for changing the battery, a trouble job to me. However, not only I cannot enjoy more convenience with the sun-powered watch, I have even nightmares.
The nightmares came when winters came. In Hong Kong, sunlight in winters is not sufficient. Every morning, the watch will stop as power stored cannot enable it to work through the whole night. Hence, the first job when I wake up is to find some light for it until it works again. There is a period for it to slowly recover. You cannot assume that it works immediately whenever you give it light. As such, I have to keep on adjusting its time until it works normally.
The most inconvenient episode occurs when I had early class at 8:30. I had to wake up very early and even so time was tight for me to do everything and traveled to school. I would worry that if I would be late especially when traffic jam existed. At that time, when I saw my watch to check if time was sufficient. Oh my god! The watch still didn't work! I couldn't assess if I would be late!
As mentioned, I have to keep on adjusting the watch time when it is slowly recovering. But how can I find the correct time at that moment? I looked for clocks that shops will display when I passed them. To my surprise, it was not easy to find a clock in public areas. My goal to adjust the time for my watch could not be easily achieved!
Before I bought my sun-powered watch, I paid no attention to clocks on streets. Only when I have bought the sun-powered watch, I notice this fact (and so I think you have never noticed this fact). This phenomenon was indeed not a common phenomenon in the past. I can remember very clearly that when I was a teenager I was not rich enough to have my own watch. As there was no other way to know the time, I had to rely on the clocks displayed by shops on the streets. I could easily find the clocks and the time in the past! These shops indeed served the public in an important way. Now, these displays are rare as you can try to confirm it on streets.
Why things have been changed? Is it because time is no longer important for people today? I don't think so. Then, why?
Perhaps you also have the answer already. But as economists, we perhaps want to organize things better, and in cost and benefit terms. The benefit of displaying a clock is to enable people to know the time. There are two types of the people. People working for these shops with clocks displayed of course know the time. Moreover, passers-by like me also benefit from these displays. The workers at these shops have no incentive to benefit the passers-by like me. But it is in their own interests to display the clock for easy observation. If they hide the clock, the workers there also cannot easily find the time. Thus, benefit going to me or the passers-by is a side benefit and an unintended benefit. As such, when the workers or owners of these shops decide to display the clocks or not, they normally will not take passers-by's benefit into account. On the other hand, displaying a clock involves a cost. The shops have to bear the entire cost of the clock. Though not a very big sum, it still affects decisions if the benefit structure from a clock changes.
The benefit from a clock has indeed changed with popularity of smart phones. Now, almost everyone has a smart phone, which gives everything you wants from a computer and a phone. In addition, it gives you the time. If people can get the time information privately (from their phone) at no extra cost, there is no need for most people for getting it on a sharing basis, namely through a displayed clock. As such, the value of displaying clock is diminishing (if not going to zero). Well, the cost of displaying a clock is low. But still it is not zero. There are three types of costs. First, electricity. But I think this cost is not a factor that triggers abandonment of clocks. It is really too low to be noticed. Second, repairing cost. Yes, clocks cannot work forever. When it can still work, I think the shop owners do not bother to drop it. But if it stops one day, I think they will no longer repair or replace it.
Third, perhaps unexpected, labour cost. In the past, there were clocks displayed in the classrooms in my university. I do think it is very important to have the clock not only because it enables me to know whether I should stop teaching already but also because it is very useful when tests are held in classroom: students need to know the time, the commonly acknowledged time, not the privately displayed time, to see if the tests will end soon. In recent years, however, the university took away all the clocks from the classrooms. Without a displayed clock, I have to display an electronic clock from the computer. If clocks are so useful, why the university dropped it? My colleague told me that it was because these clocks used batteries and every years the university had to send workers to replace batteries. The university does not want to go through the troubles anymore when time can be got via smartphones. However, obviously it has not properly considered the difference between privately displayed time and publicly acknowledged time.
In summary, as the benefit of displaying clocks diminishes and the cost of it is non-zero, at some point, clocks are abandoned. The result: I suffer from it. At this point, you may ask: if the benefit of a clock is minimal to most of people, why this does not seem to applicable to me? Some of you may know the answer, I think: I don't use smart phone.
