Live and Let Live

Posted by on . 4 comments.

Prince of Petworth writes:

So for today’s Friday Question of the Day – at what point does a neighborhood have too many liquor stores? Now I’m wondering if there is a historical component here – as many liquor stores also function as corner stores/bodegas. I assume they proliferated for convenience and perhaps a lack of access to proper grocery stores? But in 2011 given the state of our neighborhood’s access to grocery stores and the existing corner stores – at what point are there too many liquor stores? Should there be moratorium? Or should capitalism work this problem out?

And Matt responds:

I’m going to vote for capitalism here. Free markets have some flaws, but assessing the market demand for retail beer sales (again, if this were an actual map of liquor stores we could talk about liquor) and supplying a roughly appropriate number of beer retailers is exactly what free markets are good at doing. If anything the evidence suggests to me that the DC government is too stingy with these licenses and is allowing a lot of storefronts to stand vacant when convenience stores could be profitably operated.

I agree with Matt’s conclusion here, of course. But it bothers me a little that the conversation is primarily focused on questions of which policy option is most efficient at generating some end — in this case, the appropriate number of beer retailers. Occasionally, there will be a role for government planning, and far more often markets will do the best job allocating resources, but in either case, the default assumption should be that people should be allowed to do what they want with their property. Neither “I don’t like the typical liquor store clientele”, or “I think there are plenty of liquor stores already”, or “I’d rather this space be a book store” are good reasons to try and prevent the people who rightfully control a property from opening the business they want to open.

It’s very strange to me how many people think that “I want something different” is a sufficiently good reason to trample on someone’s property rights.

Comments

  1. sp6r=underrated says:
    March 22, 2011 at 4:09 pm

    Communities have rights as well.

  2. Dave says:
    March 23, 2011 at 9:14 am

    It bothers me a lot that the conversation confuses actually-existing capitalism with a free market.

    If the market were truly free, there wouldn’t exist the other things that prevent people “from opening the business they want to open,” like zoning and building codes and business licenses and health codes…

    Communities have rights, as do customers, and what this all amounts to is a lot of already-existing government interference with business.

    So really this is a question of how much more than the status quo of governmental interference that people are already used to that might seem appropriate in this situation.

  3. low-tech cyclist says:
    March 24, 2011 at 9:40 am

    Communities have rights as well.

    Maybe so, but it would still be preferable if the community’s rights trumped the individual’s rights only where there was clear evidence that the exercise of the individual’s rights would do nontrivial harm to other individuals, or to the community as a whole.

    But generally such infringements are backed up by little more than handwaving.

  4. low-tech cyclist says:
    March 24, 2011 at 9:48 am

    If the market were truly free, there wouldn’t exist the other things that prevent people “from opening the business they want to open,” like zoning and building codes and business licenses and health codes…

    And both Ryan and Matt would argue against most of that regulatory structure as well, which is also backed up by little more than handwaving.

    In fact, with such things, the evidence is generally on the other side – that harm is being done to the larger community by such restrictions.

    For instance, zoning restrictions, height limitations, and minimum parking requirements result in artificial shortages of housing in cities and close-in suburbs, and result in urban areas sprawling out far beyond where most people want to be, resulting in more cars spending more hours and more miles on more highways.

    Is this good or bad for the community? Whatever its effect on some small neighborhood in the urban core, its effect on the urban area is extremely bad.