Live data from Hacker News

Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

thebignewsletter.com

31–40 of 321 posts

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#31

It's funny to see Matt Stoller complain about land use restrictions here, as he refuses to acknowledge the problem for residential building: https://x.com/matthewstoller/status/1824155610201432264 If apartment buildings are banned in 96% of residential land in California, with most of the 4% already built up with apartments, isn't that pretty similar to the commercial land use situation in Mammoth, CA?

It's funny to see criticism of Matt Stoller's points boil down to whataboutism. It's okay to be right one one thing and wrong on another. It doesn't invalidate anything.

>It's funny to see criticism of Matt Stoller's points boil down to whataboutism.

That's not whataboutism, it's inconsistency, and it's worth pointing out.

>It's okay to be right one one thing and wrong on another.

but wouldn't you rather be right on both? "but I'm at least right on one" seems like a pretty low bar to aim for.

>It doesn't invalidate anything.

Did OP imply otherwise?

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#32

It's funny to see Matt Stoller complain about land use restrictions here, as he refuses to acknowledge the problem for residential building: https://x.com/matthewstoller/status/1824155610201432264 If apartment buildings are banned in 96% of residential land in California, with most of the 4% already built up with apartments, isn't that pretty similar to the commercial land use situation in Mammoth, CA?

So the majority of people want to keep it that way? Then it might just essentially boil down to democracy issues.

Companies on the other hand don’t get a vote. So if all grocery companies banded together and voted for a law to allow monopolies then it wouldn’t be the same thing as if all the humans voted for it. Companies do love to lobby though, but lobbying and voting are still two different things.

So if all the people in California banded together and voted to allow grocery chains to collaborate and split up areas to avoid competition, then I guess that would be mostly fine too.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#33

I’m sorry but isn’t this on the town itself? If land use restrictions are preventing them from having a second grocery store, then change the law. Monopolies will act like monopolies and its up to the local government to do something about it.

The use restriction is in a deed covenant, not a part of the zoning ordinances. Im not actually quite sure how those get altered/taken out of the deed other than expiry

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#35
post #12

>In Mammoth Lakes, there are two old K-Mart lots that could easily welcome competitive grocery stores This sounds like Bishop, not Mammoth. Bishop is 30 minutes outside of Mammoth and is a little bit bigger. Mammoth does have two grocery stores now, for years it was just a Vons and now there is a Grocery Outlet as well. Bishop has a Vons, Grocery Outlet, and a Smart and Final. Both cities have some hispanic grocers t…

Yeah it's definitely Mammoth. Mammoth Lakes, like many ski towns, has SF-level housing crisis.

Edit: Oops I mean Bishop. I'm too sleepy. The article is weird and mixing up the towns and their separate but related issues. I lived in the Bishop/Mammoth corridor for 2 winters.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#36

These sorts of land use restrictions should be illegal. It's basically a corporation trying to act as a pseudogovernment, enforcing regulations on land that they no longer own themselves. One could argue that HOAs are kind of a similar issue, acting like a pseudogovernment, with restrictions on housing passing on down indefinitely, even to new owners who may not have wanted to agree to them (but with housing being as…

How are HOAs any different than a city council, except on a smaller scale? In both cases they're democratically elected, and they enact restrictions that can't be opted out of.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#37

Behold: the Market doing Market shit.

Do you mean free market? Because I feel like land use restrictions are antithetical to a free market. In which case, your comment makes no sense.

The restrictions are contracts between two parties, not the state imposing them, so it's 100% the free market.

The state meddling in the market would be if two parties agree to a contract, and then one party gets the state to pass a law that changes the terms of the contract to the benefit of one party. Like 'right to work laws,' for example.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#38

It's funny to see Matt Stoller complain about land use restrictions here, as he refuses to acknowledge the problem for residential building: https://x.com/matthewstoller/status/1824155610201432264 If apartment buildings are banned in 96% of residential land in California, with most of the 4% already built up with apartments, isn't that pretty similar to the commercial land use situation in Mammoth, CA?

It's funny to see criticism of Matt Stoller's points boil down to whataboutism. It's okay to be right one one thing and wrong on another. It doesn't invalidate anything.

[deleted]

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#39
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean free market? Because I feel like land use restrictions are antithetical to a free market. In which case, your comment makes no sense.

The owner of the land sold it with restrictions that benefitted them. That's pretty much free market in a nutshell.

I'm not an economist, but the first definition that came up for me was:

> an economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses.

And the word unrestricted is underlined. It seems to me that land use restrictions (I mean, it's literally in the name) are directly working against this philosophy.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#40
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny to see criticism of Matt Stoller's points boil down to whataboutism. It's okay to be right one one thing and wrong on another. It doesn't invalidate anything.

>It's funny to see criticism of Matt Stoller's points boil down to whataboutism. That's not whataboutism, it's inconsistency, and it's worth pointing out. >It's okay to be right one one thing and wrong on another. but wouldn't you rather be right on both? "but I'm at least right on one" seems like a pretty low bar to aim for. >It doesn't invalidate anything. Did OP imply otherwise?

Having two opinions on two different forms of land use restriction is not necessarily inconstant. Especially since one is a form of contract law, the other government regulation.

Beyond enforcement, the government has no real part in the former. Except perhaps not disallowing it. But we have rights to specific parts of usage excluded from land sales all the time - water rights being a particularly gnarly one.

Post reply on HN