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Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

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Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#61

Post by class3shock »

015a wrote: post #46

While holding a lease on prime competitor real estate seemingly strictly for the purpose of stopping competition from moving in feels very, very scummy; it also feels like it isn't the whole story. Competitors don't need to move in to the vacant K-mart. There are always other options; those "other options" is how 99% of grocery stores get opened, Walmarts don't "move in" to old K-marts by-and-large. Is the local gove…

Except corporations do comic-book-villain-evil crap all the time. Forcing the government to buy food for your employees because you don't pay them enough to eat? Hi, my name is Walmart. Using your customers as guinea pigs for science experiments without their consent? Hi, my name is Facebook. Use lies, fraud, and bribery to extort money out of the government while supplying critical national defense services (and get caught and fined 1B)? Hi, my name is Raytheon (an RTX company).

Corporations will do anything and everything they deem that will make them money with the only constraint being the least possible adherence to law they can get away with.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#62

Post by dghlsakjg »

aliasxneo wrote: post #39
abofh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unrestricted in this sense means that both parties are able to deploy their capital as they choose, and specifically without outside requirements.

In this case someone took a piece of capital (land), and traded most of the rights, but not all to someone else.

The buyer took the deal knowing that they hadn't purchased unrestricted use of that land, but instead a limited use of the land.

Both parties agreed to the deal, and no other party restricted their actions, or unfairly restricted competition. No party was coerced, and they could have negotiated for different terms.\

An example of a great non-market restriction would be: you can't enforce any land use restriction covenants.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#63

Post by gruez »

falcolas wrote: post #40
gruez wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

>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.

Shouldn't he rail harder against the former than the latter? A contract is agreed to by two willing parties. The same can't be said for government regulation, especially for people who want to move into an area but are blocked by NIMBYs.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#64

Post by eesmith »

hmottestad wrote: post #32
epistasis wrote: post #7

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 p…

You do not have enough information to tell if a majority of people want it that way.

Some of these zoning restrictions (don't know specifically about CA but true elsewhere) were put into place 60 years ago, when a majority wanted it that way (often for very racists and class warfare reasons), and they made it a requirement to have a supermajority to change it, not simple majority.

Thus, a majority could want to change, but are unable to reach the 2/3rds or whatever supermajority threshold is required.

Don't all political questions in the US boil down to democracy issues?

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#65

Post by sokoloff »

Eextra953 wrote: post #43

What kind of calculation goes into leasing something for 750k/year to keep competition away? Is it as simple as thinking that a competing store would cost them 750k/year or do other factors go into this? Also, the mayor expressed his frustration but there is a lot that local government can do to combat this kind of thing. Even something as simple as getting a weekly farmers market started or actively looking for smal…

If it would cost $10M to build and open a new grocery store on an unimproved lot, that's only a 7.5% rate of return to force your competition to lay out $10M to open a store, at which point, you could probably convert your lease into an operating store for around $1M or less of capital and compete to ensure that they could never show a positive return on the overall move.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#67

Post by tedunangst »

banku_brougham wrote: post #58
kevinventullo wrote: post #17

In this case, I suppose the “invisible hand” operates by making Mammoth a less desirable place to live, causing them to lose tourism and residents to places with stronger competition.

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the publick, or in some contrivance to raise prices" - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

The feds were right. We need to shut down defcon.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#68

Post by derekp7 »

The way I understand it... If Alice owns land and sells to Bob with some restrictions, that means Alice is still maintaining some ownership of the land. And the price that Bob pays is discounted from the otherwise fair market value, because it has those restrictions on it.

Then, if Bob sells it to Charlie, Alice still has an ownership stake (logically speaking) from the restrictions (whether it is land use, or mineral rights, or whatever). That is what keeps Charlie bound by those same restrictions. And again, the land isn't worth as much to Charlie as unrestricted land would be.

Now since Alice still has what could be considered ownership in the land (via the restrictions), then Alice should be paying some property tax based on that value she is retaining. And since taxes can be assessed based on the nature of how the property is used (such as granting a homestead exemption/discount for example), then if the current situation isn't benefiting the county or city, they can redefine their tax code to raise the portion that Alice would have to pay based on the ownership type.

I understand that the above is an ideal situation, and if Alice isn't getting a tax bill then that should probably be addressed by the local government.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#69

Post by llamaimperative »

ipaddr wrote: post #54
epistasis wrote: post #7

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?

Aren't low rises safer then earthquake zone

Tokyo does just fine

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#70

Post by eszed »

cobertos wrote: post #33
darth_avocado wrote: post #22

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

I suspect GP meant that land-use restrictions were preventing grocery stores on other plots of land. Or maybe that's just where my head went, though there's way from this article to know whether that's true. If that is the case, however, then there's a simple (and very satisfying) way to tell this corporation to f--- off.
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