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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

#71

Post by kulahan »

deprecative wrote: post #59
TulliusCicero wrote: post #25

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…

It's literally just capitalism. This is the point of the economic system. Why are people surprised? Is the propaganda just that good?

It's literally just regulatory capture. It has nothing to do with capitalism.

In a truly capitalistic economy, there would be no regulations preventing competitors from coming in and creating competition. The propaganda doesn't have to be good when nobody understands what is and isn't capitalism anyways.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#72

Post by class3shock »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #4
forgetfreeman wrote: post #2

Behold: the Market doing Market shit.

Behold: Market participants using government to disable other market participants.

Just because a legal mechanism exists (adding a restriction to a deed as part of a private sale) does not mean that its use is legal. This is not "using" the government to disable other market participants, this is illegally abusing the mechanism of a deed restriction to monopolize a market and extort people.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#73

Post by otterley »

bluGill wrote: post #48
gruez wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

HOAs often enacts rules that would be illegal for a city council to enact. (between the US constitution, US federal laws, State constitution, State laws, and county laws there are often strict limits to what can be done that HOAs are not effected by). Courts have reigned in some of that, but there is still a lot that a HOA can do. HOAs also tend to be too small - it is hard to find someone qualified who wants to be i…

> between the US constitution, US federal laws, State constitution, State laws, and county laws there are often strict limits to what can be done that HOAs are not effected (sic) by

HOAs cannot enforce rules that conflict with State or Federal law or the Constitution.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#75

Post by carabiner »

bluGill wrote: post #60
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.

No, it becomes a "food desert", and people just learn to buy a car and drive to the nearest town with a store once a week. So really it just increases car dependency. (they are buying too much to bike or take transit - you need a car for the large storage space)

This is a ski town that gets buried in snow for half the year. Everyone has a car and you can't really bike safely with the snow plows running, icy streets. No one really lives there because of the food quality.

The article leaves this out. Mammoth isn't just "rural," it's a wealthy vacation town hemmed in by federal land with severely limited land. But then it confuses it with Bishop which is 40 minutes away and has its own issues (Bishop is kind of walkable, Mammoth isn't really).

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#76

Post by sangnoir »

rogerrogerr wrote: post #23
Suppafly wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Because I feel like land use restrictions are antithetical to a free market. The free market sorta means that anyone is going to use any means possible to fuck over their competition, I don't see how this situation is incompatible with that.

“Free market” usually excludes the use of violence. Land use restrictions are backed by the government, which has the monopoly on legal violence and will arrest you for violating land use restrictions. An average free market supporter would say this isn’t the free market working.

> “Free market” usually excludes the use of violence

How can contracts be enforced without coercive force if one party decides not to follow the agreement?

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#77

Post by shkkmo »

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?

"Refuses to acknowledge" is a really strange way to phrase the stance he put forward in the article linked in that tweet (I'm also confused why would you link to the tweet instead of the article in the first place?). I don't see a single place where he denies that land use restrictions can cause and/or amplify housing shortages. His point is that the lack of building supply is a national phenomena and thus there may be something more at work. I would argue that the housing finance middleman conglomerates who he claims are working to monopolize new housing supply are would likely be well versed at using NIMBY tendencies to achieve that goal. I would also argue that deflecting more blame for the situation onto local landowners instead of the large speculative land banks, would also be very valuable to such a cooperative oligoply.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#78

Post by jandrese »

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…

One caveat is that these decisions are local, so people who have not had a chance to move in because there is no housing don't get a vote. Thus over time the law increasingly favors existing homeowners to the point where it completely fossilizes the community.

It's a good deal for the people who live there, but a bad one for the population as a whole as all of the prime real estate is taken and they're pushed out to places that nobody previously wanted to live.

If I had a good or easy solution I would offer it, but this is just a fundamental problem with democracy. Maybe if there was a fairly hostile state zoning board that vetoed most of the laws that prevent new construction, but there is almost no way to prevent that sort of position from being captured by the local interests and it would be very hard to staff since the person would be under both intense pressure and hate from nearly all communities in the state. Can you imagine being the guy who, through veto of the anti-construction law, let some skyscraper be built that blocks the ocean view of a few millionaire mansions? You'd be lucky to get out of town alive.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#79

Post by sokoloff »

otterley wrote: post #73
bluGill wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HOAs often enacts rules that would be illegal for a city council to enact. (between the US constitution, US federal laws, State constitution, State laws, and county laws there are often strict limits to what can be done that HOAs are not effected by). Courts have reigned in some of that, but there is still a lot that a HOA can do. HOAs also tend to be too small - it is hard to find someone qualified who wants to be i…

> between the US constitution, US federal laws, State constitution, State laws, and county laws there are often strict limits to what can be done that HOAs are not effected (sic) by HOAs cannot enforce rules that conflict with State or Federal law or the Constitution.

Are you sure [in the context of GP's claim]?

The Federal government could not pass a law prohibiting me from painting my front door purple (that would be an infringement on my 1A rights).

As I understand it, an HOA can enforce such a prohibition as a private entity (and use the courts to back them, ultimately).

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#80

Post by dmd »

otterley wrote: post #73
bluGill wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HOAs often enacts rules that would be illegal for a city council to enact. (between the US constitution, US federal laws, State constitution, State laws, and county laws there are often strict limits to what can be done that HOAs are not effected by). Courts have reigned in some of that, but there is still a lot that a HOA can do. HOAs also tend to be too small - it is hard to find someone qualified who wants to be i…

> between the US constitution, US federal laws, State constitution, State laws, and county laws there are often strict limits to what can be done that HOAs are not effected (sic) by HOAs cannot enforce rules that conflict with State or Federal law or the Constitution.

But they do, every day, because fighting is far more expensive than acceding.
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