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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

#121

Post by School-Cotton »

mullingitover wrote: post #37
aliasxneo wrote: post #6

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 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.

No, “free market” doesn’t quite mean the same thing as “no state restriction on private contacts”. I mean, those concepts are usually correlated, but not in this case.

For a more obvious example: if all the companies that sell smartphones agreed to form a cartel to raise prices, the state preventing them from making that agreement would make the market for smartphones more free, not less.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#122

Post by jdeibele »

gruez wrote: post #105
dghlsakjg wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you give some examples that are applicable today? HOAs are pretty famously restrictive of free speech (house color restrictions, yard sign restrictions, political activism restrictions), and free association (visitor restrictions). Their are some speech restrictions that governments apply to historic structures, but you would have a hard time as a government trying to register the name of every visitor to a res…

>house color restrictions And have courts ruled that cities (or other governments) can't impose color restrictions? >yard sign restrictions, political activism restrictions Not sure what's meant by "political activism restrictions", but cities most definitely have restrictions on signs. You can't put a brightly flashing LED sign next to a busy intersection, or plant a billboard to make some money on the side. >and fr…

I moved to a home that's part of a small (47 homes) HOA.

Here, the visitor restrictions are aimed at commercial visitors. You're not supposed to run a business like a massage parlor or barbershop out of your home.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#123

Post by JumpCrisscross »

mmanfrin wrote: post #118
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These sorts of land use restrictions should be illegal An easier solution is mandatory sunsets after a period of time. Because the flip side of making them illegal is you'll have a lot more land with conservation easements being exploited for resources.

> conservation easements I.e. easements that come from law rather than seller stipulation? Seems an easy distinction to make.

> I.e. easements that come from law rather than seller stipulation?

A lot of convservation land in America is put under non-governmental easement [1]. The owner puts a restriction on the deed prohibiting development. They typically require emininet domain powers to be removed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_easement

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#124

Post by daveguy »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #104
TulliusCicero wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is indeed a downside, but the expectation there should be that the government should be restricting resource exploitation where that's undesirable.

> the expectation there should be that the government should be restricting resource exploitation where that's undesirable That's a system that fails more catasrophically than private easements.

That's a bold statement. Would you mind providing an example or argument?

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#125

Post by JumpCrisscross »

mywittyname wrote: post #115
Loughla wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sister just moved into a place that has an HOA. She's actively trying to get it suspended permanently. They live on a lake that attracts very aggressive Canadian geese. The geese do geese things like eat and poop lots of poop. The HOA fined them before they moved into the house for having goose poop in their back yard. For me, it's hilarious. I take handfuls of corn and stuff to throw around their backyard when I…

My HOA is worded such that it must exist for at least 30 years and there are no facilities to dissolving it before that time (after that time, a simple majority can vote to dissolve it, so long as the city agrees to incorporate the land and infrastructure). In this case, it's because the HOA is responsible for the loans taken out and long term leases to manage the sub division's infrastructure. And yes, geese love to…

> My HOA is worded such that it must exist for at least 30 years and there are no facilities to dissolving it before that time

Technically, there are. Lack of an explicit termination clause doesn't mean an agreement can't be terminated. But the party that would object to that termination is the lender. If you had their sign off, you could dissolve the HOA today.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#126

Post by insane_dreamer »

kulahan wrote: post #71
deprecative wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are incorrect. This has nothing to do with regulations.

It's the same as a farmer secretly buying up neighboring already irrigated fields from bankrupt farmers, and not planting on them in order to be able to raise the price on their own crops, assuming that the cost of importing the same crops from elsewhere is prohibitive and there is no other readily arable land nearby (thus they have a monopoly on the local market). So it's cheaper for them to leave the purchased fields fallow, and raise prices, than grow more crops.

This is the type of predatory capitalist practices for which we need regulation in the first place.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#127

Post by JumpCrisscross »

falcolas wrote: post #27
epistasis wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a "market" doing something, it's a monopolist doing monopolist stuff. One kind of precludes the other...

Not at all. The natural end state of an unregulated market is monopolies. As demonstrated again and again throughout US history, with only anti-trust regulation bringing the monopolies to an end.

> The natural end state of an unregulated market is monopolies

Not at all established. Monopolies require strong states to exist.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#128

Post by thatfrenchguy »

carom wrote: 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…

> Both cities have some hispanic grocers

One thing I have noticed after moving to the US is that white Americans are terrified of going to ethnic grocers, it's pretty fascinating

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#129

Post by MichaelZuo »

Aloisius wrote: post #93
otterley wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

HOAs often restrict freedom of expression which would not be legal if done by a city government. The first amendment, however, only protects against government censorship, not private organization censorship so an HOA can force you to paint over the mural on your garage whereas a city government could not*. Some of this depends on state of course. California, for instance, recognizes HOAs as quasigovernments which im…

For free association to be meaningful the association has to be able to restrict freedom of expression, or kick out those who refuse the restrictions.

Otherwise someone could just shout down any meeting the association decides to have.

So the pertinent question would be, are HOAs legitimate associations in that sense?

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#130

Post by lotsofpulp »

class3shock wrote: post #72
lotsofpulp wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

Betting on government inaction for breaking the law is still using the government. If it is illegal, then a competing grocery store should be able to open its doors and any lawsuits thrown out. Considering Albertsons’ and other grocery store’s lawyers are not willing to bet on this, it must be clearly illegal, which is again, a problem the government has to solve.

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