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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

#311

Post by njtransit »

epistasis wrote: post #299
njtransit wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your linked Wikipedia article doesn't say that low-rise buildings are particularly dangerous. A "soft story" building is one that doesn't have good sheer strength due to missing sheer walls inside. It has nothing to do with being a low-rise or apartment building. As mentioned in the Wikipedia article, apartment buildings in Turkey were by far the most dangerous place to be during the 2023 earthquake.

Soft-story buildings are the most dangerous buildings in earthquakes in California, and they are all low-rise. In the article: >Soft-story failure was responsible for nearly half of all homes that became uninhabitable in California's Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 and was projected to cause severe damage and possible destruction of 160,000 homes in the event of a more significant earthquake in the San Francisco Bay A…

Again, most buildings are low rise, especially old buildings, so of course most soft story buildings are low rise. But both low rise and high rise buildings can be soft story.

The reason buildings don’t collapse under shear (think side to side force like would be applied by strong wind or an earth quake) is in part because the interior walls offer shear strength. If you have too few interior walls, and you haven’t compensated via other mechanisms like stronger sheathing, then you risk catastrophic collapse. This is a risk in old construction where walls may have been removed or in cases where building weren’t constructed to appropriate standards. In Turkey, this was particularly bad because the use of concrete in floors and roofs results in more shear force.

The tl;dr is that this isn’t a low-rise vs. high-rise thing. It’s mostly an old vs. new thing.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#312

Post by sooheon »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #220
sooheon wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You would end up with people paying property tax for their gym memberships and apartment rentals. Economic theory on tax incidence says otherwise. Land, being inelastic, takes the tax burden. Land tax cannot be passed on to tenants or businesses.

>Land tax cannot be passed on to tenants or businesses. Correct, and the parent post is proposing taxes on things other than the land itself. If I sell rights to hike across my private property, or make a contract with nature conservancy not to chop down my trees, I still have the land (and pay taxes). To make the nature conservancy pay property taxes as well for contract rights they own is just like having a tenant…

Gotcha. A tax on the land itself will sort out these underutilization incentives.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#313

Post by epistasis »

falcolas wrote: post #307
epistasis wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unregulated markets tending to monopolies means that markets require regulation, not that a monopoly is a market. Unregulated markets are not the "natural" state of a market, and not the meaning of a "free" market. A free market is one in which there is competition and new agents are able to enter the market, not ones where there is no law.

Wikipedia and the American Heritage Dictionary expressly disagree: "In economics, a free market is an economic system in which the prices of goods and services are determined by supply and demand expressed by sellers and buyers. Such markets, as modeled, operate without the intervention of government or any other external authority."

Good point, I shouldn't use the term "free" market. I mean a functioning market, as is intended by anti-monopoly law.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#314

Post by class3shock »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #130
class3shock wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The way you are framing it suggests if the government (or another company) doesn't catch you and punish you then it's legal. Again, that is not "using" the government, that is committing a crime and hoping to get away with it.

This is clearly illegal, the fact that nothing has been done about it yet says nothing about it being legal or illegal. Just because a crime has been going on for years or is difficult to prove in court does not mean it is not a crime. As we type there are multiple monopolies that are illegal and could be tried in court but aren't. Those companies are not "using" the government to get away with it, they are using their money and influence to escape consequences for as long as possible. Again, call it what it is. A crime.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#315

Post by CatWChainsaw »

pixl97 wrote: post #205
dimal wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is capitalism, and I think this is inherent in all stages of capitalism. The goal of any corporation is to maximize profit, period. In earlier forms, monopolists and oligarchs may have used different levers of power, but it’s all ultimately the same thing. Use whatever means are available to make profit.

Hence why we don't allow unrestricted capitalism

Well apparently now we do. Yay.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#316

Post by nicknow »

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…

There is a difference with an HOA. The HOA can be removed if enough members agree. It's not a restriction added by a past owner that can't be removed by the current owner.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#317

Post by nicknow »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #123
mmanfrin wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

We can probably define a legal conservation easement as one that prevents further development on a piece of land, as opposed to regulating the uses and types of development.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#318

Post by nicknow »

anigbrowl wrote: post #208
sokoloff wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but it’s a thing that you agreed to when buying the parcel, as part of the overall deal. If you didn’t want that restriction, you may have bid more to get the seller to give that up or you could choose not to buy under those terms.

My point is that such contractual terms should not be enforceable given their anticompetitive impetus.

We need to be careful here. Because we still want people to sell off potentially productive land. Lets say I buy two lots along a highway with growing traffic because I believe in the next 5-10 years it will be a good spot for a gas station/convenience store.

So now 5 years later the highway is developing and I build out my location. I decide I want to sell the other lot since I'm not going to build on it.

Now, I don't need to sell it. I could hold on to it, it's not that expensive to own. It would be a great spot for a fast food joint or what not. But I don't want to sell it to someone who immediately develops it as a gas station.

The public would benefit from developing the land - new services and more tax revenue. So it's in the public's interest for the owner to sell.

So you want to allow some amount of anti-competitive restrictions. I get not wanting permanent non-removable restriction.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#319

Post by jrs235 »

gosub100 wrote: post #214
sokoloff wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HOAs’ most redeeming feature is they serve to coarsely segregate people who like to live under HOAs from people who don’t.

not really, judging by the amount of people who live there and complain about them anyways.

"coarsely". They also seen to identify folls that sign contracts without actually reading them.

Re: Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions

#320

Post by [deleted] »

pitpatagain wrote: post #134

The part of this article about Mammoth is very off: - The vacant K-Mart being referred to is not in Mammoth at all, it is in the nearest larger town of Bishop, a 45 minute drive away. There has never been a K-Mart in Mammoth. - There is also a Grocery Outlet in Mammoth just down the street from Von's, so there's already more than one grocery store? It's a different store format but it's still a very legit full grocer…

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