i really hope more and more people recognize that regulations and laws have gotten out of control, and we need a serious rollback of at least half
America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws
301–310 of 322 posts
Re: America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws
#302I serve as a planning commissioner for my city, and my city just recently tried to overhaul our zoning code to allow for more affordability and better economic outcomes for our citizens and future as a city. Here is what I have learned: In the US, few people participate or care about local laws, zoning, and elections, or even understand why participation may be important. In a citizen ballot to determine if we should…
How do you even find out about these types of votes? Other than state/federal voting every two years, I wasn't aware there were more times to cast a vote locally.
Re: America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Maybe said tax makes the mattress store reopen with its one minimum wage cashier poking at their phone all day, but you won't get more than that. The landlord isn’t operating the store so why would they need to rent to a business with low operating costs.
> so why would they need to rent to a business with low operating costs If you're asking why the landlord doesn't just leave the site vacant? They're offsetting costs or obviating vacancy taxes or both. There are a lot of reasons why it's beneficial to keep the lights on and babysit a place. If you're asking why the landlord minds having a real tenant instead? The landlord doesn't want a real lessor that actually val…
> If you're asking why the landlord minds having a real tenant instead?
This
> 10+ year lease
I haven’t had a ton of experience with commercial property, but I have enough to know that at least where I live 10+ year leases aren’t common.
5 is much more common even for businesses spending significant money on buildout.
But also the kind of businesses the article is talking about wouldn’t require extensive buildout, so they would be much more amenable to shorter terms.
There are other reasons $4 lunch bowls are never going to happen in the us. Much higher labor costs (despite what the article said about similar minimum wage) is the biggest one.
> All you need is a low cost property manager to look in on the place once a week, make sure the "staff" are actually showing up, and keep the plumbing/heat/electrical working.
They could do that. Or they could actually make some income by renting it out instead of spending $50-100k on a fake business waiting for a payday that may never come.
There are many locations that are never going to attract a renter with deep pockets. And even in locations that will, it doesn’t take many years running a fake business to erase any eventual profits.
Re: America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not about not meeting the standards of the town's health department, it's about having a 1-size-fits-all health standards. If you make a 5-seat japaneese-style neighborhood micro-eatery conform to the same cross-contamination standards as a 800-people-per-hour mcdonalds, you're making one of these unprofitable and de-facto illegal. Yes, lets have health codes. But lets also recognize different risk profiles and…
Can you be more specific on exactly what kind of cross-contamination standards make it impossible for a small eatery to exist? Do you have any specific rules in mind? Its been a while since I went through a food safety course, but I don't really recall any that would make it impossible for a small shop to achieve. I follow most of the rules I learned in my own kitchen at home. Stuff like don't use the same cutting bo…
It's not about cutting boards or temperature constraints. Yes, that applies at any scale. It's the stuff that legally mandates a minimum-size operation. Article talks about it:
> Relatedly, our health code regulations also effectively outlaw people from opening restaurants in small spaces. Most jurisdictions require at least 3-4 different sinks—one for washing dishes (usually a large three-part sink), separate ones for washing hands, one for mopping, and often another for prepping food. This makes small commercial kitchens in under 200 square feet much harder.
> America’s food regulations are also not set up for a single person to manage. The U.S. has 3,000 different agencies handling food regulations. The whole system, scattered across eight places in the municipal code, is basically uncoordinated and varies depending on where you are.
Meatpacking has the same issue. FDA regulations are designed for industrial-scale chicken, beef, and pig processing. And if you're processing hundreds or thousands of heads a day, it's absolutely needed. But what if you have just a few heads? What if you have a small flock you want to sell to your neighbors? A 1000-head-per-delivery processing plant won't even answer your call, and you even if they did you have zero negotiating power, so your only options are to go big or not be able to legally sell it.
A lot of people have amish or menonite communities that are able to process your livestock legally, but even those are disappearing. So small farmers have no way to legally get their product to market, and so they're being gobbled up by the large industrial farms.
The regulations use safety pearl-clutching to force a specific outcome that benefits a specific group, and it's not the small family farmer the commercials idolize.
Nixon's secretary of ag said it explicitly: get big or get out.
Re: America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws
#305Ok… if this is the case, then why are food trucks charging $18 for a burger and fries now? It isn’t all zoning laws.
Dude, there's a million regulations for food trucks. Not only do zoning laws typically still apply to them (of course it varies a lot by municipality) there's usually extra regulations on top of that (can't park within X metres of a restaurant for example) and cities often have extortionate fees for permits. It's often tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in permits...
So… you are saying that over-regulation drives prices up. And thus deregulation should be the goal? Does anyone you vote for say this?
Re: America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
Politicians are like ROM. You can't change them once they are programmed. If you want a different function, you need to swap them out. Yelling in the street is not going to get you anywhere. The reason Civil Rights, Gay Rights and so on got traction was not through protestors changing politicians' minds. It was through the masses changing their minds and actually going to the ballot boxes to replace their (essentiall…
It was also through the violent actions of terrorist groups that police couldn't keep under control. For every time the politicians agreed with a Rosa Parks, it was because they were afraid of a Black Panthers.
While the police and politicians were afraid, it's not because there was a real terrorist threat from the Black Panthers or other militant black movements of the time. While the Panthers had some issues with violence, almost all of that was dedicated to infighting, and the few incidents that weren't were almost all revealed to be incited and planned by agent provacateurs. They were just afraid of blacks, and of giving the "lower" classes any kind of idea that they could effect change.
Re: America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
They never change their minds, that's because the police are willing to beat the protesters for them. The Civil Rights movement is an example of (mostly, but not always peaceful) protest that changed things within living memory. Gay rights advances in recent decades definitely owe a lot to demonstrations and public organizing that put the issues into public conversation. Women's suffrage movements also featured many…
Civil disobedience and other exertions of citizen power are only a subset of "protest". I've been to a lot of protests and most of them accomplished jack shit.
It's very rare for anything to change as a direct result of protests, but the act of protesting brings issues into the public consciousness that weren't necessarily there before. That is the real driver of change. Changing public opinion directly transforms the Overton Window and limits the acceptable range of opinions and actions politicians can take. Just because no laws were directly changed doesn't mean your protest did nothing.
Re: America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's a great place to live and there will always be high demand. there would be more supply if not for restrictive zoning laws. and more supply = lower prices
SF has a relatively high ratio of housing units to population compared to other cities in the US and a 9.7% vacancy rate. By the numbers, it has an oversupply of housing.
housing units : population is not a very salient statistic
Re: America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure but there’s degrees to this. If you’re a day laborer renting a room at the local motel, it’s a lot easier for you to say “screw this place I’m going to the next town over” than for someone who has their kids enrolled in the highschool and a mortgage. Everyone has skin in the game but some have way more.
Renters can also enroll their kids in public schools. And in terms of mobility, renters might be stuck in a one- or two-year lease, far longer than it might take to sell a house. Maybe those transient homeowners are the ones who shouldn't get to vote...
I think you're kind of (completely) missing my point. Who signs two year leases at a motel?
Obviously someone with a kid enrolled in school and locked into a long-term lease is not transient and has a comparable amount of skin in the game as a homeowner.
Re: America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can also go to city hall and give a temporary address. You can not. That is not how it works. Sounds like you just don’t know Dutch law and options at all tbh.
Yes you can. Briefadres. https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/gemeenten/vraag-en-...
In Amsterdam that is only for the homeless. The people living on the streets.
Sounds like you just don’t know Dutch law and options at all tbh.