On the flip side, without the government to enforce a contract one party has broken, there would be no reason to ever fulfill a contract - you'd have to rely on citizen's force, and history has not shown that it's been particularly good to rely on regular citizens.
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.
a competing company could open a store there anyway and then fight the battle in court; they might even win, but the cost of the court case would prevent most companies from even trying, after all groceries are a relatively low margin business--if this were a gold mine instead of grocery store you can be sure someone would have opened it already and fought it in court
Any contract that intends to reduce the amount of buyers or sellers could be made unenforceable.
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.
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.
An average free market supporter would say this isn’t the free market working.
No, free markets aren’t equivalent to anarchy and every state action isn’t tantamount to violence.
This is an ambiguity in the concept of free markets, which is why we’re having a linguistic versus conceptual discussion.
How can contracts be enforced without coercive force if one party decides not to follow the agreement?
This is an obvious grey area on the abrogation of property rights.
> 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.
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.
Alas, I could be in over my head, but I guess I don't interpret "free market" to mean anarchy (no regulation).
If you go read the actual invisible hand quote from Adam Smith, that so many people are fond of quoting, he is pointing out that the free-market leads to unintended outcomes and side-effects:
"By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention."
His argument is basically that sometimes merchants accidentally do things that benefit society. The unstated opposite is the issue.
The concept of free-markets is nebulous, and thus more of a political football than a serious thing. Every culture has limits on what it will allow of the market, and what is considered not allowed. A monopoly that harms the consumer is not allowed, but we do allow monopolies in circumstances where it would be massively inefficient not to operate as a monopoly (utilities is the most common one, e.g. only one company is allowed to own power lines in your neighborhood).
This is my pet peeve with certain forms of right-wing libertarianism. If it's possible to recreate all the market restrictions of a totalitarian government through private property, markets, and cunning; then what does that kind of libertarianism actually say? Tyranny is only bad if the tyrant hasn't signed the right paperwork?
Depends, should you be "free" to offer terms on land you own, and to "free" to accept those terms when purchasing?
Whenever people talk about "free markets", it often embeds a sneaky internal contradiction between (A) the freedom to operate without worrying about secrets and strange restrictions, versus (B) the freedom to create secrets and strange restrictions on others.
That pattern is a pet-peeve of mine: People will celebrate a "free market" as being theoretically optimal when everyone has perfect information about prices and deals... Then the next day others will pooh-pooh concerns over cartels, because a "free market" enables defectors to make secret deals with hidden prices. I wouldn't be surprised if in some cases they ended up being the same people.
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.
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.
Imposing a restriction on this means that the government is saying that these two individuals cannot conduct private business in a certain way.
Now do I agree with this? Hell no, land use restrictions should be legislated into oblivion and companies should not be able to make flagrant abuse of monopolistic behavior to destroy essential businesses for towns. But this is as pure of a free market interaction as you can get, with all the downsides.
Not at all established. Monopolies require strong states to exist.
How so? When competition can merely be purchased, why wouldn't the larger company do so? Or if the competitor doesn't want to sell, the larger company can undercut them until they're forced to sell or exit the market. No government required for either tactic, and there are plenty of examples of both occurring in US history. For example, Standard Oil, which was formed when about 40 smaller companies joined forces.
Another place where monopolies take root with no state input is when there's a large barrier to entry, such as with railroads. The cost (and justifying the cost to investors) is too much for most companies to even break ground, let alone complete. For example, Bell System, which owned the copper in the ground and the equipment producer Western Electric.
Now then, of course a state can and do also raise the cost of entry for new competitors - but then we're going to be talking about a regulated 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.
"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."
That's why we have anti-monopoly laws, so that we can have markets. In recent decades, the interpretation of anti-monopoly has transitioned a bit to focus more on consumerism rather than markets, and the definition of monopoly has shifted from "is there a sole provider" to "is the dominant market player causing consumer harm."
But originally, before that shift, anti-monopoly laws were in favor of markets.
with liberty and justice for all?
Edit - we’re talking about two markets - groceries and land. Rules in one market (land) are being used to create a monopoly in the other (groceries). While the land market may still be “free”, the grocery market is not. And now we devolve into debate about what’s better - textbook free markets or markets that require government intervention to ensure the most social good.
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?
Your parent didn't say "those two cases are different," but rather "it's OK to be right about one thing and wrong on another." That someone has a blind spot for matters that affect him directly doesn't mean he's wrong about the matter that doesn't affect him directly (though of course it also doesn't mean he's right).
Except, that isn't true. Arguing that the YIMBY explanation of our housing supply problems is incomplete doesn't make you a NIMBY. Your uniformed commentary also adds nothing to the discussion. Next time please take the time of read the opinions of someone before arguing on the internet about what they are.
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?
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.
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.
But his having different priorities than us doesn't make him a hypocrite.
That doesn't matter at all, "two willing parties" doesn't make a contract legal. Neither of those willing parties are the ones harmed being harmed by the anti-competitive contracts.
I understand whataboutism as bringing up something that is somewhat related in order to shift the focus away from the original topic.
...or it's to draw attention that the author might be selectively applying arguments whenever it suits him, and readers shouldn't take him at face value. Between the two articles, it looks like Stroller is against big corporations first and foremost, and musters whatever argument is handy to back that thesis. In the case of house builders, he's explicitly says land use regulations aren't a significant factor ("just pointing at over-regulation in and of itself isn’t a satisfying explanation"), but in the case of supermarkets he turns around and says it is. He doesn't try very hard to explain why it's justified in one case and not the other. The first article is basically "I don't find it convincing [no refutation given], here's my alternate hypothesis". I feel like all of this is worth pointing out, even if it isn't exactly a straight up debunking of the two articles.
Umm... what? Those are two quite different statements. You can't conflate them that way and be arguing in good faith. You have either misunderstood his stance or are deliberately misrepresenting it.
>I took on the YIMBY’s here and pointed out that the problem of housing prices and construction is about consolidation of homebuilders, not an upsurge in annoying people who want to maintain neighborhood character.
I'm sure you can come up with a contrived worldview that proclaims those two statements, but doesn't believe "land use regulations aren't a significant factor", but it's pretty clear that's his view, even if he doesn't say those literal words.
This doesn't mean that land use regulations (and permiting processes and the other NIMBY tools) don't have an impact, but it does mean that we cant look at that impact to expain the increase.
Believing there is only one cause is simplistic and naive and believing in multiple causes is not "contrived".
As I said elsewhere, I think NIMBY land use restrictions are an obvious tool to use by any would be oligopolist or monopolist who wanted to restrict the growth of our housing supply.
The actual article linked in the tweet does a pretty good job of layong out an argument for the importance of the consolidation among homebuilders (and notably spends no time arguing that land use regulations have no impact.) Instead of engaging with any of those argument you've opted for a shallow dismissal based on trying to tie them to a position that you are only assuming they hold. That is not how you have a good faith discussion.
>This doesn't mean that land use regulations (and permiting processes and the other NIMBY tools) don't have an impact, but it does mean that we cant look at that impact to expain the increase.
Stroller isn't just adding his theory (corporate consolidation) into the list of factors, he's explicitly denies that NIMBYs are a factor.
>the problem of housing prices and construction is about consolidation of homebuilders, not an upsurge in annoying people who want to maintain neighborhood character.
If I'm ever inconsistent, I hope people point it out to me! This isn't "whataboutism" this is me changing the subject to a different area where I wish he'd be correct and use his considerable wonk-weight to correcting. Its not changing the subject to counter his point about grocery stores in Mammoth, California, it's more of a yes, and.
I'm also for improving the market forces in construction, and do devote some political effort to correcting exactly that problem.
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 people in California banded together and voted to allow grocery chains to collaborate and split up areas to avoid competition, then I guess that would be mostly fine too.
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?
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.
That's a feature, not a bug. People who don't live in a community shouldn't be able to dictate how that community runs its affairs.
If you want to live in a world where the entire State, not your neighborhood, is deciding what you can build where and when, then keep refusing to make reasonable, regional compromises.
The local decisions on zoning are not made democratically, there's layers of representatives, and the representatives that get elected are some of the least reported-on and discussed elections in our society.
Land use decisions are made by small numbers of highly motivated people, that already have housing, and benefit financially from a shortage of housing. Just like the grocery stores here.
At the state level, regulation of land use is far more similar to poll results, and that regulation is reining in the abuses of local land use policy, forcing local decision makers to allow for more housing.
Bullshit. Their money holds more value than any vote.
The biggest damage was sustained by bridges and concrete road viaducts built in the 1950s and 1960s which were not built to modern standards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_story_building
Rebuilding these as new modern apartments would make everyone a lot safer in case of an earthquake.
Also, we don't outlaw ways of life based on safety. For example, larger cities are far safer when it comes to fire deaths, than small towns, but we're not about to outlaw communities < 2,500 (see Figure 5):
https://www.nfpa.org/education-and-research/research/nfpa-re...
>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 Area
There are special warnings about soft-story buildings for home buyers, apartment renters, etc. in California. There are not such warnings for high-rises.
I don't know much about Turkey's buildings, but if there were less than 5 stories then they were all low-rise too. And I doubt that they would meet California code if they collapsed in a 7.8 earthquake.
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.
if the residents of one town were deciding that no housing could be built in another town, that would be closer to the commercial land use case made here
I can't build a fourplex on my lot, despite having the room for it, because people living elsewhere deemed it so. Instead it's a SFH with most of the lot wasted as setbacks, and is worth more than it should because of it.
(Not saying that NIMBY-ism is good or right, just that the situation is different.)
Here in SF, a good example is the leading progressive mayoral candidate, Peskin. He's basically a housing subversive. He'll pay lip service to it, then sabotage YIMBY efforts. Earlier this year he sponsored an ordinance blocking higher density in parts of his district. The current mayor vetoed it [1] but he got the board to override the veto [2].
The barons originally sold suburban supply restrictions as anti-sprawl measures, co-opting the greener factions of the left. Then they sold density restrictions as anti-traffic measures.
No suburbs + no density = no new housing.
Luckily this unholy coalition has started to crumble a few years ago. A large majority of Democrats is now in favor of more housing.
[1] https://sfstandard.com/2024/03/14/san-francisco-breed-peskin...
[2] https://sfist.com/2024/03/26/supervisors-override-breeds-vet...
To reach utopia - the fantasy goes - we must first travel through a dystopia in which the poor are enserfed by the housing barons, paying upwards of 70% of their income in rent. Unfortunately the dystopia never ends in practice.
Then there's the perplexing question of how real estate taxation got to this point. As the saying goes, a real estate family that pays any income tax at all needs to fire their tax advisor.
The vacant store has a 100 miles of literal desert in each direction and nobody can build a competing store because the environmental review process is weaponized.
>In Mammoth Lakes, Vons is the main supermarket, and there are suspicions they have been working to limit the construction and growth of a competitor, Grocery Outlet, through environmental claims. In 2017, a group, Sustainable Mammoth Lakes, filed to prevent the construction of a small Grocery Outlet occupying slightly more than one acre, with just 49 parking spots, on a spot that had already had commercial building and was close to a highway.
If you have a protracted legal battle for a new construction, intense zoning regulation, and laws against new development, then of course you will have all kinds of games played to control the existing supply.
See also: housing
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 that I'm not familiar with. As far as I know though there has never been a K-Mart in Mammoth, and I've snowboarded there since ~2002.
Bishop did used to have a K-Mart and it is just sitting empty now.
> Vons started leasing one plot in 2019 when K-Mart went under, “holding the space hostage.” It now leases the other as well.
Edit: Oops I mean Bishop. I'm too sleepy. The article is weird and mixing up the towns and their separate but related issues. I lived in the Bishop/Mammoth corridor for 2 winters.
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
- Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
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).
This could be solved today by not imposing arbitrary restrictions on what other people can do with their land without their consent.
That said, government policy could be more proactive in disallowing those sorts of restrictions and punishing companies when they try to impose them.
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 constrained as it is, you may not always have a realistic choice).
As a general rule, prior owners probably shouldn't be getting a say in what future owners do with land. Why? Because land is inherently limited in a way in which most other property is not, which reduces the ability of new entrants to 'disrupt' the market by offering people more choice.
If my town only has one car dealership with shitty business practices, no biggie, it's not too hard to go to another town and buy a car, then bring it back. But I can't buy land and bring it back to use it, I'm stuck with whatever's already there.
HOAs also tend to be too small - it is hard to find someone qualified who wants to be in charge and so they are often forced to accept some busybody nobody really likes because at least that person wants the job. As you get larger you get a choice of qualified people for the job (but of course also large enough for corruption to take effect).
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 go visit.
She has started a genuine campaign to have the HOA removed. She's so salty all the time now. It is top 10 things that has happened in my life.
Source: I've stepped in goose poop many, many times up here in Canada and it's the least bad poop to step in.
Realtor looked at us. "You're probably not interested in this house, right?" Nope. She read us right. We would never live in a place under the thumb of an HOA.
The HOAification is likely a symptom of broader cultural changes (bad changes, IMO).
We've let residential property as an investment go waaaaay too far. And now we have little suburban dictators running around everywhere enforcing whatever the fuck they want, to protect their investment.
Spoiler: my property isn't a mess and the house is well kept. Because it's better for me that way. But I can also build a small shed if I feel like it without worrying about other people. And I can pee outside on a tree. That's a bonus as well.
It's not as dramatic as it sounds. the house was owned by _someone_ before they moved in. at _some_ point the guano was left and the HOA found it (whether that alleged violation cited done in a good-faith effort is irrelevant). The HOA applied their process, and at _some point_ ownership changed. Leaving your sister with the bill, which she is probably able to recover from the previous owners.
HOA's are agreed to by the owners and they preserve the value of everyone's property and enforce common decency. (no trash, overgrown yards, RVs parked). I own a house under HOA and I get a letter or two per year about leaving the garage door open or the trash cans out too late. It's not a big deal and the neighborhood stays beautiful and desirable.
That depends, really. If the unpaid HOA fine was disclosed during the buying process, and the buyer didn't make it a condition of sale that the seller had to cover it, then the buyer is responsible. If the seller didn't disclose it, then the buyer can of course sue the seller, but depending on the magnitude of the fine, it might be easier and less stressful to just pay it.
> HOA's are agreed to by the owners and they preserve the value of everyone's property and enforce common decency.
In theory, yes. In practice, many HOAs are full of busybodies who enjoy the power trip and love to meddle in how other people live their lives. Even in the absence of that, like any institution, the people who are a part of them and subject to them often disagree on the fine details. For example, I'm not convinced it's fair that an elected board of homeowners gets to decide things like what color the curtains on the inside of your windows facing the street are allowed to be. But many HOAs have restrictions on that. I suspect you might think that such a restriction is fine, but that's exactly the point I'm trying to make: people don't always agree, but everyone ends up being subject to whatever the board/majority decides. I don't think we should allow these mini-governments to be able to enact property restrictions that actual governments wouldn't be allowed to do.
My latest fun letter from our HOA was that the paint on some air vents on our roof had faded and no longer matched the color of the roof, and we'd be fined if I didn't have them repainted. What a huge waste of time and money, both for me and for whatever busybody was paid (yes, paid) to drive around the neighborhood looking for these things.
As an amusing aside: not long ago I read of a case where a homeowner had been parking his boat in his driveway for some very long time (like more than a decade), but suddenly the HOA decided to enforce a provision about that not being allowed. Boats had to be put behind some sort of opaque fence or partition, so they're not visible from the street. So he built the fence, parked his boat behind it, and had an artistic neighbor friend paint a mural... of his boat... on the outside of the fence. Loved that.
And yes, geese love to poop everywhere.
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.
Wow, it's a wonder your sister hasn't stopped inviting you over.
Also I'm sneaky as all get out. I'm not sure she has figured it out yet.
Can you give some examples that are applicable today?
>HOAs also tend to be too small - it is hard to find someone qualified who wants to be in charge and so they are often forced to accept some busybody nobody really likes because at least that person wants the job. As you get larger you get a choice of qualified people for the job (but of course also large enough for corruption to take effect).
This might vary on a state by state basis, but there are some pretty "cities" in some states. In Florida, there are plenty with population in the hundreds. In some cases it's due to it being rural, but there's plenty of cases where the city is simply small. For instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briny_Breezes,_Florida
more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_municipalities_in_Flor...
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 residence, or restricting hours that visitors can come, or how long they can stay, but those are all things that HOAs try to control.
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 free association (visitor restrictions).
???
I've literally never encountered this, unless you count having to register to use the visitor parking.
Rules that literally say, "You cannot put up election-related signs."
==I've literally never encountered this, unless you count having to register to use the visitor parking.==
Rules that say how many people you can have at your house, how long they can stay, etc., etc.
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.
A friend of mine is a member of a little HOA that consists only of himself and his downstairs neighbor.
So much pointless overhead...
Here's a community that requires all owners to be 55+ and to register guests. https://warwickgrovehoa.org/wp-content/uploads/HOA_Guest-Pol...
Here's a community that allows political yard signs, but limits their total aggregate area and how soon they must be removed after the election. http://caminovillage.com/pdfs/hoa-ccrs.pdf (bonus: you have to comply with the HOA rules when it comes to any window treatement that is visible from the front. They literally have rules about what they can see through your windows.)
Here's a legal case about a town that tried to get a couple to repaint their home: https://pacificlegal.org/victory-in-starry-night-mural-case-...
HOAs cannot enforce rules that conflict with State or Federal law or the Constitution.
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).
Uh, D.C. has plenty of aesthetic restrictions.
Purple door disputes wouldn’t be a Federal issue, but one of the D.C. superior court. The Feds have only intervened four times, and it was over much bigger features than HOAs. And the Supreme Court has actively closed loopholes where local issues relevant to any other state could become Federally interesting.
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 imposes some restrictions on an HOAs power to censor speech, but many other states do not.
* Case law on this is actually quite minimal. Local governments do try to ban free speech of course and almost certainly overstep their bounds, but no one has gotten a case to the Supreme Court.
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?
HOAs seem to have withstood legal scrutiny…
Zoning ordinances (which are the closest analogy to HOA CC&Rs) restrict all sorts of expression but have been held lawful as long as they can be characterized as a time/place/manner restriction. See https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/zoning-laws/ for a pretty good case law overview.
If money is speech, then me giving a million dollars to a Senator should be analogous to me with a megaphone shouting down anyone who disagrees with me until their eardrums bleed.
[0] The Supreme Court case that invalidated campaign contribution limits and foisted SuperPACs upon us.
Also, core political speech (and its financing, subject to concerns over corruption) such as electoral or issue advocacy is considered sacrosanct by the American legal system and so government prohibitions on it will receive significantly stricter scrutiny.
HOA's can (and regularly do) enforce rules that governmental entities are constitutionally prohibited from enforcing.
Yes, technically not a violation because the HOA isn't technically government.
55-AND-OVER COMMUNITY WANTS TO EVICT FAMILY WITH 6-YEAR-OLD
And we not just make lawful but even encourage the creation of housing intended for aging adults: https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/fair_housing_equal_opp/f...
HOAs are a creature of state law and only have power to the extent state law confers it. They are not voluntary associations of the sort contemplated by the First Amendment. You can't choose to join an HOA unless you own land that belongs to it, and you can't choose not to be a member when you acquire a property.
If you were to draw a comparison, HOAs are far more consensual.
If you think avoiding an HOA is hard, do you really think it's easier to avoid a city government?
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.
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.
Which ones?
People do it here, constantly. Look at the FTC - they're charged with maintaining and enforcing a competitive free market. But when they make rules or prevent monopolistic mergers or anti-competitive contracts, conservatives and libertarians lose their minds.
It seems nobody knows what capitalism is!
I could be wrong, but I think property use restrictions are actually more of a socialist concept. When done right, they're meant to protect others (aka society, in general - not some businesses that don't like having competitors across the street) from various harms, such as emissions, noise, overcrowding or things like that. In other words, not about what goes on at some property, but what happens to the outside because of it. But as the uncontrolled abuse grew unchecked, it became something else entirely.
This stuff, together with non-competes and exclusivity agreements is something different. I don't know what it is, but it's neither capitalism nor socialism "as they were well-meant", but rather a weird amalgamation of perverted concepts from both, leading to both erosion of healthy markets (so, harming capitalism) and degradation of life quality (so, harming socialism).
Yea, but that's not some strictly inherent property of capitalism, and I thought stakeholder vs shareholder is still an open issue?
Single family home zoning is the factor in bloated infrastructure and housing prices going up. This protects capital investment of a necessity which ensures exploitation of the working class.
I don't see how's that capitalism at all. If Coca-cola and Pepsi signed a agreement not to compete that was made public, the FTC would go after them. If Microsoft made secret backroom deals that gave them an unfair advantage, the FTC would and did go after them. If you don't like competition, having the government come in and say you're the only one that can do that just isn't how American is supposed to work.
Non-competes are anti-capitalism and anti-American. That they're used against bartenders and restaurant servers is just gross.
> where businesses grow too big (too close to monopolies) and go unchecked
By this reasoning, the Gilded Age was already "late stage capitalism", and yet somehow regulations were implemented and capitalism continued on, in a less shitty form.
We've done it before, we can do it again.
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.
That's a system that fails more catasrophically than private easements.
I.e. easements that come from law rather than seller stipulation? Seems an easy distinction to make.
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.
Menard's does this in Michigan, and then tries to get the taxes on their replacement stores to be based on the restricted property. It's nuts.
"Sure NGO XYZ, I'll sell this land to iff you accept a long-term restriction on it's use"
The government has been mostly disinterested in pursuing antitrust actions for about half a century now, requiring very explicit evidence of very specific forms of price fixing by very unpopular companies to take any action other than blocking the largest of mergers.
Recent political changes over the course of the 2020's have started to change that, and these changes represent significant news relative to the situation for the past couple generations.
Only saw that idea just now and it seems interesting enough to investigate further. I'm not a tax guy though so don't know if I'm missing something obvious.
That said, I think I'm much more practical solution is to focus on the buyer's rights and non-competitive behavior then limiting sellers rights. It makes intuitive sense that people would be able to option or sell indefinite use rights if they own the thing itself. It is less intuitive that individuals have a right to aggregate such options for Monopoly.
Now that I think about it, it seems there could be some comparison to the corner crossing cases that are being litigated too
On a more serious note, I think tax is a terrible solution. Who is going to value all of these use rights, restrictions, and options on an ongoing basis. Why punish everyone with any kind of good faith contract to deal with an extremely niche issue, which may not even be a problem.
Seems like the current solution is best. If someone is bothered, they can complain and the AG investigates. If someone is engaging in anticompetitive action, they get fined. It amounts to the same thing without screwing everyone over.
1. Restrictions have to have a "controlling party": a dedicated party that controls the restrictions and can agree to lift it. Classical example would be HOA, but it can also be a seller if they want to sell property with additional restrictions.
2. The controlling party sets the price of a restriction
3. Restricted party can remove the restriction paying price set in 2 to controlling part.
4. The controlling party pays tax as percentage of price set in 2.
Renters are the controlling party. Landlords are the restricted party- they can not rent to other people or use the house themselves.
Consumption and supply is not fixed and taxes aren't a free lunch.
> "In June, for instance, Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who is also litigating against the merger, fined Albertsons $25,000 for imposing a land use restriction on a store it sold in 2018 in a low-income section of Bellingham, Washington. As part of the sale, the supermarket giant put a requirement on the deed that no grocery store could open there until 2038. Ferguson found this provision was a violation of the state antitrust law."
The fine imposed doesn't seem all that significant though.
Perhaps they could also be prosecuted under federal antitrust law?
Now anyone can file the same suit and they'll need to settle.
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 small time grocers would help. I think the mayor doesn't want to push too hard for whatever reason.
There's probably something else going on. My first suspicion is that the story is simply wrong: generally, when you read something that's so comic-book-villain evil, something about the story is being misrepresented or is just wrong. It would not surprise me to hear if this Vons actually did have competition that the author conveniently missed, forgot about, etc.
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.
What I will absolutely cast doubt on is that its the whole story. And, in fact, my suspicion was correct: as this other comment states, the story has a variety of inaccuracies [1].
Its honestly hard being so right all the time. My intuition is just too good, its a curse tbh.
"Land use restrictions are common in the supermarket industry, because it costs about $10 million and requires a good plot of land to open a new store. It’s much easier to open a store in a building already suitable for a grocery store than to build something from scratch."
> when you read something that's so comic-book-villain evil, something about the story is being misrepresented or is just wrong
seriously? companies pull stuff like that all the time to try to shut out the competition. It's not much different than Microsoft bundling IE with Windows to kill Netscape -- forgoing revenue on something it could charge for, to kill the competition and then have a pretty lousy browser for a long time
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.
She owns specific rights separate from the ownership of the land.
If Alice still has some say over what can be done with a property, even if it is through a contract with Bob, then how is Alice able to tell Charlie what he can do with the property once Bob sells it to Charlie? When Charlie never signed any paperwork with Alice? That sounds like something that comes with still having some level of ownership, even if the law that enables the restrictions to be enforced don't word it that way. And that is where I'm saying that the county can write into the tax law that this type of control is taxable with property tax (because even if it isn't technically ownership of the land, the right of enforcing the restrictions is still something that Alice owns).
I'd also like to see taxes on property that is underutilized (for the zoning that it is in). For example, some landlords would prefer to not rent out units rather than lower the rent to market rates (either housing or storefront properties), contributing to a constrained supply. If property taxes are raised on a unit that is unoccupied for a specific length of time, that would encourage the owner to rent it out at what the market is willing to pay instead of artificially keeping the rent higher and therefore the building empty.
You would end up with people paying property tax for their gym memberships and apartment rentals. Those too are contractual encumbrances that would impact a buyer
Economic theory on tax incidence says otherwise. Land, being inelastic, takes the tax burden. 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 pay for private use of my house, or a consumer for a shared access right to my gym.
It also isn’t just grocers. Canadian Tire is a big offender too.
- 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 grocery. There is also a Grocery Outlet in Bishop.
It's an important topic but the Mammoth part is not sourced well.
That happened with US vs. Eastern Mushroom Marketing (2005). [1] Eastern Mushroom Marketing was leasing, or buying options to lease, competing mushroom farms, and shutting them down. They lost.
[1] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2005/02/10/05-2495...
1. Courts do not consider hypotheticals. In order to get the issue before a court, you have to actually buy the land and actually get sued over it.
2. Most people in a position to start up new grocery stores barely have enough capital to start one store, and cannot afford to tie it up in litigation for the next five to ten years.
3. Those in a position to attack the deed restriction are other large chains, who all have class solidarity and would never dare of attacking their own business practices.
Sometimes the logic behind #3 breaks - usually when a business in one industry tries to expand horizontally into other industries. This used to be a lot more common back when we had functioning caps on business consolidation, but now pretty much everyone owns everyone else. And sometimes someone decides to commit financial suicide, breaking the logic behind #2. But that brings us to the next reason:
4. Courts really, really do not like getting people out of contracts, even - and especially - really, really unfair ones.
Because...
0. Courts do not want to be arbiters of fairness, because fairness is arbitrary. Laws and contracts carry the illusion of impartiality, which is often good enough to trick otherwise bright minds into getting lost in the weeds of caselaw and clauses instead of asking "Hey, aren't we playing into someone else's hands"?
or to put it different, how does society benefit from a system where kroger can sell me land, but with the stipulation about what i'm allowed to put on it? it seems to me that if kroger wants a say in how that land is used, they need to lease it rather than sell it, which is exactly what happens in the article. the article doesn't seem to expand much on the "the supermarket giant put a requirement on the deed that no grocery store could open there until 2038" aspect
https://www.oregonlive.com/window-shop/2015/06/peterkort_alb...
What did I miss? Does someone have a cached version??