[HN Gopher] Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restric...
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Albertsons kills rural grocers with land use restrictions
Author : unpredict
Score : 145 points
Date : 2024-11-04 21:32 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thebignewsletter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thebignewsletter.com)
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Behold: the Market doing Market shit.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Behold: Market participants using government to disable other
| market participants.
| coliveira wrote:
| You said well, market using government. The government is
| just a tool used by capitalists.
| db48x wrote:
| Yea, I guess the communists and socialists and libertarians
| would all use different tools.
| falcolas wrote:
| In this case since it's deed restrictions as part of the
| land/building sale it's not the government enforcing these
| restrictions, it's plain old contract law.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The government enforces all contracts, by having the power
| to impose the consequences of violating contracts. In this
| case, the government is not doing its anti trust duties
| resulting in harm to the public.
| falcolas wrote:
| Perhaps it's just me, but I'm pretty glad that we don't
| have the government interfering with our every contracted
| act (a sale is such an act).
|
| 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.
| class3shock wrote:
| 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.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| This is precisely the opposite of that, in fact.
| aliasxneo wrote:
| 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.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >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.
| rogerrogerr wrote:
| "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.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Land use restrictions are backed by the government,
| which has the monopoly on legal violence_
|
| 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.
| ConspiracyFact wrote:
| Property rights themselves are backed by the state's
| monopoly on violence. So no, the free market doesn't
| exclude violence, it requires it. (I'm not saying that
| capitalism _uniquely_ requires violence in order to
| function, but libertarians like to pretend that it's an
| exception.)
| sangnoir wrote:
| > "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?
| abofh wrote:
| The owner of the land sold it with restrictions that
| benefitted them. That's pretty much free market in a
| nutshell.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _owner of the land sold it with restrictions that
| benefitted them. That 's pretty much free market in a
| nutshell_
|
| This is an obvious grey area on the abrogation of property
| rights.
| aliasxneo wrote:
| I'm not an economist, but the first definition that came up
| for me was:
|
| > 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.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Unrestricted in this sense means that both parties are
| able to deploy their capital as they choose, and
| specifically without outside requirements.
|
| 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.
| aliasxneo wrote:
| That is interesting; I can see it from that perspective.
| I suppose when I read "unrestricted competition," I infer
| it to mean that any contractual agreement created for the
| purpose of limiting competition would be regulated to
| maintain the free market. I'm under the impression that
| this is the reason for most of the anti-monopoly
| regulation that currently exists. Outside of regulation
| of anti-monopolistic regulations, I don't think a free
| market (where competition isn't hindered) could develop?
|
| Alas, I could be in over my head, but I guess I don't
| interpret "free market" to mean anarchy (no regulation).
| yencabulator wrote:
| I'm not at all convinced about the idea of selling
| something and being able to limit what the buyer can do
| with it.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| They're similar to Islamic perpetual trusts, _waqfs_. I
| remember read a book that argued that capital being uselessly
| tied up in them explains part of the downfall of the Islamic
| golden age. (Also, dividing property among all descendants
| versus keeping estates intact to a single offspring.)
| Terr_ wrote:
| > Do you mean free market? Because I feel like land use
| restrictions are antithetical to a free market.
|
| 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.
| mullingitover wrote:
| 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.
| umanwizard wrote:
| [delayed]
| fzeroracer wrote:
| Land use restrictions are purely in the spirit of the free
| market. It's an agreement between two individuals or
| corporations on land usage as part of the sales agreement.
|
| 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.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| You were (and are) free to either buy or not buy land
| encumbered by a restrictive covenant, and of course the price
| of the parcel is influenced accordingly.
| epistasis wrote:
| This isn't a "market" doing something, it's a monopolist doing
| monopolist stuff. One kind of precludes the other...
| falcolas wrote:
| 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.
| akira2501 wrote:
| Behold: we have laws for a reason.
| drewcoo wrote:
| one hand . . . invisible
|
| with liberty and justice for all?
| alistairSH wrote:
| Also, behold a market failure.
|
| 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.
| fullshark wrote:
| Competition is for losers
| epistasis wrote:
| 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?
| akira2501 wrote:
| It's funny to see criticism of Matt Stoller's points boil down
| to whataboutism. It's okay to be right one one thing and wrong
| on another. It doesn't invalidate anything.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Ha ha, my dude, the two kinds of land use restrictions are
| the same thing. He might not be a hypocrite per se but it's
| meant to illuminate that his position boils down to "I've got
| mine."
| JadeNB wrote:
| > Ha ha, my dude, the two kinds of land use restrictions
| are the same thing. He might not be a hypocrite per se but
| it's meant to illuminate that his position boils down to
| "I've got mine."
|
| 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).
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| This isn't complicated. Matt Stoller, a guy I've never
| heard of and do not know personally, is a NIMBY. Millions
| of Californians are, no big deal. It's a valid opinion.
| But does it harm his credibility about political and
| economic matters? Yes, acutely in this case. There are
| costs to being a NIMBY, even if it's all about looking
| out for #1!
| shkkmo wrote:
| > This isn't complicated. Matt Stoller, a guy I've never
| heard of and do not know personally, is a NIMBY.
|
| 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.
| gruez wrote:
| >It's funny to see criticism of Matt Stoller's points boil
| down to whataboutism.
|
| 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?
| falcolas wrote:
| Having two opinions on two different forms of land use
| restriction is not necessarily inconstant. Especially since
| one is a form of contract law, the other government
| regulation.
|
| 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.
| gruez wrote:
| >Having two opinions on two different forms of land use
| restriction is not necessarily inconstant. Especially
| since one is a form of contract law, the other government
| regulation.
|
| 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.
| falcolas wrote:
| Personally I'd agree.
|
| But his having different priorities than us doesn't make
| him a hypocrite.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > A contract is agreed to by two willing parties.
|
| 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.
| hmottestad wrote:
| I personally felt that the use of the phrasing <<it's
| funny>> implied that the comment was some kind of
| criticism. In both comments.
|
| I understand whataboutism as bringing up something that is
| somewhat related in order to shift the focus away from the
| original topic.
| gruez wrote:
| >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.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > 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"),
|
| 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.
| gruez wrote:
| Here's his tweet promoting that article:
|
| >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.
| hmottestad wrote:
| 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 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.
| eesmith wrote:
| You do not have enough information to tell if a majority of
| people want it that way.
|
| 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?
| jandrese wrote:
| 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.
| umanwizard wrote:
| The state of democracy in the US into bad that you cannot
| really conclude anything about what "the majority of people
| want" from what the law happens to be.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Aren't low rises safer then earthquake zone
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Tokyo does just fine
| otterley wrote:
| As does San Francisco.
| toast0 wrote:
| Building codes were updated, and I'd guess a similar
| earthquake today would have less damage, but San
| Francisco did not exactly do fine in the 1989 Loma Prieta
| earthquake.
| shkkmo wrote:
| "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.
| kristjansson wrote:
| N.B. for headline-readers: the land use restrictions in question
| are deed covenants, not zoning restrictions.
| furyofantares wrote:
| Also nobody was murdered
| carom wrote:
| >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 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.
| h0l0cube wrote:
| In the same paragraph:
|
| > Vons started leasing one plot in 2019 when K-Mart went under,
| "holding the space hostage." It now leases the other as well.
| falcolas wrote:
| Bozeman MT also has a huge lot being completely unused
| because it was a former K-Mart. And Bozeman is growing like
| nuts, I can't imagine there's nobody who wants the space.
| carabiner wrote:
| Yeah it's definitely Mammoth. Mammoth Lakes, like many ski
| towns, has SF-level housing crisis.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| 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.
| banku_brougham wrote:
| "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for
| merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a
| conspiracy against the publick, or in some contrivance to raise
| prices"
|
| - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
| tedunangst wrote:
| The feds were right. We need to shut down defcon.
| bluGill wrote:
| 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)
| carabiner wrote:
| 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 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).
| darth_avocado wrote:
| I'm sorry but isn't this on the town itself? If land use
| restrictions are preventing them from having a second grocery
| store, then change the law. Monopolies will act like monopolies
| and its up to the local government to do something about it.
| cobertos wrote:
| The use restriction is in a deed covenant, not a part of the
| zoning ordinances. Im not actually quite sure how those get
| altered/taken out of the deed other than expiry
| eszed wrote:
| I suspect GP meant that land-use restrictions were preventing
| grocery stores on other plots of land. Or maybe that's just
| where my head went, though there's way from this article to
| know whether that's true. If that is the case, however, then
| there's a simple (and _very_ satisfying) way to tell this
| corporation to f--- off.
| encomiast wrote:
| Reading the article it doesn't sound like these are land use
| restrictions imposed by the town that they can simply change.
| Rather these are contract clauses in deeds or the practice of
| companies leasing the vacant space where another store might
| go. My hunch is a that a small town isn't equipped for the
| lawsuit that happens if they tell a company like Alberstons
| that they are not allowed to lease vacant land in their town on
| the theory that a competing chain might want to build there.
| themadturk wrote:
| If I remember right, Walmart also has (or had) a reputation for
| doing this. When opening a larger store in a city, they would
| close the old store and retain the old property, preventing
| anyone else from using it. I know it doesn't happen all the
| time (I've seen just the opposite happening in my area).
| jdasdf wrote:
| Yes it is, but big company bad so no one cares to look at
| themselves to see the true problem.
|
| This could be solved today by not imposing arbitrary
| restrictions on what other people can do with their land
| without their consent.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| 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 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.
| gruez wrote:
| 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.
| bluGill wrote:
| 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 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).
| Loughla wrote:
| 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 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.
| searealist wrote:
| I don't want to live in a neighborhood where my
| neighbor's yards are full of poop. This is true even if
| the unit is unoccupied.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Goose poop is not very smelly since it's mostly fibre
| from their all-grass diet. It's not like a backyard full
| of dog poop. It's no worse than applying manure to
| fertilize the soil.
| gosub100 wrote:
| > The HOA fined them before they moved into the house for
| having goose poop in their back yard.
|
| 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.
| mywittyname wrote:
| 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 poop everywhere.
| gruez wrote:
| >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.
|
| 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...
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| > 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 residence, or restricting hours that visitors can
| come, or how long they can stay, but those are all things
| that HOAs try to control.
| gruez wrote:
| >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 free association (visitor restrictions).
|
| ???
|
| I've literally never encountered this, unless you count
| having to register to use the visitor parking.
| supplied_demand wrote:
| ==Not sure what's meant by "political activism
| restrictions"==
|
| 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.
| otterley wrote:
| > 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.
| sokoloff wrote:
| 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).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Federal government could not pass a law prohibiting me
| from painting my front door purple (that would be an
| infringement on my 1A rights)_
|
| Uh, D.C. has plenty of aesthetic restrictions.
| dmd wrote:
| But they do, every day, because fighting is far more
| expensive than acceding.
| gosub100 wrote:
| https://mynews4.com/news/local/renos-caughlin-ranch-hoa-
| prop...
| Aloisius wrote:
| 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
| imposes some restrictions on an HOAs power to censor
| speech, but many other states do not.
| ouddv wrote:
| That's a bit disingenuous.
|
| 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.
| colechristensen wrote:
| HOAs go well beyond what any government is allowed to impose
| on you. They don't have to follow the same rules a government
| does.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _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.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| That is indeed a downside, but the expectation there should
| be that the government should be restricting resource
| exploitation where that's undesirable.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _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.
| mmanfrin wrote:
| > conservation easements
|
| I.e. easements that come from law rather than seller
| stipulation? Seems an easy distinction to make.
| Eextra953 wrote:
| What kind of calculation goes into leasing something for
| 750k/year to keep competition away? Is it as simple as thinking
| that a competing store would cost them 750k/year or do other
| factors go into this?
|
| 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.
| sokoloff wrote:
| If it would cost $10M to build and open a new grocery store on
| an unimproved lot, that's only a 7.5% rate of return to force
| your competition to lay out $10M to open a store, at which
| point, you could probably convert your lease into an operating
| store for around $1M or less of capital and compete to ensure
| that they could never show a positive return on the overall
| move.
| 015a wrote:
| While holding a lease on prime competitor real estate seemingly
| strictly for the purpose of stopping competition from moving in
| feels very, very scummy; it also feels like it isn't the whole
| story. Competitors don't need to move in to the vacant K-mart.
| There are always other options; those "other options" is how 99%
| of grocery stores get opened, Walmarts don't "move in" to old
| K-marts by-and-large. Is the local government unwilling to
| rezone?
|
| 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.
| class3shock wrote:
| Except corporations do comic-book-villain-evil crap all the
| time. Forcing the government to buy food for your employees
| because you don't pay them enough to eat? Hi, my name is
| Walmart. Using your customers as guinea pigs for science
| experiments without their consent? Hi, my name is Facebook. Use
| lies, fraud, and bribery to extort money out of the government
| while supplying critical national defense services (and get
| caught and fined 1B)? Hi, my name is Raytheon (an RTX company).
|
| 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.
| miltonlost wrote:
| awww, how recently were you born to think that a corporation
| doesn't do villainous deeds as often as they can?
| yencabulator wrote:
| There are lots of small towns in valleys that literally cannot
| expand outward from the one highway that passes through them.
| Needing a large flat lot in a mountain town is a huge
| challenge. The article discusses this.
| derekp7 wrote:
| The way I understand it... If Alice owns land and sells to Bob
| with some restrictions, that means Alice is still maintaining
| some ownership of the land. And the price that Bob pays is
| discounted from the otherwise fair market value, because it has
| those restrictions on it.
|
| 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.
| RobertDeNiro wrote:
| FWIW the same kind of crap is also happening in Canada :
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/competition-bureau-probe-so...
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