Steve Chapman notes the new trend of what he calls paternalism.
In Los Angeles, driving out certain businesses is not a potential side effect — it's a conscious policy. The city council recently prohibited the opening of fast-food outlets in the poor, 32-square-mile area known as South Los Angeles. If you're a global corporation selling inexpensive meals to go, Los Angeles has a message for you: Invest anywhere but here. Apparently a vacant lot is better than a Burger King.
Councilwoman Jan Perry believes the measure will assure the locals "greater food options." The Los Angeles Times reports she "said the initiative would give the city time to craft measures to lure sit-down restaurants serving healthier food to a part of the city that desperately wants more of them."
Of course, it could do that without punishing outlets that don't need luring. But if vegetarian and seafood restaurants didn't see the area as profitable before, this law won't change their calculations. It takes an Orwellian mindset to imagine that shutting out McDonald's and KFC will expand, not diminish, the range of dining options in South Los Angeles.
All it will accomplish, as several fast-food workers told the city council, is to deprive residents of jobs in the forbidden outlets. Does anyone think unemployment will improve their diet? Or that a community with fewer jobs will be a more inviting place for preferred restaurants?
As I said, Chapman calls it paternalism. I think it is authoritarianism, pushed hardest by the left these days. The same folks who howl the loudest about the "government in your bedroom" have no problem whatsoever with the government in your refrigerator or in your food choices.
Greater food choices? Right. From "Cheeseburger anna side a’ fries" to "Tofuburger anna carrot."
I might of missed this.What happens to the piece-work employed who:A. Needs to take the absolute minimum off-the job to eat?B. Feels ever so slightly not-dainty and is embarrassed at the thought of sitting in a white-table-cloth restaurant for 40 minutes to get a meal?C. Only wants a sandwich and really does not want to deal with the whole meal (with sides and other stuff they don’t want) and that whole tipping thing?D. And so on…..?
I am not a lawyer but the ban strikes me as blatantly illegal. If an area is zoned commercial, what possible legal reason could there be for banning a certain type of legal enterprise? ‘Because we feel like banning fast food’ is not a legal reason.
"I am not a lawyer but the ban strikes me as blatantly illegal. If an area is zoned commercial, what possible legal reason could there be for banning a certain type of legal enterprise?I believe San Francisco has a law that if you are a certain kind of company and already have 11 stores in tthe county, you can’t open any more.
I have several things to say about this.
1. Once again the liberal paternalistic or authoritarian, if you prefer, types didn’t think the subject through. In addition to the items Larry listed above (all of which I agree with), did it ever occur to them that the type of "sit-down restaurants serving healthier food" they are talking about usually charge two or three times as much for their food as the fast food outlets do. This is one of the poorest sections of Los Angeles – can the residents in South LA even afford to eat at the type of places they want to lure there? This is directly related to the comment in the article about this type of food outlet not seeing the area as profitable – if they aren’t going to make any money because the residents can’t afford to pay their prices, no amount of "luring" by the city is going to make them move into an area where they are likely to fail through lack of sales.
2. As feeblemind pointed out, this is a ban that is a lawsuit waiting to happen. Have these council members ever heard of "Restraint of Trade"? This is a prime example – banning a legal business from operating in an area that is zoned for it? When I see something like this, it makes me wish I had gone to Law School. I’ll be it has lawyers all over LA salivating right now.
"Councilwoman Jan Perry believes the measure will assure the locals "greater food options.""
Ummmm, by destroying greatere food options.
Reactionary leftists are retarded.
And I can’t type……