https://pilotonline.com/opinion/columnist/guest/article_c2d9d4f4-107d-5121-8538-ab23f49f9762.html
Rent seeking is one of those terms that can be misleading. It it not about being a landlord, it is the use of government influence to suppress competition. It has been going on along time.
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
What the hell does the headline on the print version mean?
“Chicago restos frosty with cupcake truck entrepreneur”
Did the last editor quit.
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I think Restos is a made up abbreviation for restaurants.
And they are giving a cold shoulder to trucks.
I’m guessing.
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And that is the result of money in politics. So long as it takes big bucks to get elected, big bucks will have the most influence.
The Libertarian view is that government should not have the power to pick winners and losers. Sounds great until you face the reality that a Libertarian can’t get elected.
Until we reduce the money required to get into office or scrap the idea that corporations are people or limit campaign contributions to small donations only or cut the window of time to campaign or all of the above, then rent seekers will always be with us.
It might help to reduce the number of constituents from 750,000 per Representative to something smaller so there is more accountability at the local level.
Will’s point was pretty accurate. We had a similar issue here when food trucks became more plentiful. Of course stationary restaurants have big investments, pay substantial property taxes and have bigger payrolls.
They do have a point.
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Rent seeking has been around a long time. The British East India Company had England under its thumb back when they had a real monarchy. The kind of government doesn’t matter, as long as government is given the power to choose winners and losers, it will and there will be an incentive to corrupt it.
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RE: “Until we reduce the money required to get into office or scrap the idea that corporations are people or limit campaign contributions to small donations only or cut the window of time to campaign or all of the above, then rent seekers will always be with us.”
Controlling the money in politics is one option. There are others. An interesting proposal I came across this morning would substitute a lottery for elections, replacing democracy with random selection.
I’m not sold on the idea, but it would avoid the problem of substituting one corruptible control structure for another.
Source:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-14/what-would-it-take-build-world-without-globalists
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Well, life is often a crapshoot, so why not politics?
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Having worked in the restaurant business, the question is what is a level playing field, and what is “rent seeking”. To me, this is a nonsensical example of “rent seeking”. Restaurants are already subject to so many economic forces each other (fast food / quick service / full service, etc.), grocery stores selling pre-packaged meals, convenience stores selling meals up to and including prepared hot meals, etc. – they don’t have the power to be rent seeking in the first place.
Asking that the food trucks be subject to the same rules as they are hardly seems unfair. For example, take his main example – no operating a food truck within 200 feet of a restaurant. But Will fails to mention that zoning laws already in place for many years restrict the number of brick and mortar restaurants – again, by type – in a given zoning area. The food truck is circumventing zoning laws when it pulls up outside a restaurant.
Or take a strip mall, shopping center, etc. Restaurant leases usually proscribe the landlord from renting a space out to a new tenant of the same type. That is, if a shopping center leases to a Chinese restaurant, the landlord can’t lease out another storefront in that shopping center to another Chinese restaurant. But if a food truck serving Chinese food can pull up and park on the street in front of that shopping center, the Chinese restaurant has lost its exclusivity. Which damages it, and in turn makes its lease less valuable, leading to lower rents for the shopping center, making its property less valuable. The restaurant loses, the landlord loses, the city (on balance) loses.
I suppose the consumer is better off, having an additional choice, and I am one who loathes oligarchy, be it de facto (monopolistic practices) or de jure (government). The food truck is functioning as a market disrupter, which is often the source of a “better mousetrap”. But, at the same time, it is still just serving Chinese food; much of its market/economic advantage is found in its ability to get around the rule of law. That kind of disruption is not beneficial to the consumer.
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You make good points in that Food Trucks do get to use a public location without having to make the investment of buying their location.
But they aren’t selling the same experience either. A Chinese take-out restaurant is in direct competition with a Chinese Food Truck that pulls into the parking lot. But the parking lot is private property owner can tell him the driver it isn’t welcome. But that same truck is not in competition with a fancy sit down restaurant. Buying a package of food to eat in a park or back at your desk is not the same.experience as being served a fine meal by courteous staff.
Still, I agree that Will could have found a better example.
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Interesting analysis.
I don’t see how zoning laws can apply, unless the zoning authority specifically prohibits the presence of the food truck. Depending on the reason for the prohibition, I might have no problem with it. To preserve the competitive advantage of the stationary vendor doesn’t strike me as a valid reason, since to grant the prohibition on that basis alone would necessarily and arbitrarily disadvantage the mobile competitor.
As for the mall owner, his contractual promise of exclusivity is not impaired by the presence of the food truck, only, perhaps, devalued by it. The law cannot protect him from such losses, and shouldn’t try.
One definition of the idea of rent-seeking is that it “involves seeking to increase one’s share of existing wealth without creating new wealth.”
https://infogalactic.com/info/Rent-seeking
The food truck is certainly a market disruptor, but I can’t think of any generic principle which would justify government intervention.
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