{"id":1303,"date":"2024-03-29T23:30:57","date_gmt":"2024-03-30T03:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/?p=1303"},"modified":"2024-02-24T14:25:34","modified_gmt":"2024-02-24T19:25:34","slug":"yet-another-cali-mess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/?p=1303","title":{"rendered":"Yet Another Cali Mess"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s an old saying that says \u201cthird time\u2019s the charm\u201d.\u00a0 In the case of California, perhaps the better slogan should read \u201cfourth time\u2019s the curse\u201d as once again somebody out in the Golden State has made a real mess of public policy through their ignorance of the simply laws of economics.<\/p>\n

To be clear, it wasn\u2019t my intention to go back to Cali for a fourth time in a row (with all due respect to LL Cool J<\/a>) but when the ABC 7 Bay Area report entitled SF re-examines procurement process after business ban on 30 states backfires<\/a><\/em> came across my YouTube feed I just couldn\u2019t resist.\u00a0 The video, which is almost 6 minutes long, reviews the \u2018unintended consequences\u2019 of the City of San Francisco\u2019s \u2018progressive views\u2019 on public policy and the economy and its eventual repeal of some of the laws under the forces of economics.\u00a0 Sadly, the larger philosophical issues posed by their \u2018best of intentions\u2019 probably remains unrecognized.<\/p>\n

In 2016, San Francisco put into law specific bans on the city government doing business with or even visiting companies in 30 different states because, in the eyes of San Francisco officials, these states didn\u2019t uphold the same values as the city, specifically in relation to LGBTQ rights, voting rights, and access to abortion.<\/p>\n

\nhttps:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/CC_03Mar_2024_SFBan.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div><\/center><\/p>\n

The most obvious consequence of excluding so many suppliers for goods and services is that it severely limits the competition and thereby raises the price.\u00a0 The most famous example of this being the Noe Valley Public Toilet that city was willing to pay 1.7 million dollars for when much cheaper alternatives existed but were forbidden by the ban.\u00a0 As Aaron Peskin, a San Francisco supervisor, notes, the remaining vendors were savvy enough to know that they could raise prices with impunity.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/CC_03Mar_2024_MarketPlayers.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div><\/center><\/p>\n

Of course, Peskin may have also noted that even if the valid vendors had no intention of gouging the city they would, no doubt, been compelled to raise prices at least enough to cover the compliance burden associated with whatever additional paperwork they needed to push through to demonstrate that they were allowed under city ordinance to be on the approved list.<\/p>\n

This compliance burden, which continues even after the softening of the ban, is still formidable as is evidenced by the very long portion of an even longer regulation that an ABC 7 Bay Area reporter displays at one point in this report.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/CC_03Mar_2024_TooManyRegs.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div> <\/center><\/p>\n

Neither was the ban as absolute as one might think during the 7 years it was in effect.\u00a0 As the report clearly discloses, the city recognized that it rarely worked since they not only granted hundreds of waivers, it expanded its work force to handle all of these requests.<\/p>\n

The whole process was bloated and inefficient, wasting not only valuable taxpayer resources but forcing the people to wait excruciatingly long times for the resolution to whatever it was they were requesting.\u00a0 These long waits disproportionately impacted the most vulnerable among the city\u2019s population who waited for homeless services or similar support.<\/p>\n

So, to summarize, the San Francisco ban on \u2018people not like us\u2019 wasted time and money, increased the bureaucracy, lowered response time and quality of service all in the name of \u2026. Well what exactly was it in the name of?\u00a0 This is the major question going unasked.<\/p>\n

On the surface, the city\u2019s intention in the ban was to either punish or, at least, not reward, those vendors who didn\u2019t share the enlightened values of the country\u2019s most progressive municipality.\u00a0 But let\u2019s examine what such a policy might actually entail.<\/p>\n

Unscrupulous vendors who set up shop in California were automatically given a green light by the ban even if they didn\u2019t support any of the progressive policies San Francisco holds so dear.\u00a0 For example, an ultra-bigoted but eminently pragmatic business may happily submerge its own political agenda in short term while it fleeced the very people who held beliefs it despised.\u00a0 It could do this knowing that once the transfer of wealth was complete it could use its acquired wealth and influence to exercise greater political control.<\/p>\n

Likewise, people who align with the politics of the City by the Bay but who live in one of the 30 banned states have their ability to influence local politics in a way that would be more to San Francisco\u2019s liking because of the blanket ban that automatically excluded them from competing for the city\u2019s business.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, like price ceilings and floors, such an artificial constraint on the market is self-defeating in enacting the very change desired.\u00a0 In other words, San Francisco\u2019s own economic ignorance in enacting the ban did more to harm their precious cause than it did to help it.<\/p>\n

But that is only one consequence of the economic ignorance running rampant in that \u2018progressive gem of a city\u2019.\u00a0 As discussed in an earlier blog (Division of Labor<\/a>), any economy is a webwork within which no man really knows how to make anything, even with something as humble as a pencil.\u00a0 Against this interconnectedness, what did San Francisco think it was banning?\u00a0 Even if direct goods and services didn\u2019t come from, say Nevada, which is California\u2019s biggest neighbor, in terms of border, indirect goods and services did.\u00a0 Food, water, equipment, etc. from Nevada surely found its way into vendors in California, some of who then resold it to San Francisco at a markup.\u00a0 The city punished nobody but itself.<\/p>\n

And that is the biggest tragedy here \u2013 that San Francisco\u2019s economic ignorance made the city its own worst enemy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s an old saying that says \u201cthird time\u2019s the charm\u201d.\u00a0 In the case of California, perhaps the better slogan should read \u201cfourth time\u2019s the curse\u201d as once again somebody out... Read more ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1303"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1304,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303\/revisions\/1304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}