SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION

Guest commentary by Andrew Phillips - Libertarian Party of Canada - Ontario Libertarian Party, on an article that appeared in the New York Daily News titled Unlicensed vendors flood area beaches, turning city shores into open-air marketplaces
 

Well the economic law of unforeseen circumstances is certainly at work here!

Nobody ever thought of this happening as the social engineers creating laws are so far removed from the real world. This is the free market at work it's chaotic, unorganized, and worst of all for the social engineers, it works. If the market place (the customers) weren't there the suppliers (the vendors) wouldn't be there as well. Whoever showed up first is not all that important as a market was there to be created and the two principals the customers and the vendors found each other. As there are a lot of vendors they are in direct competition with each other. Thus prices are kept down through competition. In all cases the free market is controlled by the consumer and the purchases they decide to make based on their own needs and / or wants. You're not paying for a government service you have no use for, the salary of the people who supply the service you have no use for, and inflated prices and shoddy service that are the end result of any monopoly.

Here if a vendor screws somebody they would lose their market share. What is also funny is Bloomberg the mayor brought in the smoking bans on public beaches but budget cuts have gutted the people who were supposed to do the enforcing. You have to wonder if any of those vendors might be laid-off enforcement officers who are using the free market to better their own situation. Recently a newspaper article here pointed out the underground economy in Canada has been estimated at 36 billion dollars a year. I'd like to know what the real amount actually is if they'll even admit to that amount in the first place. Markets like this were a permanent fixture in the old Soviet Union as the central planners were completely unable to control the supply of 24 million market items.

I enjoy the irony in this line towards the end of the article, "A guy who doesn't pay rent, he takes business away from the restaurant who pays rent. There should be some more enforcement." What took the business away from those establishments in the first place was enforcement of a ban that they didn't want. That violated their property rights and in many cases forced them out of business or facing the law of diminishing returns. Unwanted social engineering was, and remains, the real problem. In all cases the social engineers are cocooned from the economic fallout of bad decisions by mostly working for the government. However bring in enough bad laws and even they will feel the effects of diminishing returns from the rise of the
underground unfettered free market.

After all, water in the real world always finds its own level.