This past week, Q-line asked: “Should the city government get involved in regulating the free market?”
Here are your responses: ✆ “Any person who has been in business understands there is no free market. There is always a price to be paid due to nothing being free on the face of the earth. Business costs are horrific. Still, without regulations, we would live in a highly combative world where only the fittest survive, very much in the order of Prohibition businessmen who held bullet-riddled showdowns for territory. As for myself, I have pushed my bike up and down the Promenade many times, seeking the attraction of the Promenade. Each time I leave, I feel as if I have walked from no place to nowhere.” ✆ “Governments already regulate free markets, so what’s the difference? The four-story height limit on buildings in Santa Monica, for instance, and other things are to keep the citizens who don’t have millions of dollars from hating where they live, like people in Long Beach. I really hope that the city will do that, because we can always go to a shopping mall. There are very few choices for small places.” ✆ “Why shouldn’t Santa Monica try to regulate the free market? They’ve tried to regulate everything else in the city, except for the bums — the only thing they should be regulating.” ✆ “The answer is gray, it isn’t a black-and-white answer. First of all, if it’s recommended that independently-owned retail stores and restaurants should be installed, or be more plentiful on the Promenade, this is going to be absolutely impossible. One of the problems on the Promenade is — and this is true of any ‘hot retail areas,’ locally or nationally — is that the hot areas have very, very high per-square-foot rates which would dissuade an independent from owning a retail store or a restaurant. Only the big chains can afford to pay such high per-square-foot rates. Everybody else is left out in the cold. I think it’s admirable, however, that the City Council is trying to encourage more independents to come in through the limitation of the number of linear feet — in this case, 50 — to discourage more chain stores from coming into the outdoor mall.” ✆ “It’s like locking the barn door after the horse is stolen, worrying about who should be in charge of what. The Third Street Promenade is so ruined it will take a miracle to return it to something functioning and pleasant. The demise of the JC Penny, Woolworth’s, the smaller shoe stores and drug stores and clothing stores of yesteryear sounded the death knell. These upscale shops of today just don’t cut it.” ✆ “There’s too much government interference in this lovely city by the bay. So, no, I don’t think we need to have City Hall involved in local business.” ✆ “We know that the city has been involved in regulating the free market on the Promenade and you can see what we have. They need to get out of that business. They need to let free enterprise work its work, and we’d probably see the Promenade looking much better (if) they get their noses out of some of the things and get that street cleaned up and help the homeless. There’s all different techniques. It’s not just letting them stay there.” ✆ “We don’t need unknown, expensive stores and restaurants. We need Wal-mart, Target, Applebees, Costco — stores like that, and Santa Monica would really make a fortune. Rich and poor alike shop those places mentioned, and don’t shop in Santa Monica. That City Council are a bunch of hayseeds and cause downtown Santa Monica to be a hick town.” ✆ “Absolutely not. However, they already have — they refuse to allow a Target store in downtown, and that is one store that would allow low-income people to shop and be able to buy things that they can’t buy in Santa Monica at a reasonable price. So it’s almost a moot question, however, it would be nice if they would decide to butt out.” ✆ “I believe that limiting the space is not going to encourage small businesses to relocate to the Promenade. The nice small businesses that they had that lent a kind of quaint atmosphere to the Promenade were forced out by large rents. So, you know, this is again too little, too late, and totally off the mark of trying to restore the Promenade to its former glory. It’s all over with the Promenade, with the big stores — the ones that are going to board the greedy rent. It’s nothing to do with limiting their space. All the cool stores are gone, thanks to the greed.” ✆ “Your question is rather redundant. They already are involved in regulating the free market. That’s what rent control is, that’s what SMRR stands behind, that’s what they’ve been doing for over 25 years. I hope the business community finally realizes now that it’s affecting them, too, that they may wake up and do something about it.” ✆ “Absolutely not, it goes against the very principles that our country were founded on. This smacks of SMRR all over the place. Stop micro-managing our lives. Stop micro-managing businesses. If you want to encourage small business in Santa Monica, come up with some kind of tax-break for them, some kind of business credit to encourage them. But don’t stop other businesses.” ✆ “The way you pose this week’s question, there is only one answer, and that is ‘yes.’”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 9, 2004. Read the original PDF.