A local French mayor has decided to ban McDonald’s from opening in his town in a battle called McDolus vs. McDonald’s (Dolus being the name of the town).
The mayor is — and do note that French mayors have significant powers over their little piece of la France — a member of the Ecology Party and as such is insistent that people should be eating locally grown and sourced food, rather than, in his own words, succumbing to American gastronomic imperialism. This is a lost cause, given that the country is the second-largest market for McDonald’s and that at least one recent report stated that the hamburger was more popular now than the baguette. But, you know, hope springs eternal and all that.
The thing is, the ban (in the form of adamantly denying planning permission) is just proof perfect that the mayor knows that his constituents actually want a McDonald’s. Banning something always is an acknowledgment that people want that thing.
Consider what happens if they don’t want that item? No sane businessman tries to provide it, and the insane one who does try goes bust very quickly. The absence of consumer desire means that the thing doesn’t need to be banned. And the need to ban shows precisely the opposite: the existence of that consumer demand.
Yes, OK, really, who cares what some Frenchman is doing. But the underlying logic here is important. A ban on Walmart entering New York City might be backed by an insistence that residents of the five boroughs prefer bodegas to efficiency, cleanliness, and low prices. But the very fact of the ban is an agreement that in reality that they don’t. If Walmart turns up and no one does want what the bodegas don’t offer, then there’s no reason nor purpose to the ban, is there?
The same is true of the complaints about any big-box retailer destroying a mom-and-pop. OK, yes, this will happen because that’s what all we out here want, we consumers prefer the barns full, not that human contact of knowing we’re supporting our local community at some higher price. If all those complaining didn’t know this, they’d not try to kill off the planning applications, would they?
It’s that very insistence on not allowing us to make the choice which proves, perfectly, that those denying us think we actually want what they’re not going to let us have.
This all is a very useful litmus test of the difference between a liberal and a progressive. I’m a liberal (of the classical branch), interested in making sure we all enjoy so much freedom and liberty — and thus the name of the political concept — that we’re near popping from the very pleasure of it. A progressive is one who insists that we should only have the choices that the progressive approves of. You’ll have noted that it’s the progressives who do indeed ban these things that people quite obviously want, won’t you?
There’s no reason at all to ban some consumer choice other than the knowledge that if it were available some would pick it. Given that this is obviously so, we liberals should be telling the progressives to go boil their heads. Really, why are you trying to ban something that people so obviously desire?
Tim Worstall (@worstall) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a senior fellow at the Adam Smith Institute. You can read all his pieces at the Continental Telegraph.
