One of the great unacknowledged truths is that you only try to ban something when you’re absolutely certain that someone actually wants it. If no one does, then there’s no point in any action to stop them having it. It’s only if they want it, will go out and try to get it, but you disapprove of their having it, that you would ever consider rules to prevent them gaining their desire.
The truth of this is obvious. We don’t have laws against electing blowhards because no one ever would, we don’t forbid the election of socialists because no one is that stupid. Such examples abound. And yet so too do examples of people desiring a ban but disguising this unacknowledged truth.
For example, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance wants local governments to start limiting (that is, ban the opening of new) dollar stores.
Their contention is that grocery stores are put out of business by this competition from their lower-priced competitors, those dollar stores. This is bad, very bad, so therefore the spread of the dollar stores must be curbed (by law, obviously enough) so that groceries continue to thrive.
Now, consider the facts which underlie this assertion. In the absence of dollar stores, people will spend their money at groceries. When the competition arrives, then some of that cash, enough to undermine profitability, is spent instead with the new arrivals. That is, from the actions of the people doing the spending we can see that they prefer to spend at least some of their money not at the groceries. When given the choice that’s what they do — the expressed preferences are clear here.
Now consider the logic being built upon this. Precisely because people, when allowed to do as they wish, don’t spend enough at groceries, we must stop them from having the choice to shop elsewhere. Or as, we can put it, the only reason to have controls on dollar stores is to stop people doing what we agree they wish to do.
If they didn’t wish to spend their own hard-earned money at dollar stores, we wouldn’t have to limit the number of them, would we? So, the only reason we are proposing the limit is because we know that people so wish to patronize such stores.
The only justification for our proposal is that we aim to stop people exercising their freedom and liberty. Which, when we put it like that, isn’t all that convincing an argument, is it?
This does not just apply to such arguments from the lesser levels of the progressive miasma. That Walmart, or big-box stores, should not be allowed to sully Washington or New York is a simple admission from those doing the insisting that they know the consumers of those places would love to have that choice. It’s admitting people would go spend their money there — that’s the only possible reason to ban something. The imposition of tariffs upon imports is a straight-up admission that consumers would like to buy those imports. If they didn’t want to, then why bother trying to make them more expensive?
The only possible reason to ban or limit peoples’ choices is because you know they want to do something and you’re determined to stop them. As here, the only reason to limit dollar stores is because you agree people would like to shop in them. At which point, who the heck are you to stop people doing as they wish? And why are you trying to do it? And isn’t it just entirely disgusting as a linguistic matter that the people doing such proposing will insist they are the liberals? That word used to mean maximizing choice, not limiting it.
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.
