I Disagree with Bob Poole on Zoning – Econlib:
Bob makes a point that some commenters have made when I’ve argued against zoning: namely that people who bought houses under the zoning rules are being betrayed by the elimination of those rules. Bob even goes so far as to say that the local government had a contract with the home owners.
Here’s the problem. There’s no contract. Instead, the government made a regulation, people bought assets with the idea that those regulations would be enforced, and there’s some chance that if the regulations are relaxed or eliminated, people who own those assets will suffer a capital loss.
But libertarians aren’t typically in the business of saying that on that basis those regulations should be kept. People who bought medallions giving them the legal power to operate a cab in New York suffered a loss when Uber and Lyft were allowed to operate. Should Uber and Lyft be regulated out of existence?
I’ve never been a ‘pure libertarian’, though I am sympathetic to the libertarian side of the political philosophical spectrum. To me, where libertarianism falls down is with the idea that we can use contract law to replace most government regulations–but unfortunately contract law is only as effective as the lawyer you hire to defend yourself. And that hangs a lot of people who can’t afford lawyers out to dry.
And yes, it is true that a lot of laws are unfairly and disproportionately enforced on people who can’t afford laywers–but the libertarian approach, to me, exacerbates the problem. In the extreme, the libertarian approach to enforcing the law seems to emphasize private security–but if you can’t afford private security, what do you do? (To understand what I mean, imagine what would happen if you were charged $100 to call 911.)
And zoning laws are one of those places where the proper libertarian answer–abolishing zoning laws–may not be the right approach. After all, consider the public infrastructure (roads, water, sewer) that would be affected if suddenly every house in a neighborhood were converted into multi-family apartment structures. (The lack of parking alone could be a problem.) There is, in other words, a potential “tragedy of the commons” failure mode here, as no-one has an incentive to expand the common public infrastructure shared in a neighborhood–even if that’s simply widening the streets. The solution to the “tragedy of the commons” has always required cooperation of one form or another–and usually cooperation enforced by government edict. (Even pure economic solutions require an authority to shape the market towards shared cooperation.)
All that said, trying to park government zoning–which really is a restrictive regulation protecting the economic interests of a few–under the umbrella of “libertarianism” seems to be a failure in understanding the term “libertarianism.” After all, zoning is just a form of “protectionism”–and you see that protectionism play out on a daily basis across this country.
There is a plot of land just a mile and a half from me whose owners want to use to build office buildings and a shopping complex; the neighboring land owners want that track of land to remain a low-density wooded lot. The lot has no influence on the neighboring watershed, so there is no major environmental concern; instead, the neighbors simply want to preserve the aesthetics of a few wooded acres at that intersection.
And I do honestly side with the neighbors; I think woods are prettier than office buildings. But I also understand my preference in the matter and five bucks gets you coffee at Starbucks: that is, my opinion doesn’t really amount to very much.
But the zoning battle is pure protectionism: the power of the surrounding neighbors to limit how the property is being used without being willing to actually buy the land and put it into a trust of some sort, in order to preserve the aesthetics of their neighborhood.
Calling this process “Libertarian” is just stupid.