The city of Salem, Oregon invoked a law that prohibits residents from having more than three yard sales per year to shut down a woman with terminal bone cancer who was trying to raise money to pay her medical bills.
The Reddit community is aghast at such heartlessness. Yet they do not realize that most of them support policies that result in similar tragedies on a daily basis.
This particular outrage is just the “seen”. Think of all the unseen. All the taxes and regulations on “greedy” business that preclude greater capital investment, and thereby, put a lid on real wages going up across the board. All the life-saving operations and treatment foregone because the marginal productivity of labor didn’t rise as much as it could have. Furthermore, think of all the sub-marginal peoples who might not have starved had the global marginal productivity of labor gone up.
Government intervention into the economy kills every day. The causal connections just aren’t generally as visible as they were in this case in Salem.
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The problem with yard sales is that they are a kind of trespass against neighbors of the vendor – cars blocking other people’s driveways, traffic jams, car accidents, people cutting across lawns, etc. This is not an argument in favor of government intervention in the form of zoning bylaws and vendors permits however, but a case against having common, public roads with no defined ownership.
I have never heard of a conflict over garage sales at a private condominium development or in a rental development, where the rules of conduct are usually explicitly defined in the condo agreement or rental contract.
Garage sales are a crummy way to make money anyways. The economies of scale and division of labor are more or less absent. And as the conflict in Salem shows, the typical neighborhood infrastructure can’t handle garage sales more than a couple of times a year as a special occasion. If people are dependent on garage sales to survive then it’s a sign that government has body-slammed the economy into a ditch, the community has fallen and they can’t get up.
Someone who is well enough to set up and supervise garage sale tables all day is probably well enough to get a part-time job with flexible hours, where she would make a lot more money than selling old paperbacks and clock radios. Maybe the MA state regulations make it too expensive to hire casual labor (e.g. because of mandatory health insurance plans) or maybe her town’s economy is completely down the drain. If this lady is too sick to do any work, then where is the local charity? If the federal, state and municipal governments have ruined the economy then who would have enough extra money to pay someone else’s hospital bills?
Quote from Ohhh Henry: “Garage sales are a crummy way to make money anyways. The economies of scale and division of labor are more or less absent. …
Someone who is well enough to set up and supervise garage sale tables all day is probably well enough to get a part-time job with flexible hours, where she would make a lot more money than selling old paperbacks and clock radios.”
Well, it’s a good thing we have you here to dictate what’s good and bad for us.
I am not dictating anything. I am observing that the fact that someone desperately needs to have garage sales to survive is probably an indicator that the government has destroyed the division of labor to the extent that this highly inefficient and ineffective form of activity is the only choice.
The thing about garage sales is that they are short term, low-investment projects that generate immediate cash (you don’t have to wait for the paycheck). Over a longer period of time, they become less worthwhile, because you have to replenish the stock and engage in more advertising and such.
Ohh brother.
“The problem with yard sales is that they are a kind of trespass against neighbors of the vendor – cars blocking other people’s driveways, traffic jams, car accidents, people cutting across lawns, etc. ”
I guess, to me, thats the beauty of it. I really have never seen a garage sale or yard sale cause accidents but I guess you’ve seen some pretty wild ones lol.
This is Salem Oregon, not Salem Mass. — though in 1692, Salem, MA did practice interventionism that killed some citizens
Haha, thanks, fixed.
Clearly the problem here is that the lady in question didn’t get her health care for free from the government in the first place…
viz., we haven’t been mandated to foot the bill yet.
Speaking of traffic jams… we once held a yard sale at our then-new house, which happens to be located off of a state highway, about1/4 mile from any other dwelling. People, of course, parked along the highway. “You can’t park people on this highway” said the local cop. I almost argued that *I* wasn’t parking anyone, but I didn’t want to get tazed or something, so we just stopped the sale. Government “helped” us again.
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