Thank goodness for the San Diego City Council, which has taken a stand against convenience and inexpensive groceries. No Wal-Mart Supercenter will be allowed to open in San Diego.
"I have a vision for San Diego and that vision is about walkable, livable communities, not big, mega-structures that inhibit people's lives," said councilman Tony Young. If they inhibited people's lives perhaps people wouldn't flock to these stores, but of course Tony Young knows what "inhibits people's lives" even if they themselves do not. How lucky San Diegoans are to have such an omniscient city councilman to impose his "vision" on the city, and to tell them what they think!
Some people's "vision" might involve making it possible for families to get the things they need at prices they can afford, and without their shopping experience, with children in tow, always having to be a five-hour ordeal. Good thing such small-minded people are kept away from this kind of decision making.
(The complaints in the article about traffic, pollution, etc., are probably not the central concerns of Wal-Mart's opponents in this case, though I'm prepared to be proven wrong. Those, in any event, are at root calculation problems stemming from the lack of private property in the pertinent resources and from our non-market system of environmental law. On the latter, see this crucial Rothbard piece.)
