I was born and raised in the L.A. area, but for much of the last year, I have lived north of Bangkok, Thailand. Right away, I noticed that pushcart vendors are ubiquitous, as are open-air markets and bazaars, set up in evening hours or on special dates and disappearing by midnight or so.
You don’t see much of that in Los Angeles, but maybe you should.
Pushcart or sidewalk vending allows the “little guy” to set up shop as minirestaurateur or -retailer, sans the $250,000 in capital outlays often needed to start the smallest of such enterprises in Los Angeles.
Here in rural Thailand, many people even set up retail outlets or restaurants in their front yards and serve passers-by. If you have a car, you can be a taxi.
Oh, sometimes around my old haunt in Los Angeles – Elysian Valley, south of Atwater – one could find sidewalk restaurants, but they would get chased away regularly by law enforcement.
Certainly, there are drawbacks to this micro-entrepreneurial culture of Thailand. No bathrooms for diners. No place to return defective goods.
Yet there are huge benefits. There is a reasonable pathway to economic independence for almost anybody. Come up with a terrific soup or good selection of retail goods, and you are in business.
Sans overhead, prices are lower for consumers.
Frankly, with the permitting, the codes and the cost of retail space in Los Angeles, I don’t think just “anybody” can start a business. It is a myth. And that is bad for consumers and bad for the country. The “you can get ahead” prattling sounds pretty thin to a guy with $6,000 in his pocket. Mr. $6k might as well vote for Obamacare.
Of course, there are powerful forces that ally themselves against a profusion of sidewalk sellers in Los Angeles. Business operators who have paid top dollar to rent conventional ground-floor space are not going to be too happy about some guy with a pushcart out front selling burgers at half-price. Building owners will likewise be disgruntled at sidewalk entrepreneurs.
What about homeowners? A guy sets up a table selling jeans in front of your house?
Everybody believes in free enterprise, until they don’t. Rubbing shoulders with raffish sorts selling CDs and watches is not why most people bought a house in Cheviot Hills. Suddenly, regulations and strict zoning are the way to go.
And, let’s face it. Americans do not have manners like people in other parts of the world. Getting carnival-barked at your front door on your way to work – by a brash retailer – is probably not how you want to start your commute. Thais are generally polite.
Still, there are ways to pursue an expansion of sidewalk retailing.
Initially, license just a few pushcarts, perhaps legal in commercial zones only. At first it could be a small number, allowed to grow over the years, giving time for conventional ground-floor space renters and owners to adjust.
Incredible advantages
Los Angeles still retains incredible advantages as a business region, and they become obvious when one lives elsewhere: the weather, the diversity, the infrastructure, the educational facilities, the museums, the entertainment industry, the ports, the largest assembly of warehouse space in the United States.
As a parting thought, Los Angeles has a nearly singular advantage when it comes to flora, or horticulture. In Los Angeles, almost any kind of tree will grow, from the desert-loving California fan palm to tropical rubber trees to Scottish pines, which in fact originated in Scotland.
In Thailand, a tree better like tropical weather or it will die.
Sadly, Southern California cities have taken to planting the cheapest trees they can, if they plant at all, and the region’s icons – the wonderful Mexican and California palms – are not being replaced. Sagging under fire, police and civilian employee unions and pensions, cities have little left over for rewarding taxpayers. For making the region a place people choose to live, not have to live.
Almost everyone gushes after driving down a road with jacarandas in bloom. Every street in the Los Angeles could have such wonders or greater, for a small fraction of what is spent on fire and police (a fact made more annoying by numerous studies that show no correlation with size of police departments and urban crime).
So less regulations and more trees, that’s my advice for Los Angeles.
Benjamin Mark Cole, former reporter at the Los Angeles Business Journal, is co-author of the monetary policy book “Market Monetarism: Roadmap to Economic Prosperity.” He lives in Pak Chong, Thailand.
