Where Are the Roadside Vendors?

Do we want America back at work again? Do we seriously imagine that the corporations are going to replace every robot with a human? No, I didn't think you did. So we need to see a lot more roadside vendors, yard sales, and open-air markets. While licensing these micro-enterprises serves the valid purpose of preventing turf wars among them, this summer's licenses need to be issued with a clear goal of having a vendor on every roadside patch that offers room for one. 

 Will that crowd vendors too close together? If multiple vendors are selling similar merchandise, will they all lose money? There are two ways to address these questions: (1) let the marketplace settle it, or (2) try to pre-select for success of favored vendors. One of those options is viable. Attempts to shore up selected vendors by blocking others' access to the marketplace should probably be recognized as inherently discriminatory regardless of the particular basis for discrimination, and pre-criminalized. Any US citizen who is willing to engage in honest business these days should be specifically encouraged. 

 In more prosperous times, corporate investors were heard to whine that people selling fresh-picked vegetables out of the backs of cars had an "unfair advantage" over air-conditioned supermarkets. Corporate types need advance warning that such pleas for favoritism will not be taken seriously. 

Actually, successful corporations like Safeway and Wal-Mart rose to dominate the marketplace by gaining local people's sympathy with flea market space in their parking lots. It costs taxpayers nothing but a little display of their values and beliefs to demand that the big-chain stores do that again. Chain stores should be positively advertising the number of independent vendors they host. 

And restaurant chains? If a fast food store lacks a fruit stand outside, where people buy fresh produce they bring inside to enjoy with their burgers or fried chicken, something is wrong. The place of fried meat in a balanced diet is better understood as a hamburger on a plate with a whole fresh unsprayed tomato, a whole fresh unsprayed cucumber, a handful of whole fresh unsprayed green onions, and maybe a whole fresh unsprayed apple for dessert. The chain restaurants, even Subway, that try to get away with doling out a tablespoon of not-very-fresh veg in a pile of croutons and sauces, need to be hosting gardeners who can offer whole fresh raw veg for, say, a dollar per tomato or twenty-five cents per radish. 

Competition? Maybe. McDonald's needs incentives to offer people a whole big juicy satisfying tomato, not one or two paltry slices, with every hamburger. But there's no reason to expect that the incentives won't be positive. I would imagine that McDonalds would sell a lot more burgers on the days when they were blessed with garden-fresh tomatoes or corn on the cob in the parking lot. 

Restaurants have traditionally rounded out their "fat equals flavor" meat dishes with lots of bread, cheese, and condiments made of some combination of grease, flour, and vinegar. Of course, one of the little secrets of people who wear the same size clothes all our lives is that we don't eat those "sauces" and "dressings," the old European trick for disguising spoiled food that adds nothing to the flavor of fresh healthy food. When those of us who don't digest bread and cheese contemplate a bare-naked hamburger with two transparent-thin tomato slices and a wilted leaf of iceberg lettuce on the side, well, I for one do not feel that I'm looking at even one dollar's worth of food. What about a bare-naked hamburger on a plate with a garden-fresh, vine-ripened tomato, a Vidalia onion, and an ear of corn? Now we're talking about a five-dollar meal worth driving through town for. 

Non-retail businesses can benefit from working among roadside vendors, too. It's all very well for Republicans to hope that corporate investors will get a few people off welfare by "creating jobs." Sometimes that has even happened, but even when "job creators" are putting a few students to work, we all know there are people they're not going to hire. Specifically, they're more likely to hire a convicted felon than to hire someone who's had any experience as an independent contractor. Very well, let them see the independent contractors making them look bad outside the building. Let them watch that until they do deliberately hire the adults with independent work experience...having found that it's less embarrassing to watch a superior work ethic on the job in a back office than out on the street where everyone else can see how superior the independent worker is. And let the first whine of "S/He is good at her/his specific skill, but s/he doesn't have any people skills--nobody likes him/her!" be met with a frosty "For $250, which will of course come out of your salary, s/he might agree to give you a little special training in how you can learn to work wth people with actual skills and talents." The whole country badly needs for business to stop functioning as a support group for rich people's no-talent offspring. 

Low-risk, low-investment business s also a critical part of education. Every parent has a natural interest in encouraging the children to set up a lemonade stand or rake some lawns, when they want new bikes or designer shoes, rather than just asking the parents for money. Teenagers who earn their own money in legitimate micro-businesses are too busy to be juvenile delinquents. Teenagers whose legitimate micro-businesses bring them into contact with the whole community have an adult perspective on adolescent social dramas and aren't likely to attempt suicide over quarrels with school friends. Teenagers who work with their parents in micro-businesses aren't likely to forget that their parents are allies rather than enemies. 

The usual objection to roadside vendors has to do with traffic. I've never seen a roadside stand that created traffic hazards comparable with daytime road work, but, by all means, when stands do attract enough traffic to create potential hazards, municipalities should steer those vendors to larger, better placed lots. 

The owners and managers of bigger businesses who feel threatened by roadside vendors need public shaming. Have they learned nothing from the fall of the Soviet Union? When a handful of big businesses use big government to subsidize monopolies, neither the businesses nor the government can last long. Sensible shoppers, who know that diversity is strength, want to see the names of those who are not actively supporting micro-enterprise so we can avoid them.

Local government needs to safeguard Americans' right to earn quick cash without taking out loans--or committing crimes!--to finance legitimate micro-enterprises like bake sales, flower stands, produce stands, craft sales, and yard sales.