Are San Francisco Liberals Creating Problems Where They Don’t Exist?

by Steve MacDonald

Do you have a right to commerce? If you did, what would that mean? You must sell this or that? You must buy this or that? You need to accept credit cards or checks? How about, you need to take cash?

Related: San Francisco – Hey, Let’s Ban Amazon’s Cashless Retail Stores Because of How Unfair they Are

I’ve already touched on the proposal once, here, but in remarking on San Francisco’s recent effort to require bricks and mortar retail outlets to accept cash, Jazz Shaw, writing at HotAir observed that,

I just checked several notes of different denominations in my wallet and they all still contain the same message they always have. “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.” So that means they have to accept your money, right? Sadly… not so much.

I hadn’t considered that, but now that I have, I don’t think it’s relevant.

The presence of legal tender does not suppose a right to commercial exchange. In other words, it doesn’t mean someone has to take your money. Nor could it.

You shouldn’t have to buy anything, nor should you be forced to sell it, and that includes the type of payment preferred. And if you can refuse credit or checks you sure as hell can refuse cash – if that’s how you choose to do business. (And you don’t have to take foreign cash, right?)

Meddling Legislators

A proposed San Francisco ordinance suggests that stores like Amazon Go (which are just physical manifestations of the online shopping experience) are exclusionary because they only take credit cards. Is the online experience exclusionary for the same reason? Yes! So, where’s the ordinance pursuing redress for cash-only customers shopping online?

There isn’t one. It can’t happen. And yet there is no outcry from busybodies in government. Why?

Amazon is not under any obligation to create an online payment solution for people without bank accounts or credit cards. No more so than Tiffany’s, Porche or any other high-end seller or retailer is required to sell products in my price range. Online or in a physical store.

Payment Options have Always been Limited

Homeless, low-income or transient “shoppers” have been around forever. Young people with no credit have been managing for as long as there have been teenagers and things they wanted to buy. Amazon is new relatively speaking so where the hell did those people shop beforehand?

The same place they’d shop now.

And if, for some reason, that turns out to be more popular than the grab and go all digital experience, that footprint will die and be replaced by something else.

There’s no right to commerce any more than there is a right to force someone to make or sell something they find objectionable. Be it a Christian Baker asked to make a gay wedding cake or demands that the Salvation Army or Goodwill accept and sell porn or sex toys.

No Lessons Learned

If we let politicians get into the business of determining what we must sell and to whom, there is no end to the meddling in which they will engage.

I’m not saying some manifestation of a right to commerce issue is also free speech issue, but the former will inevitably overrun the latter if we do not step in and say, hey – we’ve got a process in place for this. It’s called creative destruction.

As opposed to the sort manifested by busy-body Liberal legislators who are responsible for the tune that is homelessness in cities like San Francisco. Music to which they’d like to make companies like Amazon dance.

The result of which could be, “fine, we’ll take the business, tax revenue and jobs someplace else.” Sadly, unlike the market, liberals do not learn lessons from their state-imposed destruction. If they did San Francisco might be in better shape than it is now.

Author

  • Steve MacDonald

    Steve is a long-time New Hampshire resident, award-winning blogger, and a member of the Board of Directors of The 603 Alliance. He is the owner of Grok Media LLC and the Managing Editor, Executive Editor, assistant editor, Editor, content curator, complaint department, Op-ed editor, gatekeeper (most likely to miss typos because he has no editor), and contributor at GraniteGrok.com. Steve is also a former board member of the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire, The Republican Volunteer Coalition, has worked for or with many state and local campaigns and grassroots groups, and is a past contributor to the Franklin Center for Public Policy.

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