Ogunquit, Maine is the latest town to consider an outright ban on so-called formula businesses - the fierce behemoths like Wal-Mart and Home Depot, or franchise eateries like McDonalds or Subway. Tapping into a popular nostalgia for all things local and the refined sensibilities of the small town aesthete, local business owners have been eager to push town leaders toward an outright ban:
Supporters of the chain restaurant ban say they don't want their seaside town to turn into just another congested strip of Subways, Applebee's and Burger Kings.
"This is a pristine and special community that we are stewards of," said Mary Breen, owner of a high-end bakery who spearheaded a petition drive to get the question on the Nov. 8 ballot. "It's not about finance and marketing, it's about preserving this small fishing and arts community."
It's also about preserving ones own interest - and using government to do it. Nothing would make life easier for a small hardware store owner than an outright ban on Lowe's and Home Depot chains. The same goes for the local grocer, the appliance merchant, and the local restaurateur:
"This is a pristine and special community that we are stewards of," said Mary Breen, owner of a high-end bakery who spearheaded a petition drive to get the question on the Nov. 8 ballot. "It's not about finance and marketing, it's about preserving this small fishing and arts community."
Breen, who started the Bread and Roses Bakery in 1989, became alarmed last spring when rumors spread that a Dunkin' Donuts was coming to town.
Breen is right to be alarmed. A national franchise, like Dunkin Donuts, likely runs a much tighter ship than her local bakery. And at a lower price. Proponents of the ban, however, claim that their efforts are not about a government mandated protection scheme:
As chain stores have spread in recent years, so has the movement to control them on the local level, said Stacy Mitchell, a senior researcher with the nonprofit Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
In the mid-1980s, Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif., became the first city to enact a formula restaurant ban. Since then other communities in California, Washington, New York, Florida, Rhode Island and Maine have passed similar laws, she said.
The issue is about more than just signs or drive-throughs -- it's about economics, Mitchell said. Studies show that more money stays within a community when it is spent at locally owned businesses, she said.
Although Mitchell supports the free-market concept, she said she also thinks communities have a responsibility to plan.
"This isn't a free-for-all because there are costs and benefits borne by the community as a whole," she said. "There is a point where the community has to say, 'What direction are we going?' "
As an advocate of government (or centralized) planning in the market place, it's not quite clear why Mitchell counts herself a supporter of the 'free-market concept'. Mitchell is right that the community should have a say in which businesses prosper and which fail. But they already do - in how they choose to spend their dollars. Those opposed to the large chain stores - convinced that they unfairly prey on small businesses or that they offend the more proper aesthetic sensibilities - may simply refuse to shop there. And no government ban is necessary to preserve that right. Unless by 'where the community has a say', Mitchell did not mean the 'residents' of Ogunquit, Maine, but rather the various small business owners whose livelihoods and business interests are now imperiled by the function of a competitive market.
Unfortunately, the proposed ban would incur mostly costs to the local residents - the costs of potential jobs lost, the higher cost of building materials because the local hardware merchants are unable to buy on the same scale as the home improvement chains, the higher costs of groceries because the small grocers are unable to reallocate various costs among multiple sites, the higher costs of baked goods because the local baker is unable to purchase raw goods at a reduced price or to operate on multiple shifts and is, therefore, unable to offer either volume or variety. The ban would costs residents all the benefits (like lower prices, better quality and greater variety and choice) of a full-functioning and free marketplace. But Mitchell has decided that all those costs (and more) are worth bearing, and that the cost/benefit analysis of 'community planning' is best performed and then mandated (in the form of the ordinance) by the local bureaucracy rather than by the residents of Ogunquit, Maine.
None of that should come as a surprise. Efforts to create small-scale legal protection rackets have become commonplace among businesses unable to compete due to a lack of capital, a lack of resources, a poor business model, an inability (or unwillingness) to expand into other markets, a complete lack of imagination, or a simple failure to adapt. Bolstering such efforts with an appeal to an unarticulated nostalgia for small town authenticity is just one more attempt to control the hand of the market and to privilege a single set of preferences above all others.