Sunday, August 07, 2011

Chinese Street Vendors

EconCat88 films brings us footage from the "shopping streets" of Kunming, China.

Just a few notes here. If the stores in buildings can't compete with vendors on the street that doesn't mean you should get rid of the street vendors. That just means the street vendors are the more efficient business model. If the stret vendors are declared unlawful and cleared out all that really means is people have to pay more in stores in buildings. So why the are building stores there? Primarily to feed money to the rentiers and esablished status quo. They got to have their cut! Rents aren't cheap! How much of the money you spend on goods actually goes to the actual price of a good? How much of the money that's spent at a restaurant actually goes towards the food? Do you really think the food vendors at Disneyland that make much from a $10 hamburger? Does most of that go to Disneyland?

Furthermore, instead of building empty malls, they could've built areas for the small guys to hawk their wares.

I remember in India, they've outlawed street vendors during the day because they compete with the establishment. Why outlaw capitalism and competition? If street vending is the more efficient and effective model, why keep people from benefitting from it? And the food WAS better through a street vendor. I saw him make it right in font of the cart. And it's so much cheaper. And the money will go a longer way for him than a restaurant in a building. There's the money will go towards rent, utilities, taxes, his house mortgage (which goes to the bankers), his car payment, and other establishment rentiers.

[Youtube] Street vendors

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