I was recently in a spot that had a long row of food trucks, offering traditional fare from around the world. There were a half-dozen trucks, and I’m told that often there are many more. Patrons were in line at each of them, people from every walk of life. A diverse selection, for a diverse clientele: that’s America. This is no better market, no greater opportunity, than among us.
There’s a social aspect of this that regulators don’t understand: lunch trucks have become fashionable. When regulators jump to defend incumbent restaurateurs, they’re not just defending the status quo; they’re also advancing the social prejudices of middling, narrow people against a disparate, capable, sophisticated clientele. Regulators are too ignorant to see how out-of-style they are.
Trucks like these will draw desirable customers.
The supposed regulatory justifications (health, safety) are bunk and junk: the trucks’ customers are as capable and discerning as any state or municipal regulator. (I’ve understated the comparison as a kindness to bureaucrats. Put candidly, the patrons are surely far more capable than dull and dim prohibitionists, who restrict not on reasonable grounds but on social bias, cronyism, or ignorance. One tires of hearing phony health and safety objections that a clever child would reject as implausible.)
Sadly, there’s a campaign against food trucks in parts of our country, a campaign that conspires to restrict the rights of vendors and customers to sell and to eat what they want. Imagine that: in America, we are supposed to believe that an adult may be told what he or she can eat. (Next: we will be told what we must eat.)
If sadly, then also fortunately: there are others who will not endure these restrictions without a response. The time is long since past for citizens to look about and say: we endure your restrictions with equanimity no longer. It’s off to court, to seek redress against the liberties of citizenship that middling bureaucrats impose.
Citizens, not subjects; individuals, not objects of others’ schemes and plans.
From that row of trucks, I found an especially popular one, and had a nice lunch, of fresh ingredients, well-prepared and pleasantly-served. The truck looked sharp, and the cook was friendly.
A nice lunch, indeed. Nice, and worth fighting over.
See, also, Defending Street Vendors, Food Trucks, and Consumer Choice, Institute for Justice Defends the Rights of Street Vendors, the IJ Clinic on Entrepreneurship, and the My Streets, My Eats initiative.
