The market, not the city, brings development

As the local campaigns for mayor and City Council start to gather steam, we’re seeing a lot of discussion about economic development, from the candidates and from those considering their vote. What sort of economic developments have the incumbents brought to Barstow? Can challengers do a better job? How will they bring more business to Barstow?

We’d like to interrupt the discussion with an idea that is consider radical in the America of today: Municipalities shouldn’t have much involvement in economic development at all, other than to keep government from getting in the way of the market’s natural tendencies.

Government doesn’t “bring” business and industry to a city. We can understand why people think it might because government officials are certainly quick to take credit for it.

It’s a market decision for these businesses to come here. Will they make a profit? Is there an employee base? Is there a demand?

The government’s role in these decisions should be to limit as much as possible any regulatory barriers that make it difficult for businesses to operate. These barriers can be pretty significant in California. To be fair to the city, much of this regulation originates from the state (and even federal) level, so much of what the city does to encourage economic development is necessarily trying to help businesses navigate all the red tape.

As critical as we can be about certain elements of the city’s operations — the entire concept of the redevelopment agency and potential for misuse of eminent domain authority — we haven’t seen much evidence that the city makes it harder for business (either big or small) to come to Barstow.

But thinking that the city is responsible for “giving” us economic development is along the same lines as thinking that the city should give us health care or food or anything else that we need. We should turn to the government for things that the private market can’t provide, like courts and police officers. The rest should be up to us.