A Taco Truck on Every Corner, or Not?

The FDA did not exist until the early 20th century and laws relating specifically to food were scant before then. They've been quick to pile them on like crazy since then, but they don't actually have much of an effect when you look at comparative rates. According to the CDC [1], in the US each year 48 million people get sick from bad food, and 3,000 die. Worldwide rates according to the WHO [2] are 600 million ill, and 420k deaths. The US has 4.37% of the world's populations, so our normal expected value would be 26.3 million ill and 18,381 deaths.

So in terms of getting sick from food, we actually score substantially worse than the entire rest of the world. Our death rates are 6x lower than expected which sounds very good, but I think that's unlikely to be attributable to the FDA. Our relatively large rate of foodborn illness is more of an annoyance than anything. But an annoyance for us us is something that kills people in rural areas with less knowledge and less access to resources. In particular the way people die from food poisoning is not some crazy hyper virulent strain of some hyper dangerous ailment or whatever. It's just plain old diarrhea from bad food -- something that's practically unheard of in the developed world. A couple of bottles of gatorade, lots of water, and some pepto turns diarrhea into a mild annoyance for at most a few days for those in developed areas. But for those without access to resources or the knowledge of how dangerous plain old dehydration actually can be, it can kill quite quickly.

And in any case this is primarily going to be people cooking their own food at home and making themselves sick. I'd strongly recommending traveling to the developing world. I certainly never would have taken anything I've said at face value before. But living life in a different way makes you appreciate both the things we do right, and the things we do wrong. And having a million regulations on food for the sake of safety that doesn't even really materialize is something I think we are doing very wrong.

[1] - https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/index.html

[2] - http://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/food-safe...

Not sure if you were alluding to this with your comment but people DO complain about vaccines because they haven't seen the widespread ill effects of their not existing

It’s just as easy easy to justify regulation by adding up all the imaginary costs that will be avoided.

So instead of having each food truck pay for a monthly health inspection fee and having random health inspections every X time ( so that the cost of the health inspections is completely paid for by the food trucks), we simply outlaw them.

I'm not against regulation, I'm against broad, overbearing, and dumb regulation.

I’m not so certain. I know of prominently-positioned pizza trucks in SF that are clearly cooking their pizzas there. I doubt they are doing that illegally.

I'm on the side of the food trucks, but this is an easy question. It replaces the need to enforce food safety regulations, which is hard, with the ability to enforce simple bans on the trucks' existence/presence, which is easy.

If you know food trucks are doing terrible things, but you can't prove they're doing anything wrong, you can solve your problem by dropping the evidence requirement.

The same dynamic that results in zoning that prohibits food trucks also results in large swathes of residential area in suburbs with no real restaurant options inside walking distance.

Our Planning Commission addressed this a bit last night (since this ordinance goes to them first for a formal vote, although last night was just a working session for discussion). The consensus seemed to be that although some people were in favor of no zoning restrictions (which I agree with, personally), those same members felt that it was too big of a challenge for this ordinance.

Our Planner also clarified that food trucks are still bound by nuisance ordinances, e.g. for noise and fumes. Granted, claiming a fume nuisance is somewhat difficult, but we already do have laws for residential areas covering things like that. Planning Commission was also concerned about noise and exhaust from things like generators, which could very well happen in your neighbor's yard during a football game.

There's also the use argument. Food trucks are a commercial use, and operating them in a residential zone then suggests that there's a certain commercial use in a zone that, for better or worse, isn't supposed to have that use (as I understand it). As much as we'd like more mixed use, that sort of thing might not work for now. The City also acknowledged that when you mix uses like that, especially in a residential area, it can be contentious for neighbors.

All in all, I imagine they'll leave in the restriction about residential zones, which I think is fine for now. Right now, food trucks aren't specifically legal anywhere in the city, so this ordinance would be a great first step, even if we have to take some more steps later.

I guess I'm imagining a couple of trucks parked along the edge of a fairly stand-alone neighborhood park that has plenty of parking.

I can think of multiple concrete locations where this would work great without causing a nuisance.

Of course, I don't doubt that there are also more dense and/or differently configured suburbs where this wouldn't work as well.

> I mean these aren’t really the only two options are they, come on.

In many places those are the two options that a) aren't fast food or pizza, b) are family-friendly, and c) within 10 minutes of a large number of houses. Especially in parts of the country that drink more heavily, it's hard to find restaurants that satisfy (b)... tons of restaurants have a very bar-y atmosphere for most of the night.

I mean, feel free to disagree. But... from personal experience, yes, these places exist.

Only in the US. Restaurants are embedded in residential areas everywhere I've been to.

That sounds illegal for reasons that have nothing to do with food trucks.

Selling at a loss to drive competitors out of business is a time-honored tradition that can be done without food trucks.

This situation is in no way unique to food trucks though. I could buy the property next to your restaurant and make it into an exact clone of your place and give away all my food for free until you're out of business.

And yet I don't see anyone out there arguing in favor of laws banning copycat restaurants.

If I can run a food truck and sell food at a lower cost to people who have to stand outside while they eat, and they prefer that over the experience you provide in your restaurant, the customer is not wrong. Good restaurants, by definition do not go out of business.

5. Since the strategy was so effective before, other competitors come in and do the same thing.

6. Now whenever there is an overpriced restaurant, I get delicious, below-cost food from the upstart food trucks.

---- OR ---

5. A new competitor, seeing the overpriced food, sees a profit opportunity and tries to execute the same strategy.

6. The same business from step (1), again does me a favor by providing me delicious food below my expected price.

What is so special about your hypothetical rich person that they become immune to competition or threat of competition upon reaching step 4?

An economy is a complex dynamic system. More importantly, it is continuous. We can certainly analyze fixed time periods and draw conclusions from these, but any conclusion must be drawn in the full understanding that there is a before and an after.

TL;DR Competition doesn't go away because one person did it well, once. Threat of competition can be as effective as actual competition.