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Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

I'm personally fine with local control, and despite the negative tone of this article, it all sounds pretty normal to me.

I live in SF, where there are a variety of shops. The ones I walk by all seem clean, orderly, and well run. Certainly more so than some liquor stores I can think of. So I'm happy to have them as neighbors. That said, I understand why other cities would have been more reluctant to license. Not everybody needs or wants to be a pioneer.

If we're still having the same problems 5 years out, I'll be more concerned. But personally, I'm a big fan of subsidiarity, the principle that decisions should be made as low down in the power structure as possible. [1] That different people are deciding differently right now is how we'll learn the best ways to do it. There's no urgent problem here that requires a centralized solution.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity

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I feel like the problem with that idea is right there in the first sentence of the wikipedia article - should be dealt with at the most immediate (or local) level that is consistent with their resolution. Who decides what level that is? It never seems to be very straightforward, and a lot of important things end up having consequences that go way beyond what the folks arguing for the most granular level of local control will admit (see - housing, transit, climate change).

Recreational pot sales is probably a pretty small issue in the scheme of things and will likely sort itself out eventually since there's money to be made. But the idea that local control is fundamentally a good thing seems pretty suspect to me based on how many examples there are of it going so badly.

No principle is universally applicable or produces perfect results. So I think, "If applied naively it sometimes has problems," is not a useful criticism of a principle.

The examples you raise seem to be ones where you're saying that local control is not consistent with resolution of the issue. So it seems like you're agreeing with the principle, not contradicting it.

Climate change and transit offer pretty clear examples where people have decided local control isn't sufficient, so they're resolving it at higher levels. See, e.g., the Paris accords, BART, and the various state and federal highway systems.

Housing is clearly more complicated, but it seems like the principle is often being applied there too. Most control is local, but where that doesn't work, we see attempts to resolve it at higher levels. E.g., California's recent battle over the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act and Prop 10.

Do you have an alternative principle in mind? If we don't start with the assumption that local control should be preferred, then what do you suggest instead? Historically it was the divine right of kings, which I'm not a fan of. And giving all power to the UN or the national government unless they decide otherwise also doesn't seem great.

Another way to have the same principle is to have the state lay some very basic ground rules or none at all (just a normal store), and allow localities to create restrictions as they see fit. This is how almost everything else is done.

That is actually the status quo.

This is an algorithmic issue up to a point. Local optimization is often 'easier' than global optimization but does not necessarily find a global optimum.

On the other hand, some systems do just fine navigating a complex problem space by just solving large number of local optimization problems. See for example slime molds, which are colonies without centralized nervous system, yet manage to move and forage for sustenance successfully as long as the environment is solvable.

It's more efficient if everyone get's their own breakfast but the central bank should take care of the interest rate affecting the money that's used to buy the breakfast. Etc

[IANAL] if my city and all the others around prohibit such stores it is de-facto equivalent to Prohibition in that area while the state level amendment granted that right to all the people in the state, and no local government has the power to exclude it own particular local area from the amendment.

The same principle as with for example right to vote with no voting place in N (for sufficiently large N) miles radius.

That is definitely not how the law works. There are still plenty of dry counties in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dry_communities_by_U.S...

Yeah ultimately you're being stripped of your state given rights by a locality run by cronies where it takes millions jus to win a seat on the local board of supervisors. Even though we do have ballot initiatives, a non-democratic, corrupt local process can ultimately strip you basically of all your rights. This also impacts criminalizing poverty by local governments where basically being low income and being there is a crime.

The City of San Diego is the second largest city in California and the eight largest in the United States. For the latest election cycle the City Council fundraising was in the low $100,000 — hardly “millions.”

I think the total across all races in the entire county (school boards, ballot measures, multiple city councils, water districts, everything) was about $33 million for all candidates. SD County is so big that if it were a state it would be about 20th.

See for example — https://www.kpbs.org/news/2018/aug/10/latest-fundraising-num...

So at less than an programmer salary, what you're saying is that there's ample opportunity for enterprising software artists to take over and automate the whole thing.

Have to take a pay cut though because council members only get paid $75,000 currently though it’s set to rise significantly by 2020.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/politics/sd-me-san...

> stripped of your state given rights

That seems like a strong way to put it... How about "stripped of opportunities not taken away by the state"?

California didn't give anyone a "right" to buy/use weed, they just said they wouldn't stop you. Notably, it's still illegal at the federal level...

I went to college in a dry county. You could not purchase take home alcohol in the county, but you could still possess it and drink it there. You just had to drive a little further to get it. It was a limit on convenience only.

Helping to stimulate the economy of the next county over...

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