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Comment by candiddevmike | Hacker News Reader

Why can't each city have a government provided indoor marketplace with shelf space folks could lease, otherwise fill it with other goods without any profit margin?

I think the government should provide most services everyone uses at cost, and have folks innovate/compete on top of that. Otherwise the services devolve into middlemen skimming off the top without adding value.

If something can turn into rent seeking, have the government provide it too.

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You seem to assume that the government is efficient and incorruptible. I have not seen evidence that is the case.

You can see a great example of this actually working in Seattle's Pike Place Market, they're governed by an NGO established by a public vote.

Governments in many countries provide good services to their citizens. The US has one party that just tries to dismantle and make government programs worse on purpose so they can personally pay less taxes.

The government doesn't need to be particularly efficient or incorruptible to provide a covered marketplace. It's basically touchless.

What does "touchless" mean? Who cleans the place up each day? Who maintains the building? (cleaning the toilets, fixing broken doors and windows, and other general maintenance) Who decides which iof the 95 people who want a booth get one of the 20 available spaces? Who polices that the items sold are safe? etc.. etc..

This is a weird list of FUD for the kind of basic public amenity that even borderline failed states manage to provide.

If this was a missile base or a oil refinery, maybe there'd be something to consider here. But we're talking about one of the oldest forms of public marketplace; plenty of marketplaces don't even have toilets or windows. My local one doesn't.

Been to a farmer's market? At least around here, a lot of them are run by local governments. E.g.: https://www.mountainview.gov/depts/cs/events/farmers.asp

How is that evidence it's efficient and incorruptible?

for one, there's a limited number of stalls. It certainly wouldn't be shocking if whoever bribed the government coordinator the most got one of the stalls or if people the coordinators closest friends got priority access to the stalls etc...

I don't know the ideal solution. It might be more fair if there was a raffle for stalls each week. Instead we see the same people in the same stalls. Curious how a new farmer gets in to the market. Do they offer more money than someone already there?

Are you trying to claim that farmers' markets are terrible dens of iniquity? If so, please provide data.

No, I'm only trying to claim that a government run farmers market is not incorruptible nor likely would it be any more fair.

Interestingly the link above is not to a government run farmers market. It's to a a government site that then links to a non-government, non-profit organization. So that farmers market is not government run

Thank goodness you have so energetically attacked the straw man that there is some kind of organization that is incorruptible. We are all richer for it.

Sounds to me like you're describing farmer's markets or farmer's co-ops. If your government is failing to provide these services the only alternative is to buy land and do it yourself, but you may even get pushback to that too depending on how you want to structure the co-op. As far as I understand though in the USA there's not really legal barriers to structuring a co-op.

In Taiwan we do have lots of these kinds of things you describe, especially outside of Taipei. Seems every time I motorcycle through a smaller village I always see a farmer's co-op. I'm not sure if the government set them up or not, but I'm pretty sure the government built the ubiquitous enormous covered basketball court that I see in every tribal township that functions as a playground, market, and wedding venue.

An indoor marketplace with shelf space you can lease is actually the business model of most large grocery chains. [1] Food manufacturers rent shelf space to display and sell their products. But these stores are run by corporations, not by the government.

1. For instance see: https://www.vox.com/2016/11/22/13707022/grocery-store-slotti...

A model more like a credit union might work or some cooperative. Costco is fairly close where they have a very thin profit margin and excellent supply chain management.

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