Cannabis shops in Waterloo Region

[ijmorlan]

Fundamentally, I think the problem is that some people can’t let go of the idea that things need to be controlled and managed by government. Now obviously I don’t think there should be no regulations around marijuana; but legal should mean legal. Anybody who follows some reasonable rules that relate to the goals of the regulatory regime should be able to open a store. No maximum number of stores, no allocation to various cities, just let people run their businesses.

This isn’t the only place where we see this. I’ve complained before about proposals to replace parking maxima with minima, and there are other examples.

*blinks*...are you...umm...telling conservatives...they have too many government regulations?

You see this is why anyone who claims they vote conservative for the typical reasons (fiscal responsibility, small government, limited regulations) frankly proves themselves ignorant of the actual policy this party implements.

I think this is a better example of how regulation can be good or bad.  This is clearly done badly, but I can imagine many ways in which it could be done better, with an equivalent amount of control.

</political post>

Not so much too many as the wrong ones.

I don’t think it’s specifically a conservative problem, however. There are all sorts of things that are more “left” policies that would be better off left alone.

In some areas, I believe in very strict regulation. For example, I think that cigarette packaging should be generated by a computer program operated by the health ministry: the cigarette company puts in their brand name, consisting of maybe 8-20 ASCII characters, and their UPC, and it generates a PDF which is sent directly to the printer: no opportunity for advertising, creativity, or any brand-enhancing variation whatsoever between brands.

In other areas, I think we’re way better off letting individuals and businesses do what they want. For example, I don’t think the government has, or even could, have a good sense of how many marijuana stores there should be in any city. So that should be entirely unregulated. If every entrepreneur in the country thinks they’re going to make a killing in marijuana, then something “bad” will happen: too many stores will open, and after a while many of them will go out of business. But that’s really OK. It will come out in the wash, the properties will be used for something else, and the entrepreneurs will be more careful with their remaining capital.