If Alderman Bill Waterhouse has his way.
Though I don’t know if he will have his way, because pumping and running is a way that many of our diverse citizens get gas, and the city’s black aldermen will probably whine about “disparate impact” and “racism” in relation to this proposal.
The Missouri Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association has come down with the Home Depot Syndrome. From the P-D:
But the Missouri Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association opposes the pre-pay rule. Kansas City and a few other western Missouri communities recently adopted similar requirements, said association President Ronald J. Leone.
“This is a bad idea that appears to be gaining ground,” Leone said from the association’s office in Jefferson City. “Our members have ways to deal with gas theft, and we should leave it up to the individual retailer. We’re against this sort of government intervention in the free market.”
It doesn’t appear that your members are “dealing” with gas theft well enough, except that they will pay higher insurance premiums, and charge consumers more in areas that have more driver-offers. Other than forcing prepayment at the pump, the only way to “deal with gas theft” is to have agents of governments, (i.e. police, prosecutors, jail and prison supervisors, probation and parole officers), spend time and money to pursue, apprehend, prosecute, jail or imprison, and/or probationally supervise gas thieves, assuming they are successful in each stage of the process. In St. Louis, government agents in that stead have many bigger and more worrisome fish to fry. But all that involves the same kind of “government intervention” that they complain that this bill does.
As for this business about “government intervention in the free market,” a fundamental tenet of economics is that a transaction takes place when two people have something, and each person wants what the other has more than what he already possesses. This implies that each person gives up that which he doesn’t want as much to get that which he wants more. It doesn’t imply that one person gets something from the other and gets to keep what the other person wanted from him. Waterhouse’s bill therefore preserves the essence, instead of spiting, of free market economics.
