Not in defense of looting

I haven't read the book In Defense of Looting, but NPR just did a feature story, "One Author's Argument 'In Defense Of Looting'."

From the story:

What would you say to people who are concerned about essential places like grocery stores or pharmacies being attacked in those communities?"

"When it comes to small business, family owned business or locally owned business, they are no more likely to provide worker protections. They are no more likely to have to provide good stuff for the community than big businesses.

 It's actually a Republican myth that has, over the last 20 years, really crawled into even leftist discourse: that the small business owner must be respected, that the small business owner creates jobs and is part of the community. But that's actually a right-wing myth."

This is hardly a defense of the looting of a small business.


8th and H Streets NE, 1968.  Photo: Matthew Lewis, Washington Post.

There is no defense of looting.  I understand anger and frustration and why people get violent.  But that doesn't mean I can find it justifiable.

Especially because while it might make legislators more willing to pass supports and for businesses and institutions to change a little bit, it destroys communities.

In the best of circumstances, it takes many decades for a community to recover, especially its commercial district. Places not so well resourced take even longer and likely never recover.

E.g., the H Street NE neighborhood I lived in in DC, well located--about 1 mile from Capitol Hill and less than 2 miles from Downtown--took not quite 40 years to recover.

The heart of Detroit, which experienced rioting in 1967, is still bombed out. Newark.. Etc.

Asking the right questions about small business and worker supports.  That being said, the "not likely to provide worker protections" is asking the wrong question.

Of course, small businesses, especially retail, aren't likely to provide "worker protections."

Even in the best of circumstances, they can be marginal businesses. Great for the owners, especially in terms of personal wealth building, but not big enough to be able to provide the package of benefits typically offered by larger firms.  (Sometimes associations that a business might join offer insurance and other programs that a business can adopt, but couldn't support on their own.

And it's not like chain retail businesses (Starbucks is an exception) provide a great package of benefits, unless they are unionized, and even then, benefits have been whittled away considerably in response to companies changing wage and benefits packages in response to competition from large nonunionized companies like Walmart.

The question should be, "why is it very difficult for small businesses to offer worker protections and benefits?"

The answer is: because they are microbusinesses without scale. The follow up question should be: "what do we need to do to make it possible for workers at these microbusinesses to receive protections and benefits?"

In Europe, this is less of an issue because the social welfare safety net operates independently of the workplace.

I would argue that we want workers/people to have access to a social welfare safety net, we should create one that works independently of the workplace.

Definitely the need for such became clear because it response to the pandemic and the layoff of millions, people lost not only their paychecks but their insurance (Employment, Income, and Unemployment Insurance during the COVID-19 Pandemic, Urban Institute).

PPP was an attempt, not very elegantly, to use the workplace payroll system to deliver wage support that otherwise would come from a beleaguered unemployment insurance system.

Small businesses and local support.  The other thing is that most economic studies find that small businesses spend money locally and have a greater multiplier effect on the local economy in fostering additional business, while chain businesses do not, because they usually purchase goods and services from vendors not located locally.

As someone said on an e-list, when do you see Walmart or Home Depot sponsor a local kids sports team?

Studies on the economic impact of locally owned businesses have been done for a number of communities and various retail sectors, when it comes to the economic value of chain stores versus locally owned businesses.   The consulting firm Civic Economics has performed these studies around the country.

The National Hardware Retailing Association, the American Booksellers Association, and the American Independent Business Association have commissioned such studies as well.

-- The Multiplier Effect of Local Independent Businesses, AMIBA
-- Study: Shopping Local vs. Amazon Makes Powerful Impact, National Retail Hardware Association
-- Local First and Economic Impact Studies, American Booksellers Association

Opposition to large tax credits for businesses, like FoxConn in Wisconsin, have to do with this kind of analysis too, over how much of the business activity further generates local economic activity.

Years ago, Aaron Renn wrote about how once Anheuser Busch was acquired by a non-US company, they eventually stopped hiring advertising firms based in St. Louis ("St. Louis and the Consequences of Consolidation," New Geography). This process happens in many places associated with business consolidation of banks, department stores and other retail businesses, etc.

Looting as social reparations. Again, I haven't read the book, but the argument is that looting has an element of redress for discrimination and structural racism. Again, I understand this belief, which has been frequently expressed both in the past and currently, in response to looting associated with George Floyd protests. But I don't agree.

Redress is supposed to be societal and such contributions are supposed to be structural and systematic, not an individual taking from someone/a business on their own volition, idiosyncratically.

Although, years ago I wrote a piece making the point that people in poor communities have an anthropological way of thinking about community and business participation and a belief that to locate in the community, they have to pay in. I never took anthro so I don't have the language to describe what I mean completely. Basically that to be part of the community, if you are an itinerant member through a business etc. you have to pay in, a kind of duty/dowry, in order to belong.

So looting can be seen as a kind of redress for the failure to pay in.

-- "In lower income neighborhoods, are businesses supposed to be "community organizations" first?," 2012

The Asian owned business question. And this is very much relevant to the discussions over the years about "Asian-owned stores" in black communities (I remember this being a theme in the "Hill Street Blues" tv show in the 1980s).

It came up a number of years ago in comments by DC's own Marion Barry ("D.C.'s Marion Barry widely rebuked for comments about Asian business owners," Washington Post), but also see this old blog entry about similar comments by Andrew Young, when he was working for Wal-mart, "Andy Young, Mel Gibson, maybe it's something about Los Angeles").

A number of years ago, I happened upon a great book about the Korean/Asian/Black urban retail question, Civility in the City: Blacks, Jews, and Koreans in Urban America, but I never wrote about it.

The book by Jennifer Lee, professor at UC Irvine, is definitely worth reading.