Ocala case highlights 'cereal' attacks on free market

An important property rights case came out of Ocala recently. If you missed it, look up the press coverage at Google News. The case set off alarm bells in my mind because it strikes at the heart of our free-market system.

Ocala's Castro family had planned to build 790 homes on 396 acres at Northwest 90th Avenue and 63rd Street, the heart of Marion County's horse-farm country. The family has owned the land for more than 50 years and worked with county leaders to craft a development at less than half the density allowed by law. The family granted several other concessions to the county as well.

The county commission, albeit against the recommendation of staff planners, approved the project, as did the Florida Department of Community Affairs. Two county residents challenged the approval, however, saying in part that the county had failed to prove a need for the new homes - apparently a requirement in state law. An administrative law judge agreed, prompting DCA to admit that it erred in failing to consider that requirement as part of the approval process.

Ultimately, the Cabinet supported the DCA retraction and issued a "recommendation" that the county withdraw its approval of the project.

I'd like to focus on this notion of "need." If I understand this case correctly, it is now actually codified that - where houses are concerned, anyway - the state will determine what a community "needs" and doesn't need.

This is a problem, because housing is a product like any other in our marketplace. And history has shown conclusively that central planning of goods and services has been a miserable failure every time it has been tried. An army of entrepreneurs in a free market is much more efficient at assessing "need" in that market than any group of bureaucrats will ever be.

To illustrate, let me direct your attention to the cereal aisle. Yes, the cereal aisle - which at my local Publix is at least 50 feet long, four shelves high and packed to the edges with all manner of breakfast goodies. Expensive, too, I might add.

Now, can anyone make the case that we "need" another kind or flavor of cereal? That's what I thought. Yet, in a free market, it's my prerogative to come to market with a new cereal offering if I desire and I have the financial backing. "Need" regulates itself in a free market. If nobody buys my cereal, I will go bankrupt and my lender will lose a lot of money.

May the best cereal win.

Another point: The free market is not all about need. It's about competition. I choose to manufacture cereal - in an obviously glutted market - because I believe there's something different - or better - about my product. The risk is mine to take. The market will decide if I'm correct.

Both of the previous points are as true for houses as they are for cereal. Perhaps because of my circumstances - like paid-for land, in the Castro family's case - I can offer a better house in a better location for less money. The market may be glutted, but the risk is mine to take. The market will decide if I'm correct.

Now, let's bring the Florida Department of Cereal Affairs into the mix. DCA determines there's too much cereal on the market, and that it must approve any new offerings thereto. Who suffers? Take away the climate of competition, and it is the consumer and - ultimately - the economy that suffers as choice among cereal products in the marketplace evaporates. Prices will also rise - as if they weren't high enough already.

And bargain hunters - whether for cereal or houses - will be out of luck.

I don't have all the answers to the growth management debate, but I do know that central planning of an economy leaves a bitter aftertaste. Policies in Tallahassee need to lean toward free-market principles, not away from them.