Commentary Piece for Healdsburg Tribune 8/17
In response to public demand, the City Council is limiting the number tasting rooms allowed downtown and are starting to look at ways (zoning changes etc.) to cap the number of hotels in town, or at least downtown. These are changes I am happy to see coming. But recent conversations about these issues have inflamed worries from some that the guiding principle of 'supply and demand' is being abandoned to the detriment of our local economy. “On the surface it may sound good to make these changes”, they say, “but there could be unintended negative consequences”. “If tourists demand more hotel rooms and tasting rooms, we are foolish not to supply them”, they insist! A key premise embedded in the idea of 'supply and demand' is that 'natural' economic balances will be the result if business enterprises are left more or less unencumbered. There is an unshakable faith that the principle is imbued with a trustworthy logic. If 'artificial' restraints are remove