Some powerful folks in Charlotte think that there are too many newsracks uptown offering too many different publications and cluttering things up. They want to take some down and replace others with more expensive, more attractive racks.
A Charlotte Observer official likes the idea, naturally. Publishers of smaller, competing publications don?t, naturally. The late Chicago-School economist George Stigler figured all this out a long time ago: “As a rule, regulation is acquired by the industry and is operated primarily for its benefit.”
