New Jersey is still the only state that legally bans self-service gasoline. And as happens periodically, someone introduces a bill to change that law, and renewed public debate erupts. This time, it’s the bipartisan “Motorist Fueling Choice and Convenience Act”.
This seemingly minor issue features heated rhetoric. People on either side get really worked up. Some people believe it is Our sacred right to full-service gas, as the Star-Ledger facetiously puts it. Others believe their rights are being trampled by not being allowed the choice to save time and/or money by jumping out of their cars and pumping their own gas.
Count me in the second camp. But my take is somewhat different from both sides. The argument centers around what the law should say. I ask, why should law be involved at all?
Proponents of keeping the legal ban on self-serve gasoline always point to polls showing a majority prefer having their gas pumped. A Rutgers-Eagleton poll is the latest. According to that poll, 73% favor full-serve against 22% who prefer self-serve. But popular opinion polls are irrelevant. The only “poll” that matters is the market, which should be free of government involvement. The free market measures what people actually do, not merely what they say. Besides, what right does the 73% have to forcibly prevent the 22% from pumping their own gas, if the station allows self-service. Absolutely none.
Some propose halfway measures. In a Tribune News Service op-ed, Sal Risalvato recommends changing the law to allow self-service but also mandate some full service pumps. Perhaps, in today’s screwed-up political atmosphere, that’s a necessary compromise. But that doesn't answer the begged question, why should the government be involved at all?
I have addressed many of the bogus arguments of those who favor keeping the ban on self-service here and here. So I won’t repeat them here. The point I wish to make here is that neither side understands that this should not be a political issue. Government has no role here. It should simply leave station owners free to set their own policies, based on their own reading of market preferences.
Unfortunately, the basic issue has been lost in emotionalist rhetoric. For example, one full-serve gives us this winter-time red herring:
Fortune wills it that your gas gauge reads empty, so you slide into the nearest service station. A young, hardy, fully-parkaed, and ski-masked attendant steps up. You slip your window down an inch, present a credit card, and vocalize those time-honored words, “Fill ‘er up.”
The days of mandatory gas station attendants are numbered in New Jersey. The state may have finally succumbed to the wiles of the self-service advocates. Then, you will need to step out into the cold to fumble with your gas cap, drop your credit card in an oily puddle, press the wrong octane, listen to some chirpy video ad placed where you cannot possibly avoid it, and stand there snorting ice crystals until your car has its fill — ultimately dribbling some gas on the sleeve of your nice new coat.
I mean, what?—are we in New Jersey a bunch of overgrown, incompetent 5-year-olds? Well maybe James Terminiello is: But speak for yourself, kid. But that’s what passes for a rational, mature argument in favor of legally—i.e., forcibly—preventing us adults from getting out and pumping our own gas.
But that’s the basic argument— no one should be legally forced. And no one has ever proposed forcing the Terminiellos of NJ to have someone “Fill ‘er up.” When you bring law into it, you’re bringing force into human relationships.
Full-servers counter that they shouldn’t be forced to pump their own gas. But no one has ever proposed to legally ban full-serve gas. But, they counter, if service stations are free to decide their own policies, what if a station decided to be 100% self-serve? Wouldn’t that in effect “force” me to pump my own? No. Where’s the force? There is none. The station owner is voluntarily choosing 100% self-serve. Customers are voluntarily stopping by to help themselves to a tank full. Those who adamantly oppose self-serve can find another station, ask for help (which most self-serve stations everywhere else will usually provide), or bite the bullet and pump their gas.
But there is no “sacred right” to full-serve—or for that matter, self-serve. All I ask is to liberate the market from government interference, and let the chips fall where they may.
Neither full-serve nor self-serve should be legally mandated. The government has no role here, beyond policing the markets against force or fraud. It should never initiate force on anyone’s behalf. Whichever side tries to use the legal mechanism of government to force their preference on others is a bully. That’s the full-serve mob. If the free operation of the market results in most stations going full self-serve, then that’s life in a free society. Some may be unhappy when change happens. No one is entitled to any service, if no one else chooses to provide it. Just as I had to switch to cassettes and ultimately compact disks for my music when my beloved 8-track tapes became obsolete, so full-serve lovers will have to switch to self-serve if full-serve goes away. I have never had a smartphone. A flip phone suits my needs just fine. But some day, the flip will disappear. So be it. I would never demand to outlaw CDs or smartphones, so I can keep my old technologies. I’m not an entitlement-minded narcissistic bully, like my full-serve opponents. Turning to law to force stations to provide full-serve, self-serve, or any other type of service is immoral and un-American. It amounts to involuntary servitude. My last reading of the Constitution is that the 13th Amendment hasn’t been repealed.
For decades, against all common sense, self-serve advocates have tried to overturn the self-serve ban, and the full-serve mob has fought back hard, turning this logically trivial issue into a continuing “fight to the death”, as former NJ Governor Jon Corzine described it after being pilloried for proposing a modest pilot program of self-serve in 2006. But it needn’t be this way. If everyone respected the genuine rights of others, got the government out of the issue, and let the market work freely, sanity would return.
Related Reading:
After Big Gas Tax Hike, Will New Jersey Finally End the Ban on Self-Serve Gas?
New Jersey’s Still Debating Whether to Legalize Self-Serve Gasoline
A brief history of why you can't pump your own gas in N.J.—S.P. Sullivan for NJ.com
Where Does Valid Law End and Regulation Begin?
1 comment:
The fact is, in NJ at least, legislation (I didn't say law) IS involved, even though it shouldn't be and we wonder why it is or "should" be involved. If self serve is banned by legislation, then legislation is already involved. So, it must be de-involved. But, that can only be done by passing an actual law repealing the ban, in order to get the government out of it. But, there must be a repealing law, since there was a legislated ban in the 1st place.
With government out of the issue, all stations might be full service, or all stations might be self serve. Some might be full, and others self. Some might be partly full and partly self. There might be any combination and degree of any of these, up to the free market.
In all economic activity under unalienable individual rights, it's the observer, the thinker, the explorer, the discoverer, the inventor, the entrepreneur and industrialist, the producer who starts a market by providing a supply of whatever he decides to produce. Some other producer, probably one who produces something that has already been around a while, provides demand, so we have a full, actual market, assuming the supply and demand keeps happening.
From initial, basic production, a chain of supply and demand takes place until finally, something demanded is consumed. But, consumption, by a producer, merely sets a stage for more production, supply and so on. (I said A stage, not THE stage.) Consumption is not really a dead end, as has been said and written, not unless it's done by a non-producer. (Children are not non-producers. They are, from the outset, internal, self-developers for future production.)
Evasion of rights and of knowledge of rights, in action, intervention against rights, obliteration and denial of rights, any of these things by any means for whatever purpose, including such things as "government" counterfeiting of money, is crime conducted by criminals. In the case of "government" doing any of these things, the elected and high level appointed officials, and cops, are criminals, just like any burglar, kidnapper or arsonist. This must be understood if we are to do away with statism and the "mixed economy" and establish and keep unalienable individual rights in perpetuity.
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