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Occasionally academics, business people, planners and policy makers assume Markets are unorganized and disorderly.  These assumptions are rooted in prevailing theories of human behavior, for instance if business is organized then street business is not; or in ideas of what legitimate business is, for instance the only activity which counts as business is that activity which is taught in business schools and involves a variety of other practices (accounting, etc); or in ideas of planning and policy wherein the largest economic activities, the most remunerative, easily measured, and regulated are those most desirable.   But these assumptions are fatally flawed and measure human activity by rules and regulations instead of establishing desirable rules by human needs and aspirations.  

The fatal flaw in these assumptions is the “truth” of the logic of if/then statement.  If storefront business is orderly, organized, recognized by other social institutions like business schools; sought and even de-regulated by planners and policy makers then street markets, absent from these connections and assumptions must not be organized.  But of course street business is organized and of course, like all human activities, it is regulated, and the truth of this is obvious when we consider the vast variety of family forms that exist.  Families are not unorganized, rather we might say, that like street markets, families are disorganized!  There are numerous family forms and even more numerous ways by which families organize their lives and though we may not recognize the form or organization from our perspective the fact that some form/organization exists is testament to the existence of that form/organization.  

So street markets are organized, but recognizing that organization requires two moves, first, a willingness to suspend one’s assumptions about “legitimate” organization and second, the desire to understand the principles organizing some market in some particular place.  Chaos it may seem, but there is always some order(s) producing the activity we observe. In brief, markets are often, and purposefully, unorganized, with several organizing principles operating at the same time.  Planners, policy makers, business people and academics would do well to understand these organizational principles, synthesize how they come together and work, and recognize that for more than a millennium markets have operated in uniquely distinct ways from other commercial and social activity, and for good reasons.  More about that in a later note.

As day laborers hustling business on street corners and Home Depot parking lots have flourished, some have called to get rid of them, or at least get them out of site. Some communities have responded by establishing "work centers." Centers match employers with day laborers, and do so away from the street and sidewalk.

On Sunday The Record (Bergen County, NJ) newspaper ran a story about the opening of a work center in Passaic, New Jersey. The center is hailed as the first city sanctioned day labor center in the state. It may also be the last. On a recent Friday morning the center stood empty, while the Home Depot nearby was teeming with day laborers. The electricity at the center was off, due to non-payment of a power bill, but that may not have been the only reason. It seems that some contractors prefer to hire on the street or in a parking lot. From the standpoint of convenience that certainly makes sense, as anyone who has used a drive through window can understand. Moreover, the contractors prefer to negotiate with day laborers directly, without interference with a center. Some centers require laborers to be hired on a first-come, first served basis. Sounds like finding a prom date by pulling names out of a hat.

Even established day laborers who helped get the center off the ground are disappointed. Publicity about the center has drawn many laborers to the area, most of whom prefer street corners and parking lots. Aggressive police enforcement of loitering and blocking sidewalks might drive business to the work center. But the police respond only when someone complains. If the laborers continue to thrive, complaints must be relatively few.

There may be more complaints against work centers. Critics complain that the centers attract and enable the hiring of undocumented workers. Across the country, attempts to new open centers have been blocked, and existing centers have been pressured to shut down. And so the day laborers go, back outside again.

Last week the Senate failed to pass an immigration bill. That is bad news not only for proponents of immigration law reform, but also for street commerce. Here's why. An influx of undocumented workers over the past several years has coincided with an increase in the number of folks doing business on the street. Sidewalk vendors proliferated, especially in larger cities, and day laborers waiting on roadsides and in Home Depot parking lots appeared just about everywhere. Many of these people were immigrants; a substantial portion were undocumented. These street entrepreneurs became a very visible symbol of immigration, and for opponents evidence of the failure of the federal government to stem the flow.

Lacking action in Washington, immigration opponents turned to state and local governments. Cities such as Escondido, California and Hazleton, Pennsylvania responded by making it illegal for landlords to rent to undocumented workers. Others like Salinas and Santa Ana, California tightened traffic regulations. Rules making it more difficult to operate taco trucks or to stop on a roadside to pick up or drop off passengers were indirectly aimed at illegal immigration. Finding it impractical to send their cops to the border, locals decided to discourage immigration by making it harder for immigrants to do business in their fair city. Putting aside the negative impact these rules have had on immigrants themselves, these new rules shielded some established businesses from competition and helped suffocate street life for everyone.

Federal immigration reform promised to "solve the problem" and get cities and towns out of the business of attempting to control immigration through indirect means. But now that the Senate bill is dead, you can be sure that other localities will step into the breach with their own version of reform. Whether you're the native buying tacos on the street, or the undocumented immigrant selling them from a truck, this is bad news.

On June 18 the New York Times ran a story under the headline, "Online Sales Lose Steam," describing how growth of retail sales on the internet is slowing. One of the reasons, the article points out, is that shopping is not just about getting goods and services, its also about human contact and fun. Alex Gruzen, Senior Vice President for Consumer Products at Dell said as much: "There’s a recognition that some customers like a more interactive experience.” Harvard Business School Professor Nancy Koehn put it this way: “It’s not like you go onto Amazon and think: ‘I’m a little depressed. I’ll go onto this site and get transported.’ ” Online shopping is more a chore than an escape.

The article goes on to point out that storefront retailers are the big winners. But so aren't open air markets and street vendors. Being outside and dealing with people face to face is part of the adventure of open air shopping. And for all the security features of the internet, dealing in person is also a way to establish trust. If the internet has not spelled the end for store front retailing, then it surely has not killed open air markets.

News sections of newspapers around the world decry street markets as sources of corruption, but in the metro, travel or food sections, those same markets are celebrated as sources of sociability, economic mobility, and local character, yet markets, forerunners of the contemporary complex system of trade and commerce are notably absent from the business pages. Markets and merchants are intimately woven into human history, human history is, in no small degree, a history of markets. Important elements of law, politics and family life emerged from markets, and religion spread by trading relationships. Markets are simultaneously abstract and concrete, flexible and stable and into markets policy makers have poured their expectations, scholars their expectations, politicians their praise and criticism, immigrants their hopes for better lives and markets are constantly being remade in light of new opportunities and demands for new trading relationships.

The history of markets and merchants permeates most every scholarly discipline, the humanities are represented, no less than social science in examining lives conditioned by markets in one way or another. Still, policy makers and politicians hold biased views of one type of market, the original type of market, the street market. These perceptions are biased by the last century’s revolution of storefront retail, regulation and currently, commerce globalized by internet technologies. Yet the street market persists, in the industrialized west no less than other parts of the world. More than persisting, the street or open-air market is further catalyzed by changes in storefront retail, in regulations and in changes in consumer demand and government needs. Markets and merchants are here to stay.

This article enumerates ten myths associated with markets which shape policy and economic perceptions of markets and merchants. The stereotypes are common, but not always explicitly articulated, rather they settle in to pronouncements as assumptions that underlie convictions or decisions about “suitable” economic activity.

The ten myths are:

1. Markets are disorganized and disorderly

2. Markets are sources of illegality, particularly in taxation or merchandise acquisition

3. Markets and merchants are dirty or unsanitary

4. Markets are dangerous and merchants defraud customers

5. Markets are dead-end activities and merchants live hand to mouth

6. Markets are inefficient and merchants are not “real” business people
7. Markets are unimportant, disconnected from the larger socio-economic situation
8. Merchants are without ambitions
9. Markets are for the poor and merchants are typically the poor or destitute
10. Markets are biased by race or class

Like all myths each of these has some basis in reality and the reality will always be a mixed bag of positive and negative perceptions. What matters most is how particular interest groups and organizations harness negative perceptions and use them to command the attention of policy makers. In the weeks ahead I will pursue a fundamentally constructive purpose: I will disentangle these myths in order to show how merchants and policy makers are recovering markets as important tools of city planners and public policy makers as well as helping households realize their economic aspirations.