I think that this is great: an aspiring lunch vendor has cleverly dodged the city’s licensing limits on food carts by selling his product to existing hotdoggerias, whose licenses allow them to vend it. More lunchtime variety on the streets of DC is a good thing!
But I also find it kind of infuriating that these incumbent vendors are able to impose rents on the entrepreneur behind this effort. Sure, maybe he’s glad to not have to finance or run a cart. But it’s equally likely that he just isn’t being allowed to compete because the city is artificially constraining the ability of food carts to compete. Instead some petrified halfsmoke purveyor gets some fraction of every dollar that this guy’s ingenuity deserves. Why?!
Admittedly, my outrage at this probably has something to do with my own socioeconomic destiny. As a white guy who’s getting older, fatter and more prosperous, it’s only natural that I begin to feel increasingly outraged by insults to the burrito-selling Randian supermen that the market, freed from the clutches of incompetent District bureaucrats, would naturally elevate. To imply otherwise would threaten the legitimacy of my own relatively anointed status! And that’s ridiculous: I am, after all, a valuable member of society, deserving of the respect and flat-panel TVs that come with my extraordinary and carefully-cultivated skills (ask me about the brilliant system I’ve devised for making sure I respond to email properly).