If the corona crisis doesn’t bring that new era of decline, rioting, looting, and defending or eliminating police departments probably will. From Ryan McMaken at mises.org:
Manufacturing company 7-Sigma made headlines when it decided to leave Minneapolis as a result of the company’s plant being burned by rioters. “They don’t care about my business,” 7-Sigma owner Kris Wyrobek old the Star-Tribune. After more than thirty years in the city, the company isn’t staying, nor are any of the company’s fifty jobs.
But the costs of being victimized in protests is just one of many reasons homeowners and businesses may be realizing life and business in central cities has lost its luster. The ongoing threat of more business lockdowns, more riots, higher taxes, and failing schools may induce many Americans to flee, once again, to the suburbs as their parents or grandparents did.
This goes well beyond the fear of the disease many journalists have assumed is behind the observed beginnings of an exodus from cities. Yes, many in the upper classes have fled the cities for their mountain homes and yachts for “health reasons.” But these people are relatively few in number and their thinking quixotic. They can afford to drop everything and leave cities overnight.
But the larger impacts are likely to be felt as middle class homeowners and business owners conclude they’d simply rather avoid the edicts and neglect of mayors and city councils in central cities who think nothing of issuing job-destroying “stay-at-home” orders while allowing rioters and vandals free rein.
