LETTER: Las Vegas City Council in the grips of protectionism

In response to the recent Review-Journal article reporting that the Las Vegas City Council has banned another food truck lot: As someone who works the night shift, I would challenge anyone to find someplace to have a quick nutritious and affordable meal at 3 a.m. It seems to me that nearly all the stand-alone restaurants that oppose this food truck lot close relatively early. A great compromise would have been a late-night time allocation rather than an all-out ban.

This type of anti-competitive behavior on the part of the City Council is fairly consistent with other rulings that the body has made to limit competition and innovation. Council members know who finances their election campaigns, and it is not the underdogs who are just scraping by. It is the established business owners who seek to monopolize every market in Las Vegas through regulatory exclusion.

Exclusionary regulations that prohibit small-business operators from achieving success are all too common, not just in the city of Las Vegas but Clark County as a whole. The end result of this type of governance is that innovative and industrious entrepreneurs will go elsewhere. If Southern Nevada wants to become a hub of innovation and entrepreneurs, we need to stop stomping out the little guy and give them an opportunity.