Private Property and Customer Safety: Starbucks Learns a Hard Lesson
One of my favorite illustrations of the different incentives private enterprise and government face when it comes to the provision of security is an incident that took place in a Philadelphia Starbucks in April 2018. Two black men who said they were waiting for a potential business partner wanted to use the restroom, though they hadn’t purchased anything. They were asked to order something or leave.
They did neither, the cops were called, and the men were eventually arrested after refusing to be on their way. This event received a lot of press attention compared to most arrests for trespassing. The Starbucks CEO met with the arrested men and later closed eight thousand Starbucks locations for a day of sensitivity training.
There was a similar incident with United Airlines: after being unable to convince a sufficient number of passengers to voluntarily take a later flight, they got the Chicago Police to forcibly remove a passenger, leading to a viral video of a bloodied man being dragged from the airplane.
In the aftermath, both Starbucks and United were threatened with boycotts, and their stock prices took a hit. By contrast, nobody boycotted the Philadelphia or Chicago Police, which acted on these corporations’ behalf, nor did those departments undergo special training due to these scandals. The reason is obvious: police departments are much less constrained in terms of people being able to take their business elsewhere.
One might remark that these companies were within their rights in ejecting these individuals. (I would agree in the Starbucks
Article from Mises Wire
