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Really excellent article by @ad-mastro.bsky.social on how Japan's tiny businesses are a product of the country's loose business regulations and zoning laws. I also want to add historical context to this: these types of businesses used to be the norm in America before zoning came along. 1/🧵

One way to juice this would be to penalize (tax?) ongoing empty commercial space so that landlords are forced to drop rent/divest vs book losses on space that they can't command usage of. Lit tons of underutilized CRE that rots because it's held by ppl who've no idea what to do with it.

Land zoning however isn't why home bars don't open (tho pvt bars exist if one knew a city well enough), but liquor being a huge state monopoly is. The state, and existing sellers have a perverse incentive to control the flow of alcohol.

In theory, allowing publ facing CRE because you put a shed or lean-to up next to your house solves one of the big modern CRE issues which is structural costs relative to pop/cust density relative to chosen economic use. It doesn't solve the significant existing CRE overhang.

Yeah, it's a major issue. In the past, with looser rules on residential-commercial conversion, it was a hell of a lot easier to convert residential to office and vice-versa, but modern commercial buildings are just too damn deep to enable residential conversion...