May 23, 1983
The long nose of the law
How does the old song go… everybody’s doin’ it, doin’ it, doin’ it…?
Ask the owner of any business with a video amusement machine in just about any town in our area.
Without exception, you’ll find that, one at a time, often copying from each other, the towns are getting into the business of licensing the machines (for fat fees, of course) and settling rules (and rules, and rules, depending on the town) about who can have machines, where they have to be and how many there can be.
I have mixed feeling about it all.
First of all, I see it as a businessperson. And I don’t like it at all, while I wear that hat. It’s just another way the towns have of wringing revenue out of an enterprise that is open and vulnerable to being counted, taxes and penalized for existing.
It violates free enterprise and singles out one particular business tool as victim to its financial greed.
On the other hand, I’m a parent. And in that instance, I see it two ways. First of all, I strongly believe that video machines in 1983 are no different than juke boxes or pinball machines were in 1955. Probably the video machines are more valuable in terms of overall requirement for some skill than anything we had available to us when we were pre-teens, but the purpose is the same … something to do.
However, I’m dead set against a video arcade or business watching school-age kids spending hours at a time during school hours, playing machines.
On the whole, though, as a parent, I would want to feel that my daughter could enjoy a quick game of Ms. PacMan while I shopped for groceries in the Acme or wandered around K-Mart for a while… or spent an hour at the mall window shopping. It’s more fun for her and gives me the peace of mind of knowing where she is and that she is absorbed in something she enjoys. And for that reason, I would hate to think the licensing laws would drive the video machines out of the stores, pizza parlors and arcades,
It doesn’t make any sense to me that this type of activity should be required to pay any more than the standard mercantile license fee required by any town for the operation of any business.
Here at The Journal, we conform to the requirements of the Borough of Berlin by paying an annual mercantile fee of $50.00 That entitles us to the services of the borough and gives the borough some return from our presence. Now, thanks to the new law just passed here, not only does the owner of a business pay the mercantile license fee, but an additional $50.00 per machine for every video amusement device in the place.
And I’m not picking on Berlin. In various combinations and varieties, it’s the same in Berlin Township, Clementon, Stratford, Waterford Township and Winslow Township so far. And in each town, the reasons given for singling out the video machine industry is the regulation of the pastime.
Heaven forbid we should honestly say it’s another way to make money for the town!
But the money grabbing isn’t the part that bother me the most.
It’s the downright violation of human rights involved in some of the ordinances being passed in some of the towns.
Clearly, mark that as my personal opinion, please. But consider, if you will, the use of power that permits a town to say yea or nay to the issuance of a license for video machine operation on the basis of the morality of the proprietor of the business.
Since when is it anyone’s concern what one’s moral convictions are?
Business reputation, yes. Investigate all you want how a person runs his or her business with regard to financial stability, ability to keep order and respect the law, prior record of difficulties with the business or its clientele and so on.
But leave the owner’s personal morality out of it.
In many cases, the personal biases of the judges, whether they be governing body officials or police chiefs, may get in the way of any kind of fair decision.
In all cases, one’s personal morality is just that… personal.
Between the individual and his conscience.
Not among the individual, his conscience and the law.
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