THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE TRAGEDY Deus ex machina

Hated though it may be, war remains the only way to achieve progress abruptly known throughout history. war consumes resources quickly and forces society to come up with more of them, to use its brainpower and workforce and to build.

After the war, besides many brave armchair generals, it's also many entrepreneurs that surface. After a war, there are many issues, but job shortage and real estate excesses are not among them.

In the absence of wars, governments have to promote alternative measures to spend their surplus resources however they can. In Romania for instance, a country that I've chosen randomly, construction-related enthusiasm has led to an overbuilt phenomenon.

Related to what is mentioned above or not, recently, a law which stipulates that no economic activities that involve customer circulation may take place on the ground floor of high seismic risk buildings.

What high seismic risk means is hard to say, because in Romania, those red circular high seismic risk symbols appear and disappear magically. The risk ratio is determined by counting the quakes that have taken place during the lifetime of the building and by the educated guess of the mayoralty's employees, because I've never seen anyone make accurate measurements, calculating and using any scientific bases ...

What is certain is that, once this law gets published, plenty of businesses in Bucharest will be in trouble and that is precisely in the very center of the city - Magheru, Bălcescu, Elisabeta, Pache, C.A. Rosetti, Maria Rosetti, Icoanei, Doamnei and particularly those operating in the luxuriously painted ruins of the Historical Centers.

Bucharest will show a depressing void in its very center.

The main entities affected will be banks, drug stores, cinemas, theaters, some shops and many, many places that sell food, or provide the gateway to getting drunk, sexual foreplay and loud-music entertainment.

Banks and drug stores will be happy to cut off some of the branches that they opened too hastily during the boom period, which are causing them to bleed money and which they have to pay rent for at overly high prices.

According to the law, both the banks and drugstore chains will be able to close those stores without ruining their image and putting forth a recession vibe. Moreover, they will be able to perform massive layoffs, blaming the authorities and using the new law as an excuse.

Cinemas - Scala and Patria for instance - will succumb and send their fans towards their competitors inside the malls, which are far too many, far too big and far too empty. Malls will also profit from the stores that had the obstination of working on the open street, who kept away from the alternative of renting spaces in malls out of inertia, rebellion or nostalgia.

Not every store will have to move inside the malls.

There are plenty of empty retail areas located in buildings that do not have a seismic risk rating.

Romarta alone (with all due respect for Broadhurst and with sympathy for Mr. Siminel Andrei) has about 100 such areas, mostly on the desert-like Unirii avenue.

Thus, willingly or not, the Parliament took care of shifting some landlords' prosperity to a different group of landlords. An equitable rotation of wealth.

If we take away banks, drugstores, cinemas, stores and theaters (of which the latter can just die off anyway, in their obsolescence, the future lies with municipal festivals, with the megaprojects of national theaters and niche theater institutes, right?), what is left? Well, clubs, bars, pubs and other such locations that have a counter.

Which the government has had enough of ... The effort in hounding them isn't worth the payoff in the form of taxes to the state budget. More trouble than it's worth.

If we look at the financial statements of companies that run bars, we will see that their overwhelming majority claims to be losing money. It must be hard to keep track of all the draft beer and all those colored fluids in bottles ...

Most of the clubs work in constructions that have more seismic risk red dots than a regular leopard has spots. The law in question fits them like a glove, and the blind goddess of justice will carve them up with its sword long before all arguments have been placed on both sides of its scales ...

While waiting for this anti-club law to be passed, published and implemented, club owners, managers and entrepreneurs in the sector were preparing a major protest. The people which greatly loves parties, was picking up momentum to take it to the streets against the announced injustice.

And then, out of the blue, a divine intervention manifested itself changing the course of events.

A club caught fire during a concert, killing tens and mutilating hundreds.

Deus ex machina... with prior preparation. Somebody glued some expanded polyurethane, with adhesive. Then somebody else mounted a fir tree ceiling panels. Then. that someone, or those someones, or everybody, in a fire-inducing symbiosis, washed everything with thinner. And in the end, some bright spark set off fireworks inside.

This ridiculous chain of events had a macabre ending.

Three days of national mourning have preordained the fate of Romanian clubs and bars. All those who before yesterday would have called abusive the placement of restrictions on clubs without hesitation, are now ready to sacrifice entertainment on the altar of public safety.

After the tragic even of the "Colectiv" club, the prime-minister set off the entire coercive apparatus on pub owners. The shareholders of Colectiv have been demonized by the entire media.

The final blow came from one entrepreneur in the industry.

Andrei Sosa, the owner of a club called "Expirat", said, eating a lot of humble pie, that he would close down the club, that the venue had been operating for 14 years illegally and promiscuously, endangering the life and health of consumers. A lovely example! A Perseus who abruptly pushed the three Gorgons that were the three shareholders of "Colectiv" into jail. What prosecutor would have missed out on that opportunity? A trinity of scapegoats, three heads to roll gloriously at the feet of the mob ...

Sosa's reasoning was sound ... A rented venue, an investment which has long since been amortized, a business that was waning, debts and an endless laundry list of irregularities which would be uncovered by the announced audits.

It was better for him to make the first move, by making a redemptive mea culpa and singing the same tune as the vindictive and justice-seeking authorities. His example was opportunistically followed by many.

From now on, who will dare challenge the abusive nature of a law that seeks to reshape Bucharest's real estate market?!?