Selling in Public Roads and Municipal Confiscation

Question:
He says: We sell dates and similar vegetables in the public roads, and the municipality comes and confiscates our goods, and the police come and hand us over to the police station, saying that the state prohibits this sale, knowing that we have no source of income other than this. What is your Eminence’s opinion?

Answer:
We examine the matter of the vendors, because this may harm the owners of the known shops and sawmills. It may harm them: you are selling in the roads, and they are left idle. They pay high rents, they toil, they lease the facilities, while you are in the roads. They sit idle, and they may have leased shops and premises, and secured their capital, while you are selling in the roads and taking the profits. This is the point of consideration. We look at this, and the direction of forbidding the matter is clear in this; because this permissibility in the roads may cause the people to be idle from their work, which they are attached to. They may have leased, and spent on their shops and their sawmills.