Weights, measures and clever selling

I do not buy anything from people selling on the streets and weaving through the traffic with their wares. I have even tried to wage a doomed and forlorn campaign for people to stop doing their shopping while they sit in traffic. I believe it is a surer way of getting traders off the street than to have men whipping them and scattering the wares or to try to prosecute them for selling on pavements and in between the traffic. 

If nobody buys from the traders on the pavement or those weaving through the traffic, it will take exactly four days to clear the streets. They are a wily and clever lot — our traders — and they will not waste their time on the pavements or risk their lives running through moving traffic if they are not making sales. They remain on the streets and stubbornly resist the intermittent attempts by the city authorities to remove them because they know there are willing buyers.  

I might not shop on the city and town streets but I confess I am unable