The chain stores they are “prohibiting” require too much square footage to ever move into these tourist areas. The large parking lots and facitlities that they require would be cost prohibitive regardless of the architecture.

And you never have to shop a chain store, you choose to. If people simply wanted the cheapest possible price, then stores would all be plain-facade gray, wrapped in white paper and employees would all wear undyed-fabric uniforms. People want some style, they just often make different cost-style trade-offs that you don’t approve of.

This is where, despite the fact that I pretty much am one, I think libertarians get too doctrinaire. Sometimes someone who owns some property’s freedom, or just the idea of making money, are not the values you want.

We could make a hell of a lot of money setting up plants that process human organs for sale, but nobody around here wants that. We want wine grapes. And somebody would probably be able to buy some property somewhere around here that would want to do something like build a chemical plant, or a giant Mall, or whatever. But if a local community doesn’t want that, they should at least have some say so. Notice that the voters in SF didn’t rule it out entirely–they just don’t want it to get out of control.

As a kind of disclaimer, I can’t stand coffee, regardless of whether I make it, a mom-and-pop makes it, a 10 storefront “non-chain” makes it, or an 11 storefront chain makes it.

South Park vs. Harbuck’s

Out-of-towners asked repeatedly “What is the best thing about San Francisco?”

The answer always was “The 5:14 train.”

Over-priced, over-valued, dirty, nasty place.

The reasoning behind all the crazy and stupid laws is always either xenophobic (we’re special and better than other places) or enviro-fascist (cars are evil and people driving them need to be assaulted and threatened with bikes, like Critical Mass).

I think that the crazy, natural process of building housing is what made SF beautiful and interesting. Artificially engineering that look is, to me, like distressing or antiquing a piece of furniture. Sure, that false-distressed look makes it fashionable, but it’s just fake. If you really want SF or any place to look interesting then repeal zoning laws. Let people build Second Empire monstrosities next to Art Deco apartments next to whatever. That would give the place tons of character, plus it would be free and constitutional.

The one addition I would make is that the views should be commoditized. The view of the water is both very valuable and very contentious. By allowing people to own the views we could reflect the fact that a Pacific Heights house was purchased in part for the view. I don’t know how to go about implementing it, but it seems like the best way to deal with the conflict over how high buildings by the bay can be.

I made some different, but related, points here:
http://blog.neo-libertarian.com/posts/1189964829.shtml

Sneaky b*****ds. Can’t win honestly, so they lock out the competition by law. And the taxpayer’s of SF get to pay for the defense against the lawsuit that Starbuck’s will almost certainly launch. And win.