One article of faith for liberalism seems to that if people are left to themselves, they will almost certainly do the stupidest and most harmful thing possible. The corrollary of course, is that those bureaucrats put in charge of running people's lives will never do anything stupid.

Any idiot would tell you why a dairy farm would not be built in the middle of a town, or why a car wash owner would prefer a commercial area to locate in. The city of Houston went for years without major zoning laws, and whaddaya know, most people put things where it was sensible and profitable to put them.

Some regulations are sensible--one should not be able to legally dump poisons where they can affect someone else's life and property--but this kind of overkill is typical of bureaucracies that have to justify their own existences even if the problems aren't really there.