LIBERTARIANISM IS ONLY EVER SELF-INTEREST IN FANCY DRESS:

[T]he urban left's sudden passion for deregulation goes beyond housing. When hip food establishments run into red tape, progressives jump into gear. The regulatory travails of Chicago's Logan Square Kitchen attracted a series of articles in the alternative weekly Chicago Reader, which observed: "The minutiae of this licensing confusion are mind numbing."

Libertarians and city-dwelling foodies have joined forces to promote "food freedom" and fight bans on unpasteurized milk and meat curing. "Farmers should be able to smoke a ham and sell it to their neighbors without making a huge investment in federally approved facilities," wrote food activist and author Michael Pollan.

Rules that make food trucks illegal or hard to run are yet another irritant. "Many restaurateurs would prefer a downtown free from competitors," Greater Greater Washington editorialized, "but it makes as much sense to give restaurants input on where food trucks can operate as it does to give food trucks control over prices restaurants can charge."

Much of the new "sharing economy" -- made up of firms such as Airbnb and Lyft, which facilitate the peer-to-peer rentals of things like apartments or cars that the owners aren't using -- has made regulators uneasy, but progressives have proved more friendly than not to this burgeoning market.

Urban progressives' enthusiasm for deregulation is highly inconsistent, however; indeed, in many policy areas, they're pushing for greatly expanded regulation. They've joined the fight for local minimum-wage hikes in cities from Chicago to Los Angeles, for instance, and they regularly try to block chain retailers such as Wal-Mart from expanding in their neighborhoods.

The regulatory spirit is particularly relentless when it comes to the environment. San Francisco has restricted plastic water bottles and banned single-use plastic bags from stores, prompting the alternative weekly San Francisco Bay Guardian to cheer the city for continuing to "lead the way in the nation's environmental policy." New York's liberal icon mayor, Bill de Blasio, has announced a ban on polystyrene packaging starting in July.

Smoking policy brings out the most absurd contortions, as the left champions the legalization of marijuana even as it vilifies tobacco. San Francisco -- it's easy to pick on San Francisco -- has banned cigarette smoking at outdoor events, but exempted pot smoking for "medical" purposes.

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