This is exactly the type of pointless bureaucracy that causes USA to fall behind China. Rural areas are dying because of centralization and consolidation of cor

This is exactly the type of pointless bureaucracy that causes USA to fall behind China. Rural areas are dying because of centralization and consolidation of corporations which primary are headquartered in large cities. Those large cities then oppose residential construction but not commercial construction which causes a massive imbalance of jobs to homes. The ensuing increase in real estate prices makes people consider their house as an investment first and they try to prevent further construction to the point where they mandate that even existing buildings may not be rebuilt. This situation is equivalent to a city investing in an electric bus fleet but then the federal government sues the city and sentences them to reinstate the ICE bus fleet. Nobody will disagree that this is crazy. Meanwhile, in this HN thread people argue in favor of the "historic" value of a random building. Obviously this is an extreme example but just think about how less severe situations are invisibly slowed down by excessive bureaucracy in the very successful cities and how this causes massive inefficiencies on the scale of an entire country which is highly dependent on those cities. Lost your job in <town>? Well, you're not welcome here in <city>.