Except that people who own the licenses are going to lobby against that (and probably with greater effect considering they're able to afford the licenses in the

Except that people who own the licenses are going to lobby against that (and probably with greater effect considering they're able to afford the licenses in the first place) since that would be a huge loss in equity for them. It's the same with liquor licenses in Boston (maybe all of Mass., but I'm not sure about that). There's a limited number of them, but they can be resold, usually fetching more than a million dollars. This is a huge startup cost for new restauranteurs, but they have held their value, such that when you decide (or are forced) to sell or close the business, you can recoup that initial investment. Issuing more licenses or trying to reduce the cost of them in other ways would just destroy that value for the owners, most of which have taken out loans against them that would still need to be repaid.