There are few national solutions that can help all cities. There are, however, two federal policies holding back widespread business creation and concentrating economic power in fewer hands—overly restrictive intellectual-property law and housing regulation that promotes unsustainable sprawl.
Patents used to be difficult and expensive to enforce. One of the main reasons the film industry set up shop in Los Angeles (on the other side of the country from New York City with its legions of actors, producers, set designers, costume makers and all the various and sundry people needed for a major stage production or a film) is because easterner Thomas Edison owned many of the patents on filmmaking and he didn’t want to license the technology. So the moviemakers went to California, where they could skedaddle to Mexico in case Edison wanted to make trouble.
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