During a recent meeting, the Antiplanner was extolling the virtues of Houston‘s land-use policies, and a home builder at the meeting said, “Of course, no one here wants our city to be like Houston,” meaning no one wanted Houston’s land-use regime.

Why not? I asked. “There is too much competition down there. My company can’t make a profit,” he said. “You have to have some barriers to entry to be able to make money.”

Those who accuse free marketeers of being supporters of big business don’t realize that big businesses (and often smaller businesses) don’t want a free market. In this home builder’s case, he wanted enough restrictions on the market to keep out some of his competitors (most likely smaller companies that can’t afford to hire lawyers and planners for every project) but not enough regulation to keep his company out.

But the goal of government is not — or at least should not be — to make sure that his particular company makes a profit. That’s his job. The goal of government should be to keep a level playing field. If it represents anyone at all, it should represent consumers, not producers. That means maximizing competition, not limiting it.

Of course, any time you give government power, you create an incentive for companies such as the one that employs this home builder to lobby government to use its power to benefit them. Urban planners who like to imagine that they can fulfill some utopian vision fail to account for the power of such lobbying. When they see it happen, they imagine they could fix it if only we gave them even more power — which in turn would simply stimulate more lobbying. That’s why we shouldn’t give government planners too much power in the first place.