My grandkids think I‘m an old fart when I speak of the old days growing up in San Francisco。I am one。There were many breweries in SF，lots of manufacturing going on， lots of blue-collar work。Much of it is gone。While walking to school I passed lots of businesses making brooms， furniture， bread， bottling milk， you name it， it was done in the City。Very little left，and the city “leaders” don’t seem to care。
Yuh, sure they had all that, but I’ll bet if you wanted artisanal macaroni and cheese, or yoga for your dog, you were SOL.
When I grew up in Tampa in the sixties there were lots of little companies. There were a couple of plating shops where you get your chrome redone. When the gas stations on every corner went under because the government starting mandating what prices they could charge and when they were allowed to change them those corners became small companies making and selling all sorts of things. Then, along came the EPA. Most companies went out of business. Turns out if you owned an old gas station you had to pay a government certified company to come in and remediate the soil. That cost thousands more money than anyone could make off the company they owned. They all let the banks have the property and walked away. A Honeywell plant that made missiles just closed it down. Years later all the supposed bad soil tested clean but the EPA still wanted millions of dollars because, well they had a report that twenty years prior it was dirty, so somebody had to pay. Honeywell walked away.
Look at why companies aren’t here and you’ll find the government behind their absence.
A lot of companies could have been cleaner, but the EPA wanted them to use only EPA certified companies, and nobody could afford that. It was a giant money-making scheme.