I seldom disagree with Sowell.  But I think he might be a little off base here.     As a libertarian, I don't think the Unvierse owes us unfettered access to a life devoid of exposure to our fellow man.   I don't think the Universe owes us anything. 

When you move into and buy property in a community with a written set of covenants, you have agreed to live by those covenants as part of the purchase agreement.    No junk in the front yard.   No building over 2 stories high.    That is free association.

When you move into and buy property in a community with no such written set of covenants, and a majority of your neighbors later have a meeting and decide to form new covenants and drop a copy off in your mailbox, you have something to line the bottom of your parakeet's cage with.    No matter what the soles of their feet or endless hours of naval gazing tell them about art and beauty and truth, etc.    Because what they are attempting is the same thing that makes gang rape 'rape' and that is, forced association.

Those neighbors have a choice; they can offer to buy you out, and freshly add your property to that which is subject to their inspired covenants.   And if you agree, then let freedom ring.    And if you don't, then no amount of rationalization is going to turn gang rape into anything other than gang rape.    

Same thing on the San Francisco waterfront.  In lieu of existing covenants(though that might not be the case on the SF waterfront at all), for those so moved by what the soles of their feet are telling them is the truth, they are free to purchase all the property they can and enforce new covenants and then sell the land to those who agree to those new covenants.

Because lacking that, then how far does this 'the view of the waterfront belongs to the People' go?    At some point, does the existence of a two story building impede the view of a one story building across the street?   How far does this right of 'the People' to a view of the water extend beyond actual property lines?

Or is it not the view of the waterfront that is at issue, but rather the artistic aesthetic of architecture and the inspired truth of how high a beautiful building should be? 

Perhaps, not so tall that should it fall on its side it will fall on a neighbor.    Now, there is at least a hint of a principle at work, because those who feel compelled to build really tall buildings could ameliorate that instance of forced association by purchasing the land around their tall building site; the taller the building, the more land, and so, all clusters of tall buildings would appear as mountains, with peaks surrounded by ever smaller buildings, all the way down to the smallest buildings at the edges.    And don't you dare build a two story building immediately adjacent to another for fear of someday falling on it.   Need a little yard space between folks.

No evidence of that existing principle in place in SF...

Of course, unless they agree to live in an existing neighborhood and willingly take that risk.   Just like living near those already existing tall buildings.

But back to the  right of The People to their view; what of the People who will freshly live and work in those new tall buildings-- who have purchased the property, or equivalently, rented ownership of that property?   Do they have less of a right to their view than those declaring their eternal right to their unimpeded view of the waterfront?

However, existing covenants include municipal laws in effect at the time the property was purchased.   (That includes, construction subject to municipal permit processes.)   Large municipalities seem to have that process pretty well tied up -- legally -and- ethically; folks who purchase land have a means and obligation to understand what they are agreeing to when they buy property for some intended use, and being subject to the local tribal elders view of art could very well be a part of that.

The result is cities like Chicago, whose downtown looks largely like a kind of perfect movie set, no piece out of place.

The article mentions only 'changing height restrictions,'    That implies not only that there are 'height restrictions' -- covenants -- but that there is/was some means of setting those height restrictions, and as well, some means of determining the means that set those height restrictions; those are all facts that any developer/speculator accept when they take a risk..

I don't read that the same as 'introducing height restrictions' or worse, coming in after the fact and condemning an existing building because it is freshly 'too high' and was built under earlier covenants.   That would be gang rape.

Folks have a right to freely associate under rules of free association.  That includes, form communities.   And even covenants.   And as long as those covenants are enforced in a forward direction and not retroactively against those who have not agreed to them(ie, requiring their voluntary buyout to enforce), I don't see any need as a libertarian to criticize those terms of free association.    A homeowners association can be a free association.   So can a commune.

Don't like the covenants in SF?  Then build.buy/rent elsewhere.  Vote with your feet.    Love the view?   Then deal with the local covenants.

Now that's utopia.

The opportunities to vote with our feet are ever more limited these days, even in America.

But as a libertarian, I don't believe that the Universe owes me access to space unfettered by my fellow man.    I don't think the Universe owes me anything at all.   I'm just glad to be here.

There was a time when living in a place like America wasn't a choice at all.  And then, because of risk taken on by some, there was, and for some few centuries, it was a vast place full of get the Hell away from the rotted tribe-- aka, freedom.    And today, there are yet tiny, few pockets of such opportunity.   But by and large, just like vines growing out of the Jungle, the Tribe has clawed its way out and is slowly attempting to reclaim every last bit of that which it claims is its own, that is, the life of each and every one of us, via forced association with The Tribe, dragging us all down to the unavoidable holy average mass of it.   One of the laws of the Universe: the Universe's cold laws act in a manner which consumes all gradient.    All of it.    Try to find an exception.   The bottom line in this Universe-- the one we find ourselves in --  appears to be a dim 3 deg K future of absolute sameness -- the ultimate equality -- in some far off terminus until the next great spark in the dark.

But in all of that process, the Universe does not owe any of us the opportunity for freedom, or existence in a world without force, without rape, without violence against our desire for freedom.   Freedom is, ultimately, freedom from each other, except under rules of free association.   And the Universe does not -owe- us that.   The Universe owes us nothing.  It just is.  But while it is, it offers opportunity a plenty.

Once, that urge for freedom required a seeming impossibility; to cross a vast ocean to a New World.   An uncaring Universe, none the less, even though it owed none of us anywhere 'freedom', provided the means.   On the other side of a vast ocean of inhospitable turmoil and risk were found pockets of opportunity for freedom, far from the lords and estates and covenants and mobs.   The rules are clear; at the far side of risk and failure lies reward.

Nothing has changed.   The gulf is different.   The gradient is steeper.  The technological challenges are greater.    The Universe is just as uncaring.   But that same Universe offers an even greater opportunity for freedom, across wider gulfs.

There is four times the surface area on the Moon as the USA, and this time, there is no indigenous primitives also not guaranteed their freedom from The Tribe and its covenants to be in conflict with.   And across wider gulfs, more opportunity still, with greater challenges.

Our local species of naked sweaty apes on this planet may not be the life forms that finally finds that endless freedom coldly offered up by this transient playground, this Universe.  But some species will or already has, and its reward for escaping from the chains of itself will be nothing less than the Universe itself, for as long as this brief spark in the dark lasts.

Libertarians alive today, in my mind, are like our ancestors living long before the discovery of the New World,  Are we living in a time of history at the beginning of a new stagnation -- a new species Dark Age?  Will the next opportunity for freedom for our descendants -- not even our children -- be the far side at the end of this latest Dark Age, a new Enlightenment and new Age of Exploration, on the other side of which will be the next New Worlds with their renewed opportunities for freedom?

Or are we just the latest species of life in this Universe to fail to solve the riddle of the chains that bind us to ourselves, to achieve freedom in the Universe?   The first and only?   The last?

regards,

Fred