If this is actually true, Bloomberg has indeed gone off the deep end. According to Matt Drudge, New York mayor Mike Bloomberg was watching the live HBO broadcast of a Rolling Stones concert at Madison Square Garden, when he saw — horrors! — members of the band smoking on stage. First Altamont, now this! What, indeed, is rock and roll coming to?

The Mayor sent police to the Garden to issue summonses to Keith Richards and Ron Wood; but apparently the cops elected to watch the show before issuing their citations — a decision that probably avoided a riot, actually — and since the band left in a hurry after the show, no summonses were actually issued.

Bloomberg seems to believe that New York is immune to market forces, forces he should be familiar with from his previous career. Not satisfied with what he’s done to boost the bar and restaurant business in Hoboken, he’s now determined to see to it that the Rolling Stones don’t play in the city any more.

New York has a lot going for it, but the very reason that people are willing to pay the high cost, both financial and personal, of living in the city is that it allows for more possibilities than most other places. The city is a product, like any other: it offers a certain value at a certain price. Raising the price — the commercial property tax was recently hiked 18% — while lowering the value offered shows either an incredible faith in the attractive power of New York City, or, as I think more likely, an incredible amount or hubris and contempt for the realities of commerce. People and companies have fled the city before, most famously in the 1970s. I do not understand what makes Bloomberg think that it will not happen again if the place is made sufficiently inhospitable.