Here's a question that should bother anyone who believes in functioning markets: why do Bay Area food trucks charge restaurant prices?

The whole point of a food truck is supposed to be a leaner operation. No lease on a 2,000-square-foot dining room. No dishwasher. No hostess. No property tax bill that makes your eyes water. In theory, those savings get passed to the customer in exchange for eating your tacos while standing in a parking lot dodging seagulls.

That's how it works in most American cities. But not here. In the Bay Area, you're staring down $18-$19 plates from a truck window — prices that match or sometimes exceed what you'd pay at a sit-down restaurant with actual silverware and a bathroom you can use without buying something next door.

As one local put it: "Why pay $18 for a small plate of food you have to eat in a windy parking lot when you can pay $21 for a medium plate of equivalent food in a climate-controlled dining room or on a heated patio?" It's a fair question, and the declining popularity of food truck events like Off the Grid suggests plenty of people have answered it by staying home.

Another Bay Area resident returned from a trip to Manhattan — Manhattan — and was stunned to find food cheaper there. Bagel and cream cheese for $4.50. A slice for $4.25. Sandwiches for $12-$14 instead of the $15-$20 we've normalized out here. When New York City feels like a bargain, something has gone seriously sideways.

So what's driving this? A few things. Permitting and commissary kitchen requirements in California add real costs. Insurance isn't cheap. Neither is fuel or labor in a region where minimum wage starts north of $16. But let's be honest — the biggest factor is simply that Bay Area consumers have been willing to pay. When nobody walks away from the window, there's no market pressure to lower prices.

This is what happens when high costs of doing business meet a population conditioned to shrug at inflated prices. The food truck was supposed to be the scrappy disruptor of the restaurant world. In the Bay Area, it just became another way to charge you twenty bucks for rice and protein — minus the table.

Vote with your wallet, people. It's the only language the market speaks.