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> As Assar Lindbeck put it, "next to bombing, rent control seems in many cases to be the most efficient technique so far known for destroying cities." Doesn't

• chimeracoder 10y ago
  > Doesn't seem to have had much success in destroying Swiss cities. Maybe the neutrality helps prevent bombing-like effects? When talking about policies like price floors and ceilings (ie, rent control), scale is critical. The city of New York has a population roughly equal to the entire country of Switzerland. The largest Swiss city (Zurich) is smaller than the smallest borough of New York City (Staten Island), and about one-fifth the size of the Bronx (the borough mentioned in fennecfoxen's comment). So comparing the effect of rent regulation in New York City to the effect of rent regulation in various cities in Switzerland isn't really meaningful, because the economies of cities in a country whose total population is roughly 8 million can't be compared with the economy of a city whose metropolitan region is two and a half times that size (20 million).