5 ms·

There is plenty of scientific denialism on the right. Along with anti nuclear, the belief that rent control is a remotely good idea is an example of scientific

by JPKab 6y ago

There is plenty of scientific denialism on the right. Along with anti nuclear, the belief that rent control is a remotely good idea is an example of scientific denialism on the left. There are some decent arguments to be made against nuclear but rent control has always always caused more harm than good everywhere it's been tried.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> Along with anti nuclear, the belief that rent control is a remotely good idea is an example of scientific denialism on the left. No, because “good idea” isn't an objective claim within the domain of science , it's a subjective value claim outside of the domain of science. Now, it's possible that in some cases this belief could be supported by belief in an objective claim that is itself an example of science denialism, but it could just be that people who believe that rent control is an good idea have different values than you do.
- handoflixue 6y ago
  One can generally look at the stated values of the people advocating for a policy, and then run objective studies on whether that policy produces outcomes in line with those stated values. A lot of people, confronted with proof that their favorite policy does not do what they want, will simply deny the science and continue to believe that this policy is concordant with their values. Some policies are also bad enough that one can safely say that no reasonable mainstream set of values could endorse it without denying the actual facts of the matter - for instance, re-introducing lead and asbestos is just plain Not A Good Idea for any set of values worth discussing, despite the fact that there are most assuredly a few sociopaths out there who'd be happy to make a buck gutting those regulations. I've no personal experience with "rent control" but I get the impression that the people saying it's a bad idea genuinely mean one of these two cases, not simply a difference of values. Whether the science actually agrees with them, however, is quite beyond my expertise :)
  - dllthomas 6y ago
    The values that people hold don't necessarily match those that people profess. I don't think that's what's at play here, but it can be good to keep in mind.
vitno 6y ago
calling this "scientific denialism" seems like a huge stretch to me. It's not a science, it's housing policy.
- koolba 6y ago
  It's a policy that is intended, or at least marketed, to lower the price of housing in the interests of the general public. The science denial aspect is refusing to look at every single instance of these policies leading to negative outcomes, some sooner than others.
  - heterodoxxed 6y ago
    | to lower the price of housing in the interests of the general public. Its purpose is to prevent displacement, especially of the poor and elderly for whom displacement is a major negative. For that purpose, it has done very well as a policy.
    - zamfi 6y ago
      > For that purpose, it has done very well as a policy. Well...for those who are not actually displaced, yes. But the ones that are displaced are often essentially banished by a dysfunctional housing market. Rent control is not targeted towards the poor and elderly, and there are many others who benefit in the short-term (but then, again, are unable to move because the market rate has skyrocketed, though of course not just because of rent control).
      - heterodoxxed 6y ago
        | for those who are not actually displaced, yes. Yes, exactly. | But the ones that are displaced are often essentially banished Without it they would have been displaced even earlier. Speculative bubbles exist outside of rent control, especially in the US where rent control is never all that strong or comprehensive.
        6y ago
nullserver 6y ago
Parents city decided to rent control all the mobile home parks. They changed there mind after thousands of people received eviction notices. Owners would rather let the land sit empty then deal with the nightmare it would create.
- DetroitThrow 6y ago
  Wow crazy outcome, wonder if a land tax system would have helped that.
toast0 6y ago
I think the key thing with rent control is to have reasonable limits. If you limit rent increases to something between 5% and 10% annually, it provides stability without causing a significant distortion except when prices are rapidly climbing for several years in a row. This is the same issue with Prop 13. The idea isn't bad; it's useful for people to have bounded future expenses. The problem is the bound is too low, and it distorts the market.
lutoma 6y ago
Proponents of nuclear power labelling everyone who does not unequivocally support it "science deniers" is such infuriating populism. Nuclear power obviously has immense benefits, but there are also undeniable risks associated with it. It's entirely possible to be in favor or against it while considering the exact same scientific facts depending on which of these you consider more important, no "scientific denialism" required. I also don't see how nuclear power is supposed to be related to the economic left/right spectrum.
- jboog 6y ago
  Coal kills thousands of people a year in the US (13,000 if you believe the extreme estimates) Less than 20 people have died in Nuclear related accidents in the history of this technologies use. And almost every single one of those were unrelated to the nuclear technology itself (electrocution, other workplace accidents that could happen in any power plant) If you want to lump in Chernobyl and Fukushima we are still only talking 3-4000 deaths in history. And there's zero reason to believe these accidents are likely to ever occur in the US. So yes, there are "undeniable risks", but they are vastly vastly overstated. Especially when the "undeniable risk" of climate change is many millions of deaths whilst climate change activists insist we can't use the only technology that can almost entirely eliminate cooking the planet via coal, oil and natural gas.
  - _-___________-_ 6y ago
    I am generally in support of nuclear technology but statements like "Less than 20 people have died in Nuclear related accidents in the history of this technologies use" don't help the cause. That's just flat-out false, and you indicate in the following paragraph that you know that. Leaving out the two most significant accidents in the history of the technology shouldn't be the default...
    - jboog 6y ago
      I was clearly talking about in the US. Literally the previous sentence I was talking about the danger in the US of fossil fuels, then I wrote about the danger of nuclear and then move on to worldwide. Nothing I wrote was false at all. It's almost like you're intentionally trying to misread my argument to paint me as disingenuous.
neaanopri 6y ago
100% Rent control in crises makes sense. Rent control was applied in WW2 in NYC for example. Just like rationing is a good response in a crisis, but not in "peacetime".
- asdff 6y ago
  It's a crisis in a lot of cities where rents have outpaced wages for decades now.
bosswipe 6y ago
Rent control is not scientific denialism. Economics is not a science because nobody ever does controlled experiments. There are also disagreements about what end goal you're trying to optimize for. Economics is just a bunch of biased political arguments using different priors for assumptions. This is evident when you about different "schools" of economic thought. There are no irreconcilable "schools" of thought in the hard sciences with whole universities dedicated to only one school or another.
- dcolkitt 6y ago
  > Economics is not a science because nobody ever does controlled experiments. So, is astronomy not a science?
- ulucs 6y ago
  >Economics is not a science because nobody ever does controlled experiments. Now that's provably wrong, and outs you for not knowing anything about the literature.
justnotworthit 6y ago
Any biology forum that was 50/50 anti-evolution; or a physics forum that often argued newton is good enough and the rest we can control; etc etc, would be some kind of fringe, excluded place. Deny supply and demand? Always popular. We're 100 years past the marginal revolution, yet, both the practictioners of the discipline and outsiders (marxist sociologists) think this can be controlled.

by JPKab 6y ago

dragonwriter 6y ago

> Along with anti nuclear, the belief that rent control is a remotely good idea is an example of scientific denialism on the left. No, because “good idea” isn't an objective claim within the domain of science , it's a subjective value claim outside of the domain of science. Now, it's possible that in some cases this belief could be supported by belief in an objective claim that is itself an example of science denialism, but it could just be that people who believe that rent control is an good idea have different values than you do.

handoflixue 6y ago
One can generally look at the stated values of the people advocating for a policy, and then run objective studies on whether that policy produces outcomes in line with those stated values. A lot of people, confronted with proof that their favorite policy does not do what they want, will simply deny the science and continue to believe that this policy is concordant with their values. Some policies are also bad enough that one can safely say that no reasonable mainstream set of values could endorse it without denying the actual facts of the matter - for instance, re-introducing lead and asbestos is just plain Not A Good Idea for any set of values worth discussing, despite the fact that there are most assuredly a few sociopaths out there who'd be happy to make a buck gutting those regulations. I've no personal experience with "rent control" but I get the impression that the people saying it's a bad idea genuinely mean one of these two cases, not simply a difference of values. Whether the science actually agrees with them, however, is quite beyond my expertise :)
- dllthomas 6y ago
  The values that people hold don't necessarily match those that people profess. I don't think that's what's at play here, but it can be good to keep in mind.

vitno 6y ago

calling this "scientific denialism" seems like a huge stretch to me. It's not a science, it's housing policy.

koolba 6y ago
It's a policy that is intended, or at least marketed, to lower the price of housing in the interests of the general public. The science denial aspect is refusing to look at every single instance of these policies leading to negative outcomes, some sooner than others.
- heterodoxxed 6y ago
  | to lower the price of housing in the interests of the general public. Its purpose is to prevent displacement, especially of the poor and elderly for whom displacement is a major negative. For that purpose, it has done very well as a policy.
  - zamfi 6y ago
    > For that purpose, it has done very well as a policy. Well...for those who are not actually displaced, yes. But the ones that are displaced are often essentially banished by a dysfunctional housing market. Rent control is not targeted towards the poor and elderly, and there are many others who benefit in the short-term (but then, again, are unable to move because the market rate has skyrocketed, though of course not just because of rent control).
    - heterodoxxed 6y ago
      | for those who are not actually displaced, yes. Yes, exactly. | But the ones that are displaced are often essentially banished Without it they would have been displaced even earlier. Speculative bubbles exist outside of rent control, especially in the US where rent control is never all that strong or comprehensive.
      - 6y ago

nullserver 6y ago

Parents city decided to rent control all the mobile home parks. They changed there mind after thousands of people received eviction notices. Owners would rather let the land sit empty then deal with the nightmare it would create.

DetroitThrow 6y ago
Wow crazy outcome, wonder if a land tax system would have helped that.

toast0 6y ago

I think the key thing with rent control is to have reasonable limits. If you limit rent increases to something between 5% and 10% annually, it provides stability without causing a significant distortion except when prices are rapidly climbing for several years in a row. This is the same issue with Prop 13. The idea isn't bad; it's useful for people to have bounded future expenses. The problem is the bound is too low, and it distorts the market.

lutoma 6y ago

Proponents of nuclear power labelling everyone who does not unequivocally support it "science deniers" is such infuriating populism. Nuclear power obviously has immense benefits, but there are also undeniable risks associated with it. It's entirely possible to be in favor or against it while considering the exact same scientific facts depending on which of these you consider more important, no "scientific denialism" required. I also don't see how nuclear power is supposed to be related to the economic left/right spectrum.

jboog 6y ago
Coal kills thousands of people a year in the US (13,000 if you believe the extreme estimates) Less than 20 people have died in Nuclear related accidents in the history of this technologies use. And almost every single one of those were unrelated to the nuclear technology itself (electrocution, other workplace accidents that could happen in any power plant) If you want to lump in Chernobyl and Fukushima we are still only talking 3-4000 deaths in history. And there's zero reason to believe these accidents are likely to ever occur in the US. So yes, there are "undeniable risks", but they are vastly vastly overstated. Especially when the "undeniable risk" of climate change is many millions of deaths whilst climate change activists insist we can't use the only technology that can almost entirely eliminate cooking the planet via coal, oil and natural gas.
- _-___________-_ 6y ago
  I am generally in support of nuclear technology but statements like "Less than 20 people have died in Nuclear related accidents in the history of this technologies use" don't help the cause. That's just flat-out false, and you indicate in the following paragraph that you know that. Leaving out the two most significant accidents in the history of the technology shouldn't be the default...
  - jboog 6y ago
    I was clearly talking about in the US. Literally the previous sentence I was talking about the danger in the US of fossil fuels, then I wrote about the danger of nuclear and then move on to worldwide. Nothing I wrote was false at all. It's almost like you're intentionally trying to misread my argument to paint me as disingenuous.

neaanopri 6y ago

100% Rent control in crises makes sense. Rent control was applied in WW2 in NYC for example. Just like rationing is a good response in a crisis, but not in "peacetime".

asdff 6y ago
It's a crisis in a lot of cities where rents have outpaced wages for decades now.

bosswipe 6y ago

Rent control is not scientific denialism. Economics is not a science because nobody ever does controlled experiments. There are also disagreements about what end goal you're trying to optimize for. Economics is just a bunch of biased political arguments using different priors for assumptions. This is evident when you about different "schools" of economic thought. There are no irreconcilable "schools" of thought in the hard sciences with whole universities dedicated to only one school or another.

dcolkitt 6y ago
> Economics is not a science because nobody ever does controlled experiments. So, is astronomy not a science?
ulucs 6y ago
>Economics is not a science because nobody ever does controlled experiments. Now that's provably wrong, and outs you for not knowing anything about the literature.

justnotworthit 6y ago

Any biology forum that was 50/50 anti-evolution; or a physics forum that often argued newton is good enough and the rest we can control; etc etc, would be some kind of fringe, excluded place. Deny supply and demand? Always popular. We're 100 years past the marginal revolution, yet, both the practictioners of the discipline and outsiders (marxist sociologists) think this can be controlled.