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It's not clear what you mean by "doesn't work". > https://ichthyoid.writeas.com/price-controls-basic-economics-by-thomas-sowell-ch https://ichthyoid.writeas.co

It's not clear what you mean by "doesn't work". > https://ichthyoid.writeas.com/price-controls-basic-economics-by-thomas-sowell-ch https://ichthyoid.writeas.com/price-controls-basic-economics... The goals and outcomes that this chapter describes far exceeds the goals I have described (maybe oversimplified). To clarify, the outcome desired is prolonging an established balance between fixed income (subsidy) and rent (market force) by artificial control for the specific case of the elderly indigent, which is necessarily capped by senescence. Ironically, throughout the chapter, politics are mentioned in a myriad of contexts and even highlighted. > since luxury housing is often exempt from rent control. Because why? Politics.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago
"Doesn't work" meaning "fails to achieve the stated objective". Maybe you're asking why or how it doesn't work? It doesn't work because money is in some sense not what's really going on. Sowell's main point in the whole book is that in a free market economy, money is how we allocate scarce resources that have alternate uses. But the real action is the allocation of resources, not the money. So if you institute rent control, you have not created any more housing. You have not increased the incentive for creating more housing. All you've done is allocate the existing housing a different way. (You've also created a disincentive to pay for proper maintenance on rent-controlled apartments.) You've moved the problem, helping those who are in the right position when rent control is enacted, at the expense of others. (Of course, those who are in the right position become major advocates of rent control, but that doesn't make it a good policy. It just makes it politically popular with the beneficiaries.) [Edit: I don't have time to plow through the link you provided in your edit/update. But I think that for the specific issue you're trying to address, a pure subsidy might work better than rent control.]
- Supermancho 4y ago
  > I don't have time to plow through the link you provided in your edit/update. But I think that for the specific issue you're trying to address, a pure subsidy might work better than rent control. I agree with this. It could work better if only legislation could keep up with inflation, which it doesn't. Hence fixed income is best subsidized by fixed rents.
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    So rent control is better because the legislature won't keep paying attention? That's at least plausibly correct. If you don't trust the legislature, though, you might not trust them to write the rent control legislation in a way where the cure isn't worse than the disease. But you could argue that they only have to get that right once, whereas the subsidy they have to keep getting right. (Though they could plausibly write an inflation escalator clause into the subsidy legislation...) I still don't think that I agree with you. But you've made a case that made me think, which is about the highest praise I can give to an HN comment.
    - Supermancho 4y ago
      > If you don't trust the legislature, though, you might not trust them to write the rent control legislation in a way where the cure isn't worse than the disease That was my initial assertion. > It's always the implementation that falls apart (because politicians). > But you've made a case that made me think I appreciate the earnest engagement.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago

"Doesn't work" meaning "fails to achieve the stated objective". Maybe you're asking why or how it doesn't work? It doesn't work because money is in some sense not what's really going on. Sowell's main point in the whole book is that in a free market economy, money is how we allocate scarce resources that have alternate uses. But the real action is the allocation of resources, not the money. So if you institute rent control, you have not created any more housing. You have not increased the incentive for creating more housing. All you've done is allocate the existing housing a different way. (You've also created a disincentive to pay for proper maintenance on rent-controlled apartments.) You've moved the problem, helping those who are in the right position when rent control is enacted, at the expense of others. (Of course, those who are in the right position become major advocates of rent control, but that doesn't make it a good policy. It just makes it politically popular with the beneficiaries.) [Edit: I don't have time to plow through the link you provided in your edit/update. But I think that for the specific issue you're trying to address, a pure subsidy might work better than rent control.]

Supermancho 4y ago
> I don't have time to plow through the link you provided in your edit/update. But I think that for the specific issue you're trying to address, a pure subsidy might work better than rent control. I agree with this. It could work better if only legislation could keep up with inflation, which it doesn't. Hence fixed income is best subsidized by fixed rents.
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  So rent control is better because the legislature won't keep paying attention? That's at least plausibly correct. If you don't trust the legislature, though, you might not trust them to write the rent control legislation in a way where the cure isn't worse than the disease. But you could argue that they only have to get that right once, whereas the subsidy they have to keep getting right. (Though they could plausibly write an inflation escalator clause into the subsidy legislation...) I still don't think that I agree with you. But you've made a case that made me think, which is about the highest praise I can give to an HN comment.
  - Supermancho 4y ago
    > If you don't trust the legislature, though, you might not trust them to write the rent control legislation in a way where the cure isn't worse than the disease That was my initial assertion. > It's always the implementation that falls apart (because politicians). > But you've made a case that made me think I appreciate the earnest engagement.