Fair, I didn't intent to zero in on the word "best" there. I think its still important to know why its the best of the options we have today though. There's a

Fair, I didn't intent to zero in on the word "best" there. I think its still important to know why its the best of the options we have today though. There's a huge blind spot in only applying that Adam Smith quote to private landlords - the government. Functionally they own all land, between property taxes which act much like rent, and more extreme measures like eminent domain, the government has staked a claim to all land and offers us the privilege to live on it as long as we play by their rules. We have to pay rent in the form of property taxes. We have to pay taxes on any value crested from the land, and often have to get licensed and/or inspected when doing so. Adam Smith's writings are much better used as an argument against many of today's government structures rather than against private land owners renting it out to other private citizens. And it makes sense, Smith was writing in opposition to the monarchy of his time. I'm not saying that there aren't plenty of terrible private landlords or that our housing market seems reasonable. But if we stop complaining about private land ownership at the point of the individual we haven't gone far enough. The government shouldn't be claiming ownership over everything and everyone within its borders. Fix that, then we can really worry about what any one land owner does with the smaller pieces of land they own.