Yes, I thoroughly believe that behaviors can be coordinated without explicit agreements. That is essentially what the entire field of economics is about: decomp

Yes, I thoroughly believe that behaviors can be coordinated without explicit agreements. That is essentially what the entire field of economics is about: decomposing how people respond to different incentives to act in an "agglomerated" fashion. The thing I hate about articles like this one, and claims like "look at the shady stuff McKinsey has done" is that they never really even attempt to provide evidence about how the incentives around propping up com. real estate values would be enough to sway decision makers. They just try to tie some loose threads together, and use scary terms like "elites" as if all of the elites acted with one mind. There have been plenty of comments elsewhere in this thread making the argument that the connection between com. real estate values and people making the actual RTO decisions is far too tenuous to have that be a primary motivator. Also, having been a director and had lots of interactions with C-suite folks, I find it laughable to think that of all the concerns high-level execs have that "helping the stock portfolios of other rich people" is their primary driver.