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I don't like rent controls because I view it from an economist's perspective. They would add distortion to the market, and not solve the underlying cause. I DO want to fix the issues rent controls seek to solve/passivate, but there isn't much consensus on the causes, their solutions and the implementation of those solutions. Ask five different people involved with the issue and you likely get 5 different causes, solutions and implementations. I've noticed this pattern in other issues, like the minimum wage. Poli's say "Distort the market, fix the symptom of this problem." Fair enough, it's popular. Eco's respond "No, that may have unexpected consequences, maybe worse than the original symptom. Find the underlying cause and fix that." The problem you then run into is that the underlying causes are very broad and already hotly debated: education, wealth disparity, poverty etc. I agree with the economists, but I'm starting to wonder how practical their argument is. It usually leads to a noisy, less clear solution that makes quite a few assumptions. Perhaps it's something that is not politically feasible in the foreseeable future. In the end one doesn't end up with a clear alternative to the Poli's "Fix the symptom" and assuming THAT even has enough support, it wins by default. Maybe it is more productive to figure out how to minimize the externalities of policies that by design create distortion, although that itself can also be problematic (your fixes for side effects have side effects).
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Oct 16, 2014 15:45
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| # ¿ May 8, 2024 18:14 |
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