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rguillebert

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It depends on what you mean by free market, it's often used interchangeably with with laissez-faire capitalism but an important concept in a free market is that the barrier to entry for new competitors should be as low as realistically possible, so regulation that prevents vendor lock-in can be pro free market.

The Baumol effect 3 years ago

You're only saying this because you don't like the outcome of economic research. So called "soft" sciences are the best way to get close to the truth in those fields even if it's harder to get undeniable answers.

Namedtuples also behave like tuples, which is great when you want to incrementally turn tuples into classes but if you want an easy way of creating classes, it's probably not a good idea to have them behave like tuples. Plus dataclasses have more features.

Absolutely not, they protect current renters, not people with the lowest wages, people with the shittiest jobs have been priced out already. Rent control protects the millionaires renting in Mayfair as well.

I don't support policies that actively entrench the status quo. I'm for taxation that's as high as possible without causing too much negative impact on investments. We're having a conversation about rent control here though, that's why I only talk about rent control, in a conversation about taxation, I'll talk about taxation.

There's a limited supply of housing in those high demand locations, not everyone who wants to live in London can live in London because there just isn't enough units, with that limited supply, housing should go to the people who need it the most, like the people who have jobs in those locations.

Kicking grandma out of her rented apartment

If she's retired, she can move somewhere cheaper so someone who actually needs to live there for their job can move in.

The rest of what you've written is completely unsubstantiated.

There's also pretty big restrictions on how high you can build in most places, I looked up the zoning document for Tower Hamlets and the parts of the borough allowing tall buildings is extremely tiny.

So maybe rent control's effect on supply is vastly overblown.

Just because rent control negatively affects supply doesn't mean bad supply is only caused by rent control.

I live in London too and I'm baffled by the lack of tall buildings in pretty central parts of the city. The real solution is more supply.

Rent control is a band aid while that happens to keep long term (especially elderly/vulnerable) renters housed.

At the expense of people who don't currently live in London but could, such as immigrants or people from poorer parts of the country finding a good paying job here.