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A comment on Rent Control Needs Retirement, Not a Comeback. Parent comment

Re:Rent Control Needs Retirement, Not a Comeback by dkarl on Friday February 09, 2018 @11:27AM (#16341486)
I don't agree with the article, but I think your reasoning is dangerous. If a means is introduced to serve a noble purpose, but it does not serve that purpose, then the nobility of the purpose is not a defense of the means. Right now there's an article on the front page about the consequences of applying that reasoning to dubious forensic sciences that were introduced with the noble intention of ensuring justice but in fact undermine it.

If a means doesn't serve an end, then continuing to pursue it despite the perverse consequences doesn't prove your commitment to the to the desired result.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Rent Control Needs Retirement, Not a Comeback by closeparen on Friday February 09, 2018 @12:03PM (#16341846)
This statement right here is the entire philosophical disagreement between (liberal) YIMBYs and affordable housing activists: given that price controls (esp. affordability requirements for new construction) are well intentioned but don’t produce housing at a large enough scale to help, do we double down on them or back off?

One side is hammering on the noble purpose, saying that if price controls don’t work, we must take housing entirely out of the hands of the market. The other is hammering on the practicality and implementation detail of particular regulatory regimes, and we talk past each other for years.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Rent Control Needs Retirement, Not a Comeback by dkarl on Friday February 09, 2018 @01:06PM (#16342420)
I think you've left out the side that is incessantly, one-sidedly hammering on the "fact" that government restrictions never serve any constructive purpose, and the solution is always to remove or relax them, but with that addition, I would agree with you.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Rent Control Needs Retirement, Not a Comeback by closeparen on Friday February 09, 2018 @01:35PM (#16342695)
Explicit limits on density and construction are unambiguously responsible for too-low levels of density and housing construction. That’s not “government can’t do anything right” - that’s “government works.” When you design public policy around single family homes and car-dependence, that’s what you get.
[ Parent | on HN ]