Price controls don't work, except for short term periods.... when you have a temporary disruption of few weeks (for an earthquake, weather, etc).
In long term famine, food that is price controlled disappears from shelves and almost never makes, and is resold in black markets at 3x the price (or whatever the market is).
Increasing food prices cause more food to be grown and food to be shipped over longer distances, lessening the impact of a famine. It also causes people to spend less on luxury foods that cost more per calorie.
> We have more empty houses than homeless people. Efficient market my ass.
Have you bought an unused home and given it to someone homeless lately? There are many that are quite inexpensive out there.
On the whole, I agree that our current housing and property market is not as efficient as it could be. One reason for this are our building codes; they raise the cost of housing making truly inexpensive homes illegal. There is definitely a lot of benefits to living in a properly–built house, but that is always going to be more expensive than a shack you built yourself on land you claimed from the wilderness at the edge of a growing population. When governments eliminate that possibility, they cause people to go homeless. I suspect that you will want to “fix” this by having the government step in and buy a house for everyone who wants one.
The bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.
Yes, this doesn't work with land.
I don't know why anyone would believe that. It doesn't even work in places with no zoning restrictions at all. Building up gets you more housing, sure, but it also costs way more cash per square foot, it inherently drives the price of all nearby housing higher.
> higher housing prices cause people to reduce the square-footage they occupy as well.
This is just "famine" being spun as a benefit. "Bread prices at $10,000 per loaf and rising is good, actually. It will help those silly obese Americans lose weight!"
Your point is apriorism and not supported by evidence.
This is a good thing because it ensures that food is used by the most productive and profitable citizens, right?
We have more empty houses than homeless people. Efficient market my ass.
Currently the most profitable use of land in London is building luxury apartments that are bough by Saudi and Russian billionaires who never live there or even let them out. They wait for their price to go up even more.
During covid 700,000 people left London, but real estate prices grew.