You know, until this conversation, I used to actually respect your conservative opinion. But now, you are no better than the other crazies that have fucked up the Republican Party with their puritanical views on economics. These crazies are of two school. They are either in academia and have never worked in business or been given any leadership position where their policies and actions would have real effects on real people or society. The others are idiots ignorant of economics who follow the former without really (again) understanding the economic effects of theory. These morons are usually students of the Austrian/Chicago school of economics. When I was at Princeton I used to think like this. Now that I actually have some type of influence, and I've seen the result of theoretical approaches, I no longer hold these views.
Injecting a red herring and attempting to politicize one of the most unanimously agreed upon topics in economics (the negative effects of rent control) is not proving anything other than your attempts to cover the failings of your argument. The views on rent control crosses political boundaries in economics because it is one of the most well known and well studied cases of the effects of supply and demand in market hit with a often view as inflexiable price ceiling.
Since you think you know what you don't know, I will give you an example that is as plain as day. You can do the dishes (i.e. look up the references afterwards). When Japan's economy started to slow down and go into reverse, policymakers in Washington D.C., London, Brussels, and all the important economic schools were of one mind. They said "Let the weak firms die" or "Kill the weak banks". They repeatedly scolded the Japanese for two decades to kill off important parts of their economies that were dragging the rest down. They implored Japanese prime ministers and heads of central banks to follow economic theory and let the dying die so that the living can flourish. Japan ignored all this advice and poured money into their economies. Yes, Japan pioneered quantitative easing. People like Larry Summers were at the forefront of this nonsense. Well, when the US economy went into a tailspin in 2008, these same idiots did the same thing the Japanese were doing. Even Larry Summers himself said that he was mistaken in his beliefs. Seeing what they were going through, those in the West now understood the perils of following economic theory to the letter and letting critical institutions such as banks go under. Why? Because sentiment and confidence are extremely important in the modern economy. Also, these acts have a domino effect. Kill one bank and those that do business with that bank will also go under. Other banks will see what happened seize up. This is what economic purists did not understand: that there are unintended consequences that exist outside the realm of cold numbers.
Of course, many economists have come around to this view. But the idiot followers are either too slow or dumb to understand. In America they are considered Tea Partiers. They think theory trumps everything. True idiots that will never learn.
Again another red herring.
Here is something you will never understand about economics since you are not in that field: It is not an exact science. Yes, economics can use the latest algorithms from engineering or even pure math, but it is also reliant on the social sciences too. Things like behavioral economics are as important to the dismal science as mathematics. That is why, unlike physics or engineering, you have "right-wing" economists and "left-wing" economists. The dismal science is far too complicated to be left in the hands of theoreticians.
This isn't a debate about left and right political spectrums. It is a debate about a universally agreed upon view on the effects of rent control which is one of the most studied and well studied and known issues in economics. Neither is the universal conclusion on the topic a theory as there are decades worth of case studies on the issue from pro-free market economists such as Monetarist Milton Friedman, Austrian F.H. Hakey, Keynesian Paul Krugman, even Swedish socialist economists such as Gannar Mygrail, etc.
Again it is so well studied and understood that there is no actual debate on the issue itself from anyone with a fundamental and solid understanding of economics no matter what school of economics they adhere to and regardless of their own political leanings.
Furthermore while economics may be considered a soft science (Certainly there are some models which are very accurate but even these mathematical models have their limits in regards to how many extraneous variables to include and account for in their workings) there are well known and established fundamental axioms which are very much grounded in solid and observable economic outcomes that all economist agree upon (supply and demand, the effects of ridged price ceilings, and price floors, etc) as factual and universally agreed upon truths.
Lastly I'l leave you some quotes from some very renown economists and one communist forging minister all of whom have political views which run the gamut but who all agree upon the effects of rent control and its destructive nature.
In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city except for bombing - Asser Lindbeck- noted Swedish socialist economist.
The Americans couldnt destroy Hanoi, but we have destroyed our city by very low rents. We realized it was stupid and that we must change policy. - Vietnam Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach 1989
Rent control has in certain Western countries constituted , maybe, the worst example of poor planning by governments lacking courage and vision - Gunnar Myrdal - architect of the Swedish welfare state
If this account seems to boil down to a catalogue of inequities to be laid at the door of rent control, that is no mere coincidence, but inevitable. Friedrich von Hayek noted free market economist
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