[Thuggery]

Undoubtedly? I've never seen any real proof of it. It's just kind of a mantra. Housing pricing continues to be a problem in every first world country's urban center. Do they all have the exact same "zoning?" And why now? Did this evil zoning just get enacted now for presumably pointless evil reasons?

"Zoning" to me seems to be a modern version of "kulaks" for neoliberal types that just can't grok that there is something fundamentally rotten in the entire system. And have no real practical solutions to fix it.

[fighterpilot]

If you haven't seen any proof then it's because you haven't looked. Just google any of the research on this topic.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-08/zoning-regulations-ad...

It's not surprising that every major urban centre has inflated property prices. Restrictive zoning laws such as the ones studied above are more common than not. San Fran, London, Australia, Berlin, what have you. NIMBYism is the default. Homeowners aren't going to willingly vote away their profits.

Not only is there solid empirical evidence, but it makes evident sense. There is no cap on supply due to the ability to build vertically. Rapidly inflating prices significantly above cost over a multi decade time frame makes zero sense in a market economy without an artificial cap on supply. Gold would be cheap (at cost) if more supply could be invented/constructed, irrespective of how many people wanted to invest.