[hackerlight]

This libertarian worldview is only coherent for goods like food or computers, where the quality and safety of supply is regulated but the quantity of supply isn't.

Property is a whole other ball game. In every market economy you see tremendous capture of government by landlords. They rig the game by constraining supply. The free choice worldview breaks down given that shelter is a necessity, and the only place I can get it from is this cartel that has 2x-ed the price of the good via their capture of government. That delta in price is theft facilitated by government force, masquerading as a free transaction between consenting parties.

Libertarians are supposed to be against regulatory capture and crony capitalism, and the property market is like a textbook example of this kind of depraved capture of government by special interests.

[dane-pgp]

Well said, but it's interesting that you contrast "goods like food" with "shelter", suggesting that only the latter "is a necessity".

That doesn't invalidate your point, but I think it requires a more subtle argument than if you had given a different example like maybe transport.

[hackerlight]

You're right that it needs to be fleshed out more subtly.

I think the main point is that government constraints on supply is theft, whenever those constraints are applied onto an entire market with no good substitute. Not theft as understood in a current legal sense, but functionally equivalent.

The interest group (landlords, steelmakers) are stealing from customers (renters, builders) by lobbying government for supply constraints (zoning laws, steel tarrifs). The mechanism of theft is artificially higher prices paid by the consumer, with no way out given an absence of substitutes.

Whether the good is a necessity or not is somewhat moot to the question of whether theft is occurring. Even if I buy unnecessary gym equipment, I am still being robbed if the price is 2x higher due to government corruption. It is more pernicious when the good is a necessity, like shelter, though, because the theft becomes mandatory.