[hank777]

Based on the article posted here on rent control the other day,it does indeed seem as though greenspun uses the same unsubstantiated assertion strategy for building arguments as does the cato institute. I guess I have to give him credit for being no worse than folks that get paid to write this crap.

[tptacek]

One of the few problems the Cato people don't have is being strong, reasoned, effective debate opponents.

[hank777]

lol.I am not going to opine about their entire body of work. But if you think they never have the problem of which I speak then clearly you didnt read the rent control article which explains new york's and other big cities high rents on rent control. Whether you agree with rent control or not, this is an insane unsubstantiated assertion.

[tptacek]

I read it, I disagreed with it, but it didn't seem insanely unsubstantiated, just wrong. For it to be insanely unsubstantiated, it would at the least need to be true that rent control was a stunning success, which it is not.

[hank777]

I disagree. He bases his argument on the idea that rent control causes high rents as demonstrated in places like NY. This is patently false in my opinion, but my opinion is not what counts. The reason I say it is unsubstantiated and therefore insane, is that he provided no argument for the idea that there is a causation between high rents and rent control. The author falls into the all too common trap of mapping a correlation to a causation. That may be a good strategy to throw red meat to right wingers, but it is not a well constructed argument.

[tptacek]

Are we talking about the same article? In the one I remember, he backed his argument up with a survey of deviation from median rent in markets with and without rent control.

[timr]

Yes, he observed a correlation. In this case, there's a very reasonable argument to be made against a causal relationship: cheap cities don't institute rent control.