Another interesting post by Brad de Long: today he reprints part of a 1986 New Republic article about libertarian thinker Robert Nozick’s resort to rent control laws. It’s an amusing anecdote (though I don’t think it should be used as ad hominem attack on the libertarian position on rent control), but what struck me was a tossed-aside comment in the original article:
Cambridge, after all, has one of the nation’s most draconic rent control ordinances –as do many college communities where students and junior professors have imposed economic regulations on the “townies” who rent them apartments during the school year.
I wasn’t around in 1986, so I don’t know how accurate the class conflict assessment is here, but it’s fair to say that the 1990s housing boom - which, though not created by the repeal of rent control, was certainly exacerbated by it - has put the death nail in the coffin of old townie Cambridge. The contrarian liberalism with which the New Republic prides itself (and which this website often emulates) is a bit too facile here.
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