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Ashish's Niti

Niti in Sanskrit means policy/strategy/vision. This blog hosts my political views, along with news and commentary. This blog has moved here.

Tuesday, August 17, 2004

Alex begins Economic Foundations of Law at GMU

Alex begins the courson with an example depicting how a law requiring basic amenities in dwellings harms both the landlord and the tenant. It is a great read and it has couple of follow-up quiz. See if you can take a crack at it.

Update: One of my readers complained that Alex has not taken into account externalities involved. Particularly, he thinks property values might fall if mimimum standards are not enforced. I responded to the comment from the point of individual rights and freedom. However, important point was made by Alex today that the externality argument is different than the naive argument that requiring mimimum standard is good for the tenant. The first one has to be tackled differently (and may be right to some extent) but the second one is demonstratedly false.

It will be interesting to know if those who support minimum standard for dwelling also support rent control. To me, simple economic common sense indicates that you cannot have both minimum standard for dwelling and rent control at the same time!

If you have minimum standard for dwelling in one place and rent control in other, then it surely means segregation of rich people and poor people. Then socialists go on complaining that gap between rich and poor is growing and also that there are "two Americas" so on. Well, who facilitated all these?

If somebody argues against rent control he/she is accused of being anti-poor. If somebody argues against minimum standard of dwelling he/she does not understands the important of community. Doesn't individual property right count for something?

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