Economic Facts and Fallacies: Second Edition

In short, reducing the set of mutually acceptable terms tends to reduce the set of mutually acceptable results, with both tenants and landlords ending up worse off on the whole, though in different ways.

That decades had to pass before a mistake with obvious negative consequences began to be corrected is one sign of the problems of decisions by third parties who pay no price for being wrong.

Photographs of crowded slums in Third World countries may insinuate the conclusion that “overpopulation” is the cause of poverty, when in fact poverty is the reason for the crowding among people unable to afford the transportation costs of commuting or much urban living space, but who are yet unwilling to forego the benefits of urban living.

Even today, it is often cheaper to ship goods thousands of miles by water than to ship them hundreds of miles by land.