But what about government intervention in interpretation of rent contracts? Can a landlord say there are no dogs allowed in the building? If so, what about seeing eye dogs? Can landlords choose renters based on the colour of their skin or their religion? Am I allowed to pay rent with sex or is that prostitution? Can I secure my rent against a promise of selling myself into slavery if I don’t? Does the government break up monopolies? If so what counts as a monopoly and what doesn’t? Who enforces that and what measures are in place to prevent corruption on their part? What about building codes, those directly affect rental houses? Can I build a fire trap and rent it out cheap to people who can’t afford better, if I do and it does go up in flames, can they sue me for my negligence? What about the hundreds of years of common law surrounding the interpretation of contracts in general, without which you’d have no idea what a rental agreement even means?
And you say cartels count as supply and demand. I’m not sure i understand the line. Would a 15th century King of England be government or just an example of supply and demand? He sends goons to demand taxes from the peasants and they risk violence or imprisonment if they can’t pay, why is that not like a cartel? Why is a democratic government not like a cartel? Can’t private actors interfere with markets just like governments can if they have sufficient power either through violence, wealth or even just charisma? What if the pope makes a decree about fair rent and landlords in some latin american countries risk serious social repercussions if they don’t comply? Is that a “government”? What about a society that doesn’t have a fixed governing body but that has clear social rules that are enforced by mobs when broken, is that government intervention?
If you want examples of how people don’t consistently buy things at the lowest price available and don’t actually have a fixed cut-off price that they’ll pay for something (these are key assumptions of supply and demand), they are numerous. If you want examples of goods that don’t seem to be affected by supply and demand they are numerous. I think we could make a case that a rental unit is more like a unique piece of fine art than like a fungible commodity. People don’t move every hour depending on where they can get the best rent, and people can’t just put up buildings overnight to respond to increased demand.
But the whole government intervention vs. no government intervention is not something I can work with. You know what you mean (well, do you know what you mean?) but there is no way that I could know exactly what set of laws “no government intervention” implies, and I don’t want to talk about it just to find out that my example wasn’t a true example of no government intervention.
I’d like to know why you think rent is easy to analyze through simply supply and demand analysis. I have never seen evidence that is it. You can’t go from this:
To this:
And act like they are driven by the same forces.
ETA: In my haste using MS paint I labelled my arrows in the wrong direction. The group to the left is the people with homes, the group to the right are the homeless. Of course, this makes absolutely no difference to the point.
