The Importance of Rent Control

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Milton Friedman never spoke to Leonard Reed again. He was so angry about this that he never and Stigler actually found it kind of funny, but as you knew George. I mean, you guys just stopped this but Friedman was absolutely outraged. If you grant the point about equality, then you're saying that the justice of having control over my own property. That is, I own this house, I get to decide who lives in it. And if you don't want to pay that price that's absolutely fine. Well, go somewhere else. You cannot be made worse off by having a another choice offered to you. I cannot possibly harm you by offering to participate in a voluntary exchange

Is the perfect really the enemy of the good? Or is it the other way around? In 2008, Duke University economist Michael Munger ran for governor and proposed increasing school choice through vouchers for the state's poorest counties. But some lovers of liberty argued that it's better to fight for eliminating public schools instead of trying to improve them. Munger realized his fellow free-marketers come in two flavors: directionalists--who take our political realities as given and try to move outcomes closer to the ideal--and destinationists--who want no compromises with what they see as the perfect outcome. Listen as Munger talks to EconTalk's Russ Roberts about two different strategies for achieving political goals. Along the way, they discuss rent control, the minimum wage, and why free-market policies are so rare.