What are the reasons for believing that Mamdani, even if he wins the mayor's office, will find that it is for him a dead end? There is his rent freeze thing, to begin. My old anarcho-cap instincts kick in here. Markets are very useful things -- it is precisely in the valuation of assets (and of transferable liabilities) that they most directly prove their worth, and rent control in all its forms is a direct attack on this function. New York City's history with "rent stabilization" is a solid illustration of this point. The history is not happy. And intensifying the war on the discovery of value will do a good deal of harm to actual values. Brenda Richardson wrote a fine brief piece in Forbes on some of these issues two years ago. The bottom line is that Mamdani seems likely to mess with the housing market in ways that effectively freeze new construction of livable spaces, force further skimping on maintenance, lead to longer waitlists and reduced m...