I hate having to do this, but I feel it is necessary to add to my list of the low-hanging fruit of public policy where 90% solutions (improvements) on these issues are several orders of magnitude more important than 99% solutions on a thousand others. In my defense this was always filed under "partial list", and it continues to be. I just hate making a tag and then needing to update it.
Keep in mind that I did issue addendums to the list shortly after first publication. This will take one of those and elevate it to the new big list.
The Big Six:
- Drug Prohibition (end it--allow adults to make their own choices)
- Education (privatize it--give the government an ever-smaller role)
- Immigration (open it up--allow people to freely move and freely interact with other people)
- Taxation (simplify and redirect it--efficiently tax the use of resources not the creation of resources)
- War (move away from it--make postures less bellicose and violence less of an option).
- ***AND*** Housing Development (greatly reduce the obstacles and restrictions so that the owners of capital can buy, build, and reconfigure real estate as they see fit)
First because of Kevin Erdmann's work and recently because of Bryan Caplan's current discussion and forthcoming work, I have become radicalized to make this addition to my reform agenda canon.
Living in a historic district with all its well-intended nonsense, I see this issue close at hand. The HD seems to be a classic case of people being nostalgic for a past that didn’t actually exist. The effect is expense for homeowners, self-righteous satisfaction for busybodies, a jobs program for the rent-seeking suppliers and regulators, and general exclusion for those who don’t fit in or can’t afford to.
Every day I see stark examples of the perfect being the enemy of the good.
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