Because politicians forcibly imposed a system designed to sacrifice owners to renters, the entire housing market has gone into a tailspin, with the lowest rate of construction of new apartment housing of any American city. Private citizens, dealing with each other, reach agreements that balance crop supply and demand at market-clearing prices. Politicians, on the other hand, perennially disrupt the markets of a handful of subsidized products to give windfalls to their favorites. Federal dairy policy was notorious for decades for producing inflated prices and mountains of rotting surpluses. We're going all out, all out .
Federal controls are profoundly disruptive for crops like peanuts.
Every few years, a drought hits the peanut-growing areas, and the supply restrictions, combined with draconian import quotas, guarantee that domestic peanut prices skyrocket far higher than they otherwise would. Government power does not guarantee order, because political pressure often subverts efforts to protect the rights of innocent citizens. Public school systems are notorious for refusing to expel violent students, regardless of how many other students they injure. All 23 high-school principals in Montgomery County, Maryland, signed a petition complaining that the school system refused to eject violent students who had assaulted teachers, committed arson, or thrown other students through plate glass windows. The Washington Post reported that the system even refused to eject a group of students who assaulted one passive victim so badly that he suffered permanent brain damage.