> Some people cannot afford to buy,

...and crashing housing prices drastically would solve this.

> and some would not buy even if they could, preferring flexibility or a different kind of market exposure.

A lack of flexibility in home ownership means a lack of liquidity in the market. A more liquid market is the solution here, not rent.

Paying rent is not market exposure. It's explicitly excluding renters from any market appreciation. No one chooses to rent so they can "gain exposure" to monetary loss. This is an absurd argument.

> Aside: Don't tell me you want state-built housing projects. People seem to forget that the USA already tried that.

People who hate government housing love to point to urban projects built in primarily black neighborhoods before the civil rights movement, and conveniently forget that postwar housing programs built much nicer housing in primarily white neighborhoods. I grew up in one such house.

> Even in Russia and China virtually anyone who can afford to move to private housing does and never looks back.

Imagine seeing people who would otherwise be homeless become stable enough to move into nicer private homes and seeing that as a failure of public housing.

My guy, people are sleeping on cardboard outside in 10 degree weather here. Grow a sense of perspective. Yes, I also support improving quality of housing, but if your criticism is that my solution doesn't result in perfect housing, I'll point out that your opposition to all real solutions doesn't result in housing.

> Australia's state housing projects may have kept some people off the streets but have not prevented runaway housing prices for everyone else.

Sorry, what was that first part?

Australia's state housing projects couldn't meet the demands of investor greed, because corporate greed is limitless. It should be unsurprising that as long as investment is allowed in housing, housing can't be cheap.

> It's not "anarcho-capitalist" to recognize that many laws and regulations have had paradoxical effects once implemented.

True. It becomes anarcho-capitalist when you see the complexity of regulation and use it as an excuse to oppose any and all regulation.

> History is full of examples of well-intentioned plans functioning far worse for both the collective and the individual.

History is also full of examples of well-intentioned plans functioning quite well. You like working no more than 40 hours a week? You like that your boss can't lock you in your office and let you burn to death if the place catches fire? You like that your food has to be inspected for foodborne illness?

Many of the regulations we have were written in blood and there are many people still suffering because regulations have not yet been written. Your free market ideology brought us sweatshops, cars that explode when rear-ended, paychecks paid in company store credit, black lung disease, prison slavery, Chromium-related cancer clusters, opiods, microplastics, kitchen grease fires--the list is endless, and in every one of these cases people knew what they were doing was harmful, did it anyway, and walked away with the profits of, in some of these cases, literal murder, because people like you are too blinded by ideology to prioritize human lives over freedom of the market and regulate before untrustworthy corporations cause harms that they obviously will.