Humans have a habit of making bad decisions. Sometimes, we make bad decisions unwittingly. Other times, we knowingly make bad decisions and decide to deal with the consequences later, like choosing to drink too many tequilas despite the rough morning to surely follow. Regardless, we should try and avoid making bad decisions to the best of our abilities and, at the very least, learn from those decisions.

Rent control is a bad decision. Data upon data from numerous states and countries show that rent control leads to negative consequences, such as decreased housing and less maintenance of rental units. Yet, the governmental bodies in California, Oregon, Washington, the District of Columbia, NYC, Saint Paul, and others have enacted rent control laws. Even in Massachusetts, a state where rent control was repealed in the 1990s after two decades of horrible results, is toying around with enacting new rent control legislation and ballot initiatives. At this point, governments that enact rent control laws do so either ignorantly or recklessly, and I do not know which one is worse.

Libertarians should not only oppose rent control because of the negative consequences that stem from rent control policies, but also because the government has no business interfering with a private transaction between a landlord and tenant. This simple notion is scoffed at by the new wave of “democratic” socialists like Katie Wilson and Zohran Mamdani. Recently, Mamdani unleashed the extremism we know exists in him when he promised to take legal action to confiscate private rental properties and transfer them to “community land trusts, nonprofits or even tenants themselves.” This statement reflects Mamdani’s ignorance and/or recklessness to the law and basic economics.

The war against landlords and private property owners continues. Although currently contained in Democratic Party strongholds, socialist activists throughout the country will continue to beat their drums to the tune of recycled chants encouraging rent control and criticizing landlords. History is on the side of the Libertarians. We must encourage the political left to learn from the bad decisions of the past.