Anticommons

Anticommons is Too Common:

Rent-control creates what the legal scholar Michael Heller describes as a “tragedy of the anticommons.”* This tragedy arises when too many people can veto decisions on moving property from one use to another. Without rent-control, authority to decide the use of an apartment rests exclusively with that apartment’s owner, subject only to the terms of the lease he or she signs with tenants. With rent-control, however, this authority is shared with tenants (beyond the terms of their lease) and with the rent-control board. The need to get so many people to unanimously approve changes in how property is used stifles the market’s capacity to move property from lower-valued to higher-valued uses.

Heller explained that the “tragedy of the anticommons” significantly slowed economic development in post-Soviet Russia. How sad that housing in modern-day New York City suffers from the very same government-created tragedy.