Top all-time · #5801
J. W. Mason
Personal blog · jwmason.org/slackwireeconomicspolitics
J. W. Mason's personal blog at jwmason.org covers economics and politics. Since 2015, 14 different Hacker News readers have linked it 27 times, most often “Considerations on Rent Control (2019)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link J. W. Mason's Slackwire posts on rent control and housing supply, and on money, debt and trust. The comments cite or quote them as sources or support, without judging the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Considerations on Rent Control (2019)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-01-23
What Hacker News says?
I recently read this article about rent control does not reduce the housing supply https://jwmason.org/slackwire/considerations-on-rent-control...
Comment linking /slackwire/considerations-on-rent-control/
on “How housing became the world’s biggest asset class”Submitted On Cryptocurrencies (2018) as a story · 33 points
HN discussionSo first of all I think home-ownership is bullshit for other reasons. So I don't really want to defend it. > In other words, the buyer will have roughly the same monthly payment regardless of interest rates. Those rates will determine how much money goes to the seller vs the bank over 15 or 30 years. Yes > Low interest rates cause artificially high prices which don't benefit society, just the sellers. Private owners…
Comment linking /slackwire/the-natural-rate-of-interest/
on “Rhode island makes financial literacy classes required for high school students”Submitted A New Macroeconomics? as a story · 32 points
HN discussionThe US is pretty fucked, but if at the non federal level some government can start issuing a fuck ton of bonds and do interesting things, we can see more change. A basic horseshit politics in the US is to act like nothing is possible without controlling government (super-majorities if needed) at all levels. We must work around that, because it will not happen reliably. Might need states to start seceding too. ---- A…
Comment linking /slackwire/climate-policy-from-a-keynesian-perspective/
on “How do you fix a stroad?”Submitted Actual Intelligence as a story · 2 points
HN discussionYou and the above poster are overstating your case. Your post boils down to "don't u believe in science lol?" I agree with this comment: https://jwmason.org/slackwire/considerations-on-rent-control... I think that if rent control doesn't hurt housing supply, it's because of various regulations that are distorting the market. Enacting rent control instead of reforming those regulations seems silly to me.
Comment linking /slackwire/considerations-on-rent-control/
on “Empty storefronts are killing neighbourhoods”Submitted Considerations on Rent Control (2019) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionKeep in reading, including the comments such as the author's in https://jwmason.org/slackwire/considerations-on-rent-control... : > I’m not entirely unsympathatic to your point of view. If we could do more to boost the supply of affordable housing, there would be less need for rent control, that is true. > But, first, less need is not no need. I don’t think it’s even physically possible to get a perfectly elastic ho…
Comment linking /slackwire/considerations-on-rent-control/
on “Empty storefronts are killing neighbourhoods”Submitted Marx on the Corporation as a story · 2 points
HN discussionTo start, the huge elephant in the room is that it is insane that cities are more expensive when city dwellers consume less resources and incur fewer environmental externalities, and are more productive. If our only hope is continued "suburbanization with li-ion characteristics", as so many people seem to believe, we're fucked as a country. So this preposterous fact those that all manner of incentives have gone wron…
Comment linking /slackwire/considerations-on-rent-control/
on “Empty storefronts are killing neighbourhoods”Submitted The CBO Just Handed Us Two Trillion Dollars as a story · 2 points
HN discussionNot wreck, but just run in their own interests. The modern corperation is internally a very large feudal society ("manors within manors"), shareholders are completely absentee, and the secondary markets do not directly effect the balance sheet. I should cite the posts in https://jwmason.org/slackwire/tag/corporate-governance/ , some of which I were paraphrasing, and others which I haven't read before but are also in…
Comment linking /slackwire/tag/corporate-governance/
on “CEOs are hugely expensive – why not automate them?”Submitted Acquisitions as Corporate Money Hose as a story · 2 points
HN discussionBecause it actually often works and there has been research that has found benefits. The question is whether or not the benefits are worth the drawbacks and that's highly sensitive to your actual objectives, to the local conditions, and extremely sensitive to the details of how your rent control is implemented. For example, it is an empirical fact that rent control greatly decreases the number of people that leave a…
Comment linking /slackwire/considerations-on-rent-control/
on “The world is run by people no smarter than you”Submitted Political Parties Are Illegal in the United States as a story · 1 points
HN discussionKrugman is the best-sounding stuff of the mainstream. Since that what you brought up, I would start with https://www.crisesnotes.com/paul-krugman-functional-finance-... . Arguable Krugman is so good about not saying terrible stupid shit, that it might come at at cost of not being internally consistent or acknowledging when his views in fact change. Krugman at least was a "New Keynsian", which is a very complicated c…
Comment linking /the-slack-wire/
on “Does QE Cause Wealth Inequality?”Submitted What Is the Stock Market For? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionhttp://jwmason.org/slackwire/on-money-debt-trust-and-central... >People get very excited about China’s social credit system, a sort of generalization of the “permanent record” we use to intimidate schoolchildren. And ok, it does sound kind of dystopian. If your rating is too low, you aren’t allowed to fly on a plane. Think about that — a number assigned to every person, adjusted based on somebody’s judgement of your…
Comment linking /slackwire/on-money-debt-trust-and-central-banking/
on “Why Captchas have gotten so difficult”Submitted Is Capital Being Reallocated to High-Tech Industries? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionMaybe read https://jwmason.org/slackwire/considerations-on-rent-control... a bit, basically history is repeating itself with the economic consensus on the minimum wage. Also see this comment https://jwmason.org/slackwire/considerations-on-rent-control... and the author's response. One can argue that it's less that the theory is "wrong" but that that the theory doesn't match reality: the housing and employment market…
Comment linking /slackwire/considerations-on-rent-control/
on “German constitutional court strikes down Berlin rent cap”Is there a clear consensus that this is the case? I had much the same understanding as you after reading all the debates on rent control on HN, but was recently pointed to [1] which offers a very contrarian perspective (including an analysis of a study done on rent control in SF). As a non-economist, it feels like this topic deserves a great deal more empirical study so we're not stuck arguing with anecdotes and hyp…
Comment linking /slackwire/considerations-on-rent-control/
on “German constitutional court strikes down Berlin rent cap”http://jwmason.org/slackwire/alternative-visions-of-inflatio... this one is fresh off the presses and gets deeper into the issues.
Comment linking /slackwire/alternative-visions-of-inflation/
on “America's “Friendscape” Crisis”https://jwmason.org/slackwire/at-jacobin-the-fed-doesnt-work... well start with those side effects: inflation is kept in check by beating back workers whenever they get to powerful. Then take into account how lousy growth has been since the 1970s when they started doing that. If we could have had depressions but more amortized growth, and not "jobless recoveries" and anemic amortized growth, would that have been wor…
Comment linking /slackwire/at-jacobin-the-fed-doesnt-work-for-you/
on “America's “Friendscape” Crisis”> is needed once due to inflation everything gets too expensive while wages stagnate due to capital concentration We have seen vanishingly little inflation over the last decade precisely because the job market was so week. Rich people don't chase after basic goods, so healthcare and housing get more expensive but milk stays the same. I suggest taking a look at http://jwmason.org/slackwire/alternative-visions-of-infl…
Comment linking /slackwire/alternative-visions-of-inflation/
on “How to Boost Innovation”This is a book excerpt. I didn’t find any in-depth reviews, but one of the authors posted a summary of the book here: https://jwmason.org/slackwire/against-money/
Comment linking /slackwire/against-money/
on “On The Conflation of Money and Things”
