Names are distractions; the patterns are ossified

The reason rent is unbearable and homelessness shapes our lives now is because the same small, self-reinforcing circle of elite thinkers has had a monopoly on “serious economic ideas” for forty years. It’s a closed ecosystem where columnists, policymakers, think-tank economists, and university insiders circulate one another’s arguments until they harden into consensus. That consensus, Crimson-coded, always tilts toward market solutions, property-owner interests, and fiscal austerity — not because it works, but because it preserves institutions from the threat of change. When gatekeepers all come from the same schools, the same networks, and the same worldview, they reproduce the same policies: deregulation that helps landlords and developers, hostility to public spending, and an obsession