Originally published on Substack. 

Texas families paid an average of $173.94 per month for electricity last year, among the highest monthly bills in the region, while ERCOT issued repeated conservation requests and came dangerously close to emergency conditions.

At the same time, more than 98 groundwater conservation districts across the state manage water through political boards, regulatory allocations, and bureaucratic permitting rather than clear market exchange.

That is not a coincidence.

Texas does not mainly have a water problem or a power problem. Texas has a control problem.

Scarcity is real. It always will be. The question is whether it is managed through prices, property rights, and competition, or through bureaucrats, government entities, and political favoritism.

One system creates incentives to conserve, invest, and innovate. The other creates shortages, fragility, and permanent fights over who gets what.

Lawmakers should stop confusing government management with a functioning market.

ERCOT Is Not a Free Market Success Story

Texas likes to talk about being different. On electricity, it is different, but not nearly as free-market as many claim.

ERCOT is the centralized operator that manages the flow of electric power for about 90 percent of Texas load. It is not “the market” in any meaningful sense. It is the central gatekeeper of a system built around rules, mandates, political interventions, and constrained price signals.

When one entity manages the grid under heavy political oversight, that is not decentralized competition. That is centralized administration dressed up in market language.

As ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas recently warned, the system came “incredibly close” to emergency operations that could have ended in rolling blackouts. And the pricing data tells the story.

Texas residential electricity rates reached 16.18 cents per kilowatt-hour in March 2026, nearly 30 percent above neighboring Louisiana’s 12.44 cents, and far above Oklahoma’s 9.09 cents.

Meanwhile, legislation in recent years could undermine the grid’s ability to meet forecasted demand because lawmakers keep steering investment rather than letting competition and price signals do the work. This is when conservation notices have become routine, which is not a weather quirk. It is a structural symptom.

Lawmakers keep trying to subsidize reliability, steer financing, and politically backstop the system instead of letting competition and price signals coordinate supply and demand. That is why Texans keep getting “reforms” without genuine resilience.

If lawmakers truly want a stronger power system, they should move toward more real competition in generation, storage, retail options, transmission incentives, and private investment, not more political planning.

The answer is not to make the centralized framework even more central. It is to reduce the barriers that prevent genuine market discovery and competitive discipline.

Water Systems Are Political Systems First

The same problem exists with water, and in many ways it is worse.

Texas has more than 98 groundwater conservation districts covering all or part of 144 counties, each operating under its own rules with its own political boards.

Decisions about allocation, pricing, infrastructure, and conservation are political long before they are economic. That setup almost guarantees misallocation.

Texas water law also contains the Rule of Capture, a principle that gives landowners broad groundwater claims in theory, but those rights are limited in practice by layers of local regulation and institutional conflict.

As the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality acknowledges, no single state agency regulates groundwater use statewide. Instead, more than 98 politically created districts each set their own rules, creating a patchwork of legal conflict and political rationing rather than a coherent system of exchange.

When the government owns or heavily controls the system, the incentives for long-term stewardship and innovation weaken. Pricing is distorted. Investment decisions become political. And the people making the decisions usually do not bear the full cost of getting them wrong.

That is not resource freedom. That is confusion.

The Price System Is Not Optional

This is where lawmakers need to remember basic economics.

Hayek’s knowledge problem is not an ivory-tower concept. It is a practical warning.

No central authority knows the correct future price of electricity in every hour across Texas. No board knows the right amount of water to conserve, move, or ration across every county and basin. No agency can process the changing information that millions of people and businesses reveal through market choices.

Prices do that.

Prices signal scarcity. Prices tell producers when to invest. Prices tell consumers when to conserve. Prices help entrepreneurs discover better technologies and business models.

When lawmakers suppress those signals through subsidies, political allocation, and government ownership, they should expect misallocation.

As Milton Friedman taught, do not judge policy by its intentions. Judge it by its results. Texas keeps getting the wrong results.

Property Rights and Privatization Fix Incentives

If lawmakers want lasting improvement, they need to think less like players and more like referees.

The answer is stronger property rights and more privatization of these resources.

When something is privately owned, someone has a direct incentive to protect it, improve it, and use it efficiently. When something is managed by government, responsibility is diluted and politics fills the vacuum.

That is true for water infrastructure. It is true for electricity generation, transmission, and storage.

Private owners respond to profit and loss. Government entities respond to politics and pressure.

Private firms that fail lose money and market share. Public entities that fail usually ask for more funding and more control.
As the Mises Institute explains, the state is the one institution that can compel payment, block competition, and preserve failure indefinitely.

In a real market, even a dominant firm faces pressure from innovation and rivals. In politics, failure can survive for decades.
Privatizing these systems, or moving much closer to genuine market competition, would not make scarcity disappear. It would do something better. It would make scarcity manageable through real incentives.

The Unseen Costs Are the Biggest Ones

This is where Bastiat still matters.

The seen is the state-backed loan program, the public utility expansion, the district board meeting, or the ribbon-cutting for a politically favored project.

The unseen is everything Texas never gets because government crowds it out.

You do not see the private water trading platform that was never created because the legal framework discouraged exchange. You do not see the private grid innovations that were never financed because lawmakers decided to steer capital somewhere else. You do not see the smaller competitors who never entered the market because they could not break through the political structure of the system.

Those unseen costs are often far larger than the public costs everyone debates, and no budget line ever captures them.

The Bottom Line

Texas does not need more state management of water and power. It needs less.

A centralized grid gatekeeper and government-dominated water systems do not solve scarcity. They politicize it. They weaken price signals. They discourage competition. They protect bad decisions from market correction.

If lawmakers want abundance, resilience, and affordability, they should trust the institutions that actually coordinate scarce resources well: private property, market prices, competition, and voluntary exchange.

Texas should be leading the country in resource freedom. Too often, it is still acting like scarcity must be managed from the top down. That is backward, and it is costing Texans.

Five Takeaways for Policymakers

1. Move ERCOT toward real competition. Reduce barriers to private generation, storage, and retail entry. Let price signals coordinate supply and demand rather than political steering. Every layer of intervention added since Winter Storm Uri has made the system more rigid, not more resilient.
2. Consolidate or eliminate redundant water districts. More than 98 groundwater conservation districts with conflicting rules and political boards is not a system. It is a patchwork of misaligned incentives. Simplify the framework and move toward tradable water rights with clear ownership and market exchange.
3. Clarify and strengthen the Rule of Capture into a workable property-rights system. Water trading works where ownership is clear and exchange is legal. Reform groundwater law to enable genuine market exchange rather than political rationing.
4. Apply Bastiat’s test to every energy and water bill. Ask not just what the bill claims to do, ask what private innovation it displaces, what competition it forecloses, and who bears the unseen cost. If the answer is taxpayers and future consumers, vote no.
5. Privatize what government does not need to own. Water infrastructure, grid assets, and distribution systems managed by private owners under competitive discipline perform better than politically managed ones.

Closing

I’ve spent decades working across more than 20 states and the federal government on property rights reform, energy market policy, and the economic case for limited government.

What the data consistently show is that markets, when free to operate, coordinate scarce resources better than any government board ever has. The evidence is not close.

Texas has every advantage: energy abundance, economic dynamism, and a constitution that respects property rights. What it lacks is the political will to trust markets to do what politicians cannot. That is the will the 2027 session needs to find.

Stay engaged, stay principled, and keep letting people prosper.

Originally published on Substack. 

Americans are getting hit again — at the pump, on utility bills, and soon at the grocery store. This week’s surge in oil, diesel, and shipping costs is being framed as a Middle East story. That is only half true. The conflict is real and it matters. But the reason this shock is landing so hard on American families is that Washington left them exposed.

Let me give you the straight economics.

What Just Happened
​
On February 28, the U.S. and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury — coordinated strikes on Iranian military targets, nuclear sites, and leadership, resulting in the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran’s response was swift and targeted where it hurts most: the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard declared the strait closed, threatening to set ablaze any vessel attempting to pass. At least five tankers were damaged, two personnel killed, and about 150 ships stranded in open Gulf waters.

As of March 4, only five vessel crossings were recorded through the strait — compared to a seven-day average of 27. Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd, MSC, and CMA CGM — the world’s largest shipping firms — have all suspended operations and rerouted vessels around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, adding weeks to transit times and billions to costs.

“When analysts have looked at the things that could go wrong in global oil markets, this is about as wrong as things could go at any single point of failure.” — Kevin Book, Clearview Energy Partners

The numbers hitting family budgets are real. As of March 5, the national average for regular unleaded hit $3.25 per gallon — up from $2.98 just one week ago, a 9% weekly surge that is the sharpest in nearly four years. Diesel has climbed to $4.124 per gallon — the highest since December 2023. The benchmark freight rate for Very Large Crude Carriers hit an all-time record of $423,736 per day — a 94% increase in a single weekend. And analysts at Barclays and Goldman Sachs warn Brent crude could reach $100 per barrel or higher if disruptions persist — the same level that sent gasoline to an all-time national average of $5.016 per gallon after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Why Americans Pay Global Prices No Matter How Much We Produce

Here’s what I hear constantly — and what my peer-reviewed research on oil and gasoline markets confirms: oil is a globally traded commodity.

When a chokepoint carrying roughly 20% of global oil consumption shuts down, prices rise for everyone. About 70% of the oil passing through the Strait goes to China, India, Japan, and South Korea. When their supply tightens, their economies slow, global demand reshuffles, and American families pay more — at the pump, at the grocery store, and on every freight bill embedded in the goods they buy.

Our domestic production is a genuine buffer. Without it, we’d already be at $4 or more per gallon. But it is not a wall. The global market is the global market. And right now, the global market is in crisis.

This Lands on Families Already Squeezed

This shock does not arrive in a vacuum. Before this week, GasBuddy had forecast annual average prices below $3 per gallon for the first time since 2020 — a genuine bright spot for families still recovering from the inflation surge of recent years. That relief is now at serious risk.

Economists warn that if prices remain elevated, the retail industry could face a significant cooling period as consumers prioritize fuel and essential groceries over discretionary spending. FedEx and UPS have already implemented general rate increases of 5.9%, but effective shipping costs are rising by as much as 18% once fuel surcharges are factored in.

This is Bastiat’s “seen and unseen” in real time. The seen is the conflict in the Gulf. The unseen is the American truck driver, commuter, farmer, and family paying more because policymakers made the economy less adaptable, less productive, and more dependent on decisions made far from home.

Government Failure: The Full Picture

What we are living through is not just a geopolitical event. It is the compounded consequence of years of government failures — domestic and foreign — that left American families with no cushion.

Failure 1: Restrictions on domestic energy supply.

The U.S. is the world’s largest oil producer. But decades of permitting delays, leasing restrictions, pipeline blockades, refinery constraints, and ethanol mandates have suppressed what we can produce and process. My peer-reviewed research documents how ethanol legislation distorts gasoline price dynamics, adding costs and volatility that fall directly on consumers. A free country that wants affordable energy does not handicap its own supply base and then act surprised when global turmoil shows up in family budgets.

Failure 2: Tariffs as a hidden energy tax.

Tariffs are taxes. Before this week’s shock, they were already raising costs on steel, equipment, and industrial inputs the energy sector needs to produce, refine, and move fuel. Protectionism doesn’t sit off to the side as a separate policy debate — it compounds energy costs across the entire supply chain. You cannot claim to care about affordability while defending taxes on the inputs that power the economy.

Failure 3: Fiscal recklessness that eroded family resilience.

Washington spent trillions of taxpayer dollars in recent years and still left families with less cushion. Electricity prices have climbed 36% over the last five years, and the federal government got it off the way for businesses to build the energy infrastructure or refinery capacity that would give families real protection against shocks like this one.

Government did not build a meaningful cushion for working Americans. It helped erode one.

Failure 4: Strategic dependence on a volatile region.

The world — including America’s key trading partners — remains deeply dependent on Middle Eastern energy flows. As Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group put it: “Closure of the Strait of Hormuz would disrupt roughly a fifth of globally traded oil overnight — and prices wouldn’t just spike, they would gap violently upward on fear alone.”

The policy answer is more domestic production, more free trade, and faster permitting — not less.

The Answer Is Not Price Controls

It never is. Price caps feel compassionate until the shortages, reduced investment, and supply pullbacks show up.
We have run this experiment before — on gasoline, on rent, on prescription drugs. It fails every time because it attacks the symptom while making the cause worse.

Cap the price of energy without increasing supply and you get less energy. That is not a theory. That is economics.

The Bottom Line

Energy price shocks are not simply acts of fate. They are the result of geopolitical risk colliding with bad policy choices made over many years. War triggered this spike. Government failures made it more painful than it had to be.

As Milton Friedman taught us: don’t judge policy by its intentions — judge it by its results. Families are the ones paying for the gap between rhetoric and reality. They deserve better.

Five Takeaways for Policymakers

1. Unleash domestic energy production now. Fast-track permitting, expand pipeline and refining capacity, and stop treating domestic abundance as a political problem. Every barrel suppressed by regulatory red tape is a barrel held hostage to global volatility.

2. End tariffs. Tariffs on steel, aluminum, and industrial equipment compound the price shock families are already absorbing. Free trade lowers costs — protectionism raises them.

3. No price controls — full stop. A gas price cap sounds compassionate. The unseen is shortages, long lines, and reduced investment in the production that would bring prices down naturally. We’ve run this experiment. It fails.

4. End the Strategic Petroleum Reserve so the private sector best allocated oil rather than holding oil out of the market thereby driving prices higher.

5. Make affordability the governing standard. Every energy policy decision should be evaluated first by its impact on the cost of living for working Americans — not its appeal to any political constituency.

Closing

I’ve spent years studying how energy prices move through supply chains and how government intervention distorts them. What the data — and Friedman and Bastiat — consistently show is that the market, when free to operate, is the fastest and most reliable path to lower prices. Government failure is what makes energy expensive. Free markets is what makes it affordable.

Policymakers still have time to respond. Families don’t need more speeches about compassion while Washington keeps making energy scarcer and more expensive. They need more supply, more freedom, and more discipline. That is how you lower prices. That is how you strengthen the economy. And that is how you let people prosper

Originally published at Kansas Policy Institute.

Kansas families feel the squeeze. Prescription drugs are expensive. Credit card balances are heavy. Rents and groceries are up. When people are hurting, it’s understandable that lawmakers reach for a simple-sounding fix: cap the price. 

But that’s where good intentions collide with bad economics. Milton Friedman’s warning applies perfectly here: don’t judge policy by its stated goal, judge it by its results. And Frédéric Bastiat’s “seen and unseen” is the cheat code every legislator should keep on their desk: the “seen” is the lower posted price; the “unseen” is the shortage, the quality drop, the access loss, and the costs pushed into other corners of the economy. 

ECON 101: A cap doesn’t remove scarcity; it hides it.

Prices are signals. They tell producers what to make more of and tell consumers what’s scarce. When the government sets a price ceiling below what supply and demand would produce, sellers respond rationally: they supply less, invest less, or change the product to cut costs. The result is predictable: shortages, waiting, rationing, fewer choices, and lower quality. That’s not ideology. That’s how incentives work. 

The political appeal is obvious: a cap looks like instant relief. But the “unseen” shows up later, and it hits real people.

“Upper payment limits” for drugs are price controls

In Kansas, one proposal (introduced in 2025 as SB 212) would create a prescription drug pricing board and allow the state to set “upper payment limits” for certain medications. That is a textbook price ceiling, just written in bureaucratic language.

Supporters likely mean well. But if you cap what can be paid, you change the incentives for manufacturers, wholesalers, pharmacies, and insurers. The “seen” is a headline claiming lower prices. The “unseen” is what follows: tighter formularies, fewer covered options, delayed availability, and supply pulled toward higher-paying areas. 

Scarcity doesn’t vanish; it’s managed—usually through paperwork and gatekeeping.

Federal example: the 10% credit card rate cap idea

A federal proposal to cap credit card interest rates at 10% is being sold as consumer-friendly. But interest is the price of unsecured credit. Cap that price below the risk-based level, and lenders will protect themselves in the only ways they can: tighter approvals, lower credit limits, fewer rewards, more fees, and less access for people with thinner credit files. The “seen” is a lower APR for some borrowers who still qualify. The “unseen” is credit drying up for those who need it most.

This is the same pattern as any other price control: if you force the price down, you get less of the thing. In this case, that “thing” is credit availability.

Local example: Rent control is a cautionary tale

Rent control is one of the clearest “seen/unseen” examples in economics. The “seen” is a tenant paying below-market rent today. The “unseen” is fewer rentals over time, less maintenance, less new construction, and higher prices for everyone who isn’t lucky enough to get one of the controlled units. Kansas law wisely prohibits local governments from enacting rent controls or controlling real estate purchase prices.

Housing is the same story: prices fall when supply rises. Kansas should encourage local reforms like accessory dwelling units, smaller minimum lot sizes, and fewer parking mandates because fewer zoning restrictions actually reduces housing prices rather than subsidies or caps.

That same logic should guide the state and federal levels, too. If rent control is bad economics in Wichita or Kansas City, it doesn’t magically become good economics when moved to Topeka or Washington.

The consistent rule for lawmakers: avoid price caps everywhere

Whether the policy comes from a city council, the statehouse, or Congress, the economic mechanics are the same:

• Price caps reduce supply (less production, less investment, less entry).
• They shift costs into hidden fees, lower quality, rationing, or delays.
• They invite gaming and lobbying as industries fight over exemptions and loopholes.
• They punish innovation by lowering the payoff to creating something better.

That’s why Friedman’s point matters: you can have noble motives and still cause harm. Bastiat’s point matters because the harm is often delayed and invisible until families are stuck with fewer options.

What Kansas should do: free up supply and competition

If the goal is affordability, focus on reforms that expand supply and competition rather than trying to command prices:

• Remove barriers that limit entry and supply (especially in housing and healthcare delivery).
• Increase transparency that consumers can actually use to shop and switch.
• Reduce rules that entrench incumbents and block lower-cost competitors.

​Price controls feel compassionate. But real compassion means choosing policies that work in the real world, not just in press releases. Kansas should keep its policy compass steady: don’t cap prices—free markets so supply, competition, and innovation can push prices down the right way.

Originally published at Pelican Institute.

Most lawmakers who flirt with price controls are not trying to hurt anyone. They are reacting to real pain: families squeezed by high drug costs, high interest rates, and an affordability crunch that feels personal. But economics has a tough love rule: good intentions do not guarantee good results. 

Milton Friedman warned that policies should be judged by outcomes, not motives. And Frédéric Bastiat taught the same lesson a century earlier: don’t just focus on what is “seen,” like a lower sticker price, but also what is “unseen,” like shortages, lower quality, and higher costs shifted somewhere else.

Prices are Signals, Not Villains

A price is not just a number. It is information. It tells producers what is scarce and worth making more of, and it tells consumers what is costly and should be used carefully. When the government caps a price below the market level, it does not erase scarcity. It hides it.

That is why basic economics keeps producing the same result: legally binding price ceilings create shortages. If you force sellers to charge less than their cost or risk, fewer sellers will sell. Some stop entirely. Others cut quality. Some find loopholes. Consumers end up paying in different ways: waiting, rationing, reduced options, or hidden fees.

This is the Bastiat point in plain English: the “seen” benefit is the lower posted price. The “unseen” cost is everything that quietly gets worse because the incentive to supply has been damaged.

Drug “Most Favored Nation” Pricing is a Price Control

Consider the “most favored nation” drug pricing pushed by President Trump. The pitch is simple: tie what is paid in the United States to the lowest prices paid in other countries. That may sound like an issue of “fairness” or bargaining power, but economically, it is a cap imposed through government payment rules. It imports foreign price control systems and then tries to force that result here.

The predictable “unseen” effects emerge: reduced supply at the controlled price, tighter access, and weaker incentives to invest in the next generation of treatments. Healthcare already suffers from distorted incentives, heavy third-party payment, and limited competition. A new price ceiling does not fix those root problems. It adds another layer of central planning.

Credit Card Interest Rate Caps are a Mistake

Now, take proposals to cap credit card interest rates at 10%. This is often framed as consumer protection. But an interest rate is also a price: the price of credit without collateral. The rate reflects risk, expected losses, operating costs, and the cost of funds.

If the government sets a cap below what risk requires, lenders cannot wish risk away. They adjust by doing what the math demands: tightening approvals, cutting credit limits, reducing rewards, adding fees, or exiting higher-risk customers altogether. The “seen” effect is a lower rate for some borrowers who still qualify. The “unseen” effect is less access for borrowers on the margin, often the people most in need of flexible credit.

Bill language by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders makes clear it is a hard cap with penalties and enforcement mechanisms. It is not a nudge. It is a legal ceiling.

Why Price Controls Fail

Price controls are popular because they appear to be action. They can even create a short-term illusion of relief. But the underlying forces do not disappear. When you suppress one price, pressure builds elsewhere.

Think of it like squeezing a balloon: you can flatten one spot, but the air moves. In markets, that “air” is cost, risk, scarcity, and human behavior. You cannot legislate them away.

A Better Approach

If the goal is affordability, the free-market path is boring but effective:

• Increase competition and entry to give consumers real options.
• Remove barriers that restrict supply or protect incumbents.
• Improve transparency that helps shoppers compare and switch.
• Reduce policies that separate consumers from prices and choices.

That is how you get sustainable price declines without shortages: more supply, more innovation, more competition.

Price controls are tempting precisely because they are simple. But economics is clear: the simple fix often backfires. The compassionate thing is not to pass policies that feel good, but to pass policies that work. ​​

Originally published on Substack. 

America is in an insurance affordability crisis. Home and auto premiums are soaring—some up 40% or more in just two years. And instead of addressing the root causes, politicians are reaching for their favorite broken tool: price controls.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, lawmakers in states like Illinois, Louisiana, and New York are rushing to cap insurance rates as families revolt against 30%–50% increases. The story is the same across red and blue states alike. Regulators want to “protect consumers” from big insurers—but their interventions are the reason affordability collapsed in the first place.

The Real Causes Behind Rising Insurance Costs
​
Let’s start with the basics. Insurance premiums reflect risk and cost. When the cost of rebuilding a home or repairing a car goes up, so do premiums. And those costs are rising not because of greed—but because of government-induced inflation, tariffs, and regulation.

• Tariffs and protectionism have driven up prices on steel, lumber, and glass—all key materials in construction and auto repair. When it costs more to rebuild, insurers must charge more.
• COVID-era restrictions disrupted supply chains and triggered cost spikes that still linger today. Many local governments locked down markets, banned elective construction, and forced insurers to pay out more for delayed claims.
• Federal overspending and a bloated Federal Reserve balance sheet of over $6.6 trillion fueled inflation, which raised costs across the economy—insurance included.
• Regulatory mandates—from state-by-state price filing rules to federal environmental and liability regulations—have made it harder for insurers to compete, innovate, or price accurately.

It’s a vicious cycle: government interference raises costs, consumers feel the squeeze, and politicians respond with even more control.

Price Controls Are the Wrong “Solution”

Price caps don’t solve affordability. They destroy it.

When California capped insurance premiums for decades, insurers left the state. Now its regulators are scrambling to approve double-digit rate hikes just to lure them back. Louisiana tried deregulating to attract more insurers—then flipped again, imposing “excessive rate” controls this year. The result? Confusion, fewer carriers, and a less stable market.

As S&P Global analyst Tim Zawacki told the Journal, “Price controls don’t lead to affordability. Ultimately, they just chase insurers out of the market.”

He’s right. You can’t legislate away risk. The only way to bring prices down is through competition, efficiency, and innovation—none of which survive when government fixes prices.

Deregulation: The Real Path to Affordability

If politicians truly cared about helping families, they’d focus on freeing the insurance market, not strangling it.

1. End protectionism. Tariffs and trade barriers raise input costs for construction and auto repair, inflating claims and premiums.
2. Streamline state regulation. America’s insurance system is a patchwork of 50 regulatory regimes, each adding compliance costs that get passed to consumers. States should reduce red tape and allow competition across borders.
3. Stop using insurers as political punching bags. Demagoguing companies for “profiteering” ignores actuarial reality—and drives them out of states entirely.
4. Cut government spending. Inflation is the ultimate premium driver. When Washington spends and borrows without restraint, every policyholder pays the price.

Trying to solve a government-caused problem with more government always fails. Affordability won’t come from mandates—it will come from markets free to adjust, compete, and innovate.

The Bigger Picture: The Housing Affordability Squeeze

This isn’t just about insurance. It’s about the broader housing affordability crisis. Rising premiums, property taxes, tariffs, and interest rates all share a common thread—too much government. From local building codes to federal trade policy, intervention has made housing less affordable for millions.

Families don’t want subsidies or price caps—they want predictability and opportunity. They want to build, buy, and insure a home without government distortions turning every step into a financial burden.

Closing Thoughts

When politicians talk about “protecting consumers,” it usually means protecting themselves from political backlash. The truth is that markets—not bureaucrats—are best at setting prices and balancing risk. If we want affordable insurance and housing, we must get government out of the way, not invite it in further.

Freedom—not force—creates prosperity. That’s as true for homeowners and drivers as it is for every sector of the economy.
​
Let people prosper.