> Markets would love to build more housing. But they're prevented from doing so by the regulatory state. Markets would love to build nuclear power plants, but they're prevented from doing so by the regulatory state.

I don’t like it when people anthropomorphize concepts like economic markets, but I _especially_ don’t like it when they do this to make it seem like the anthropomorphization should be a sympathetic character to the reader.

Like one of the GPs said, above: the market is something that responds to incentives.

Regulation and bureaucracy shape those incentives, sometimes in the ways that you’re describing, but the market is just as “happy” to capitalize on bad housing regulation as it is to capitalize on a lack of any housing regulation at all.

The problem of constructing just the right amount of regulatory apparatus is very difficult, though.