Two women are waiting in line at a Moscow store one day, to buy bread. The line is a long one: in Moscow under the USSR, the length of lines to buy basic foodstuffs was legendary (and that”s when you could get them at all).

One woman, forgetting herself, says to the other, “It”s an outrage that we should have to wait so long, just to buy bread! Does this happen in the West?”

The other woman sharply corrects her comrade: “It”s a privilege that the government provides us with bread! Did you know that, in the West, the government doesn”t even MAKE bread?”

And, indeed, it doesn”t. We have bread – plentiful bread – without the need for government intervention. This is a complex supply chain, too, not by any means trivial (just try centrally planning it).

If you cut the government out of financing housing, then yes, it will take the market some time to adapt. It will take it years, maybe decades, to fine-tune itself. But it will do it, and very likely better than it”s been done so far.