In the previous post, I wrote the following:

Most on the American left would not like to live in a country like North Korea any more than any other sane person would. And needless to say, we’re not like North Korea and never will be. What they don’t realize, however, is that their ideology is a link in the same ideological chain. Granted, it’s many links down the line, but it’s the same chain.

Statism starts with the fundamental belief that government, rightly ordered, can do good things and should play a large role in society. On the other side are people who start with the belief that government is a necessary thing, but that it should be limited in size, favoring the civil society of private individuals cooperating voluntarily. Most American statists may not want to be like North Korea, but the ideology that produced North Korea is statism just as much as the ideology that produces big-government progressivism and giant welfare states. It’s just a matter of degree.

A short time later, I serendipitously was emailed an article that helped confirm that very point.

The article is about New York City’s history of rent control, which is now almost a century old. Half the city’s renters live in places for which they must pay rents at market value, the other half live in places whose rents are kept artificially low by a byzantine maze of rent control laws.

Now, someone is challenging those laws on the grounds that they are unconstitutional. The author of the piece, Nicole Gelinas, makes it clear that it goes beyond unconstitutionality—that these big government laws are violative of fundamental freedoms:

Harmon’s arguments are compelling. Consider: The Fifth Amendment says that nobody can be “deprived of . . . property without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.”

Rent regulations deprive Harmon of his property. These laws aren’t like zoning laws, under which Harmon wouldn’t be able to build a munitions factory on his home, a perfectly reasonable restriction. Instead, Harmon can’t use much of his own property for any purpose. He’s a trespasser in his own brownstone. If he doesn’t want to renew a tenant’s lease, it’s tough luck. In fact, Harmon has spent $30,000 in fees trying — so far unsuccessfully — to vacate one apartment so that his grandchild can live there. Because tenants in the two other regulated apartments are (like Harmon) older than 62, if he wants “their” space, he has to find them similar apartments at the same or lower price in the same neighborhood.

The fact that Harmon must renew leases over and over is a violation, too, of the Constitution’s contracts clause. Rent regulation compels Harmon to sign his name to a piece of paper every year, whether he wants to or not.

What about due process, another constitutional protection? The Constitution holds that laws can’t be arbitrary or selective. But that’s the definition of rent regulation. The city has declared an emergency — but half of the city’s renters get no protection from that emergency.

Forget about the contracts and other constitutional issues for the moment. Instead, just think about the phrase, “He’s a trespasser in his own brownstone.” Just imagine yourself owning a property and being told you are not allowed to move your grandchild into that property. Imagine yourself being told that you MUST lease your property out to someone, and that you can never—not even when the lease contract expires—opt not to renew.

New York is not North Korea, but this is a form of tyranny. Violation of people’s property rights is a violation of their inherent natural rights. Interfering in contracts between private parties (for any purpose beyond third-party adjudication of otherwise irreconcilable contract disputes)—and telling one party that he MUST give the other party a new contract every year, even if he does not want to—is a form of oppression. It’s not forcing people to cry when Mayor Laguardia died, but it is still a form of oppression.

And that is what I am talking about when I say that statism is statism, it’s just a matter of degree. You either wake up in the morning believing that more government is the answer, or you wake up in the morning believing that it is not.