My first ever encounter with this classic by Friedman and Stigler was in the week after the Christchurch earthquake in 2011. Rent control was in the air.
I was stunned when I read the first line of this classic, which starts by comparing the housing market after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 with the impact of wartime rent controls on the availability of housing in the same city in the 1940s.
The San Francisco earthquake of April 18, 1906 was followed by great fires which in 3 days utterly destroyed 3,400 acres of buildings in the heart of the city.
When one turns to the San Francisco Chronicle of May 24, 1906 — the first available issue after the earthquake — there is not a single mention of a housing shortage!
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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