Forced Markets

There is a category of market that most economic frameworks do not name clearly: the forced market. A market where participation is not truly voluntary. Where people cannot refuse or exit without severe harm. Housing is the clearest example. You cannot opt out of shelter.

When necessity removes exit, pricing stops reflecting value and starts reflecting pressure. The result is not a market failure in the technical sense. It is a structural capture -- a system that works exactly as designed, just not for the people who live inside it.

Forced Markets argues that the solution is not to abolish markets. It is to distinguish between markets where exit is real and markets where it is not -- and to apply different rules to each. Open where exit is real. Guarded where exit is impossible.

The book develops this argument through housing, traces it through the broader economy, and proposes a concrete policy architecture: quality-based rent anchored to regional income, ownership circulation limits, an escalator tax on speculative holding, and a Housing Quality Commission to administer it.

The tools on this site -- the Rent Calculator and the Scenario Machine -- are the working models. The book is the argument that explains why they are designed the way they are.