Price, wage, rent controls

I have the idea that things like price, wage, rent controls are very useful to correct imbalances in bargaining position or imbalances in bargaining information -- eg. employers and landlords often have more power in the short term, and can use that to impose unreasonable contract terms, if they were not stopped, and the same could apply to prices.

But that they don't usually work to change the value long-term, because if the "official" value doesn't reflect the market for a long time, it distorts the market and the problems bubble up elsewhere: eg. either black markets (if prices are significantly too high) or bribes (if the prices are significantly too low). And often "bribes" are really inefficient, eg. the school catchment area system is supposedly fairer than paying for education, but leads to people overpaying for houses to get to the right catchment area, which can lead to everyone living somewhere that's less efficient for them.

And if the changes are short-term or not-too-large it works because it's not worth anyone's while avoiding the official answer. And sometimes we don't have a better solution, and using the only tool we have available and hoping the side-effects are not too bad is better than ignoring the problem. But it would be better if the demand could be addressed directly (either by meeting it or ameliorating it) rather than pretending it can be legislated out of existence.

Is that right? I'm not sure I'm thinking about this the right way.

It's painful for me to say so, because there's lots of things I wish were distributed "fairly" rather than on the basis of "who can pay a ridiculously extortionate sum", from education to concert tickets. But I'd rather everyone were taxed a lot more and then things were priced according to demand, rather than trying to fix individual unfairnesses piecemeal.

Scott Polar Escape

http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/museum/events/

Apparently one of the staff at the Scott Polar Research Institute decided outreach needed to reach further, and organised a mystery escape! Groups from 3-8 are invited to be locked in the lobby with a mystery to solve to escape.

I went with Amy and several of her friends and it was totally awesome. Very crystal maze. There is a backstory about suppressed research, and you need to solve a set of puzzles to progress, helped by any exhibits in the room and a limited number of hints. There were a few technical hitches, but it generally went very smoothly, the staff member I think organised most of it was obviously not quite a professional puzzle-setter, but had a good setting, good equipment (real small safes!) etc.

We escaped with about thirty seconds to spare! It was very dramatic, as we were stuck for about twenty minutes in the middle, but once we got over that hitch, it turned out we had most of the pieces to get the rest of the way really rapidly.

And it got me to wander round the museum which I'd never done before, despite living so close.

There's a companion event at the Sedgwick Museum but both are fully booked now. But they said demand was really high, so I hope they'll do some more.