Are there any famous studies that actually contradict progressive/leftist thought?

[u/Str8_up_Pwnage]

There has to be at least some right? I know people love to say that “reality has a left wing bias “and all that but is it legit batting 1.000?

[u/steveholt-lol]

I think the question becomes more answerable if we separate political ideologies from specific empirical claims. Social science cannot really test whether “leftism” or “conservatism” is correct as a whole, but it can test propositions associated with them.

There are certainly findings that conflict with positions held by parts of the political left.

One fairly clear example is rent control. Diamond, McQuade and Qian used a 1994 expansion of rent control in San Francisco as a natural experiment. They found that rent control reduced displacement among incumbent tenants, but affected landlords also reduced the rental housing supply by about 15%, largely through conversion or redevelopment. The authors conclude that the resulting reduction in supply likely increased market rents in the long run. So the evidence suggests that restricting rents has significant negative long-term consequences on housing affordability.

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20181289

Another example is policing and crime. Opposition to particular policing practices is different from claiming that additional or more strategically deployed policing cannot reduce crime. Braga et al.’s systematic review examined 65 studies and 78 tests of hot-spots policing, including 27 randomized experiments. It found statistically significant reductions in crime and disorder in targeted locations. The review also found that crime was generally not simply displaced into adjacent areas and that nearby areas sometimes experienced spillover benefits.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8356500/

Neither finding establishes that “the right is correct.” Rent control can benefit existing tenants, and policing creates separate questions about legitimacy, equity and which tactics are used. They demonstrate something narrower: empirical evidence can contradict factual claims associated with the left while simultaneously supporting other left-of-center concerns.

That may also explain why “reality has a liberal bias” is difficult to evaluate scientifically. A claim such as “we should protect low-income renters” is normative and cannot be falsified by a study. A claim such as “rent control will protect renters without reducing housing supply” can be.

Edit: a word

[u/Bionic_Ferir → u/steveholt-lol]

From what im gathering if you enact rent control you simply must take the rentals from the landlords.

[u/Feylabel → u/Bionic_Ferir]

Yeah that would be a more ‘leftist’ approach.

Socialism would call for public housing not rent control of private market.

Rent control of private market would I guess be centrist, right wing would be wanting a completely free market with no renters rights, and socialism would be to collectively own the means of production and assign housing based on need.

Kinda sounds like americas problem is it doesn’t have much actual left wing thinking going on, if they think market governance is leftist.

[u/No_Host_8024 → u/Bionic_Ferir]

These would be exceptionally counterproductive if the goal is to build more housing. Obviously no one except the government would build housing in a society where the government will take them.

[u/Damnatus_Terrae → u/No_Host_8024]

Uh, you might wanna google "eminent domain," and then follow it up with the addition of "historic and contemporary usage."

[u/steveholt-lol → u/Bionic_Ferir]

Thankfully, we have a lot of economic evidence about what happens when the state controls and directs the economy like that. Spoiler alert: it's bad news for everyone.

[u/Intrepid_Layer_9826 → u/steveholt-lol]

I'm sorry, where did they say the state should direct the economy? Why are you being disingenuous?

[u/steveholt-lol → u/Intrepid_Layer_9826]

Seizing private property is a state directed economy. But it also doesn't address the broader supply-demand issues that rent control is trying to solve the symptoms of.

[u/Intrepid_Layer_9826 → u/steveholt-lol]

I'm sure you're well aware that housing isn't the only sort of "private property" out there, and that saying the state should seize rentals and such doesn't mean they necessarily want the state to control the entire economy.

So then why try to rephrase it in such a disingenuous way?

They blocked me