Has Frank Rolfe Lost It?

No, Frank Rolfe has not lost it.  At least, not yet, not as far as I know.

Frank is the Elon Musk of the manufactured housing industry.  An entity in which he owns a big stake is one of the largest mobile home park owners in the United States.  His educational company, Mobile Home University, is the way most new people get into the business.  In person, he is smart, articulate, generous, gregarious and passionate about what he does.

(Full disclosure – I took a Mobile Home University boot camp course a few years ago.  I enjoyed it and recommend it.  I do not know Frank, other than having chatted with him in an elevator once.)

Like Elon Musk, Frank can be a lightning rod.  One of his parks in Austin was the locus of a rent strike and litigation some years ago.    His comments are often taken out of context and blasted over social media.  He was unfairly targeted in the John Oliver rant about the manufactured housing industry. 

I am not sure why people like to dump on Frank, but I suspect that there is both a casus bello and a casus belli.  The casus bello is that many people feel uncomfortable that residential property is owned by private investors.  The unspoken assumption is that something as basic as a roof over one’s head should not be held hostage to capital.  That is an idea worth engaging with, but the engagement should be done head-on, with the idea itself.  It might be that the most just way to house people is to have all residential property seized by the state, and to have the state provide housing and critical infrastructure.  I disagree because I think that housing is a service better provided by the private sector.  That said, I might be wrong.  We live in the marketplace of ideas; let’s be up front about what we think, engage, and let the best idea win. 

The casus belli is that Frank is an easy target.  A bunch of people think that residential property shouldn’t be privately owned.  A well-spoken property owner sticks his head over the parapet.  What do you think is going to happen?  People don’t articulate their policy position.  Instead, they get their tribalism on and dump on Frank.

Frank shares one more feature with Elon Musk, as well as with Kurt Gödel, John Nash, Vincent Van Gogh, Vaslav Nijinksy and David Foster Wallace.  That is that he sometimes appears to teeter on the brink of insanity.  Madness and genius sometimes co-exist.  We have all known for years that Frank is a genius at business.  That’s why I like to read his blog posts and listen to his podcasts.  However, I have recently noticed hints of madness in Frank’s online communications.

A daemon asks, “Please elaborate”.  I reply,

-OK, I will. 

-Continue.

-He supports Trump, DeSantis and Elise Stefanik.  He likes to heap blame on the current administration.

-Is that madness?

-Trumpistas deny reality.  They deny science, facts, common sense and statistics.  They give a dog-whistle to criminals like Alex Jones and the January 6 rioters.  They say that night is day and day is night.  They do it for money, political gain and, in Trump’s case, because he has daddy issues and likes to see his name in lights.  One definition of madness is the denial of reality.  Trying to give political power to people who deny reality is a second-order form of madness.

-Don’t lots of people support Trump and his acolytes?  Isn’t sanity statistical?

-Plenty of people support the Trumpist wing of the Republican party.  I am even friends with some.  I own mobile home parks, for fuck’s sake.  But don’t let your pocketbook sway your view of the world.  And, no, I do not think that sanity is statistical.  There is truth and there is untruth.  They exist regardless of what we think.

-What does that have to do with Frank?

-Some of his recent posts have included Trumpista rants.  I think he is voting his economic self-interest, but that’s not all.  He is letting his self-interest distort his view of reality.  Maybe he just stays within his echo chamber more than he should.

-Everyone does that.

-He writes about mobile home parks.  He should stick to writing about mobile home parks, instead of ranting about politics.

–Isn’t that what you are doing here?

-Who the hell are you?

–Your image in the mirror.  You are talking to yourself.

-I thought we were here to discuss Frank’s grip on reality, not mine.

Frank recently wrote a blog post called “The Actual Facts about Rent Control”. In it, he discusses an article in the Wall Street Journal titled “Rent Control Measures are Back as Home Rents Reach New Highs” (subscription required).  Here’s the quote that made me think that Frank might be losing it:

Articles like this one by the Wall Street Journal – which used to be a fair and balanced publication – are simply designed to gain favor with left-leaning readers at the expense of those who have not taken the time to actually review the actual stats supporting the topic. State laws and political orientations make rent control a non-starter of biblical proportions. At this stage, you have about as much chance of passing “defund the police” initiatives (which are also still getting press with some media groups). Perhaps they could combine them into one bill and give that a shot?

That made me blink.  The Wall Street Journal, bastion of wokeness?  The publication with an editorial page to the right of the John Birch Society?  Not in this lifetime, I thought.  Is he going to say next that the moon is a communist plot and Queen Elizabeth is a cephalopod?

So, I read the article.  Now, I have to eat some crow.  The article is unfair, inaccurate and dangerous.  I agree with Frank’s conclusion.  I do not, however, agree with his reasoning.

The article says that rent control laws are on the rise.  To support this position, it cites a few state and local jurisdictions that have recently passed rent control laws.  Frank says that the article is bunk, because the majority of states have not passed rent control laws.

Both statements are true.  Most states and municipalities have not passed rent control laws.  But the minority of states and municipalities that have passed rent control laws is growing.  There is a current majority of x and a growing minority of -x.  The law of excluded middle does not apply here.  You do not have to be a genius to hold those two ideas in your head at once.  You cannot use reductio ad absurdum to disprove that argument, because there is no contradiction.

I will go farther.  It is not just untrue to say that rent control is not a problem because the majority of states and municipalities have not adopted it.  It is pernicious to do so, because the argument attempts to wish away the problem of a growing trend.  Yes, states and localities with rent control laws are a minority – but they are a growing minority.  That is a trend, and we should fight like hell against it, or at least work with legislators to craft rational rent control laws.

The problem with the article is rhetorical, rather than arithmetical.  The author manipulates pathos to the exclusion of ethos and logos in a way that is quite common in discussions of rent control.  Three sources are quoted, i.e. a bunch of economists who don’t say much, a pro-rent control politician, and a spokesman for a property-owners industry association.  No specific property owner is given a quote.  We are told that a faceless entity called the “real estate industry” lobbied against rent control laws.  A spokesperson for the real estate industry is quoted as saying that rent control is “an existential threat”.  By contrast, a Florida state senator who supports rent control is allowed to tell a story with his quote: “You renew your lease, and it says, well, we increase your lease by $500 a month.  Who can afford that?” 

The advocate for the residents gets to craft a narrative that puts the reader in the place of a hard-working renter.  Something called the real estate “industry” speaks through a spokesperson and gets a quote that references a buffoonish twentieth-century French philosopher.  Who are you going to believe? 

A more balanced article would also quote a property owner who would say something like, “I am a small business owner.  I do this because I want to provide clean, safe and affordable housing to people who need it, but rent control laws make that very difficult.  Inflation is above eight percent.  Rent caps are three percent.  I cannot stay in business if expenses exceed revenue.  My rents were below market when I bought the place.  If this continues, I will need to skimp on services or infrastructure.  I might have to abandon the property.  Either way, my customers will suffer.  It bothers me that the people who will be most severely injured by this law are my customers, who are some of the most vulnerable people in our population and those whom the law was designed to protect.  I know this sounds crazy, but facts are facts.”

Want balanced news coverage?  Share the microphone equally.  Look at the facts, as well as at low-hanging pathos.  Be honest about your assumptions.  Instead of doing this, the Journal article takes cheap and easy shots.

So – no, Frank has not lost it.  But, like his Doppelgänger Elon Musk, he skates close to the line.  Let’s keep an eye on him going forward.  I am sure that the rest of the public will.