alt Hacker News> Rents cannot (at meaningful scale) exceed local productivity
Manipulating the real estate market via direct economic manipulation, collusion, or regulatory capture is so common that the entire concept of manipulating the market to earn higher profits is called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking.
It's not just that it can, it's that it does so often it's taught in Econ 101. That you don't know this implies you have never taken an economics class or that you forgot what you were taught, and in the meantime certainly have not spent any real effort in learning about economic theory. I think you read a lot of Ayn Rand and right wing libertarian popular books about the free market and how it's perfect. Stop posting confident nonsense.
No, what's happening here is you misunderstood the quoted text, silly.
The claim is not that rents are always at their optimal or most efficient level - they're not! The claim is that you cannot (at meaningful scale) charge people who earn $1,000/month in income $2,000/month in rent to live in a place. They will have to move.
Did you take any arithmetic classes?
And any case, you should stop mind-reading. You're bad at it. I'm not a Randian nor a right-winger nor a libertarian nor free-market idealist.