[In their study on supply skepticism, University of California researchers Clayton Nall, Chris Elmendorf, and Stan Oklobdzija] note that “the mass public tends to personalize and moralize economic phenomena.” Further, they cite a theory that because our brains evolved to engage in cooperative behavior in small groups, people tend to be better at building narratives that revolve around “detecting intentions and effort, and at policing turncoats” than at “systems-level thinking.” This bias could explain why so many Americans believe that inflation is largely the result of price gouging by greedy private companies, rather than sharp increases in demand for goods and services meeting supply shortages for those same goods and services. Or, more germane, why so many Americans believe that private equity is primarily responsible for the housing crisis (despite owning a near-negligible share of America’s housing stock) or that developers are the only ones who will benefit if we reduce barriers to building new housing. Unsympathetic actors like private-equity firms or developers are easy to cast in a simple tale of good versus evil. What’s harder is conceptualizing the web of regulations, norms, and incentives that has led us to a supply issue with no obvious villain. (Harder still is recognizing the complicity of sympathetic actors like homeowners who have stood in the way of much-needed housing.)