Broadly speaking, there is no best choice. Everyone will recommend whatever they study, which also tends to be whatever they started with, which tended to be chosen by dumb luck. You'll get the most recommendations for the most popular systems. While there are a few distinctly inferior martial arts (e.g. ones that focus on mysticism), there are no superior ones. Most of the major ones have merits. It depends on the person too -- different types of systems work well for different people. The key is to find a good school. Good school of any system will beat a bad school of any other system. So what do you look for in a good school:
* Hard training. You want to be pushing yourself to the limit. Fast-paced classes (a lot of doing, not a lot of talking). The long explanations do help a little as a rank beginner, but overall, throwing a technique a few thousand times is the best way to get good.
* Not too commercial or money-oriented.
* Not cult-like.
* Still, you want good respect and discipline. The former keeps people safe, while the latter lets classes run efficiently. People should be aware that the reason for the discipline is efficiency and safety, and not because the instructor wants to be worshiped.
* Not too competitive. Even full contact sparring when both people respect each other and are trying to not hurt each other is safe. Even no contact sparring with both people trying to score at any cost is tremendously dangerous.
You should also see that what they teach makes sense. Funny looking stances? Probably not too good. Hands up in fists guarding head, knees bent? Probably better.
I'd advise you to switch schools after about 2 years. That's about enough time to pick up the basics. Go into the new school with an open mind. You'll feel like they do things differently, wrong, and you won't like it. In time, you'll appreciate about half of what the old school does is better, and about half of what the new school does is.
Cost doesn't correlate with quality. Size, to some extent, helps. You want more people to practice with. Avoid things that focus on sport (this is especially prevalent in Taekwondo schools, but there are good ones, and bad ones in other styles). You want good form for a fight, not for scoring points in a match.
Crudely speaking, styles fall into two categories: grappling and kicking-punching. There are schools that do both, but I've never seen one that does both well. Pick one and go with it. If you've gotten good at it, you can eventually try practicing the other. Starting both at the same time usually doesn't work well. They work very differently, and your body will learn better in series than in parallel. I'd give 2 years as a minimum time in one before starting the other, but more may be better.
When evaluating schools, ignore ranks and titles. They're mostly self-appointed. A tenth dan in one school may be equivalent to a brown belt in another.
It's also useful to look at the abilities of students after given periods of training. This may be hard for you to evaluate, though.
I would argue that the questions asked are largely wrong. A ceiling on rents does reduce the amount and quality of housing. The question, then, is: how much does it reduce amount and quality of housing, and how much does it lower prices? If we have minimum wages, unemployment will be higher, but how much higher? On the other hand, how much higher will average wage be?
Economics is a cost/benefit trade-off. If minimum wage doesn't reduce unemployment that much (and all evidence is that it doesn't -- the US is at about a natural level of unemployment in the long term, moving up and down with business cycles), we're better off with it in place. If it kills employment, we're better off without it.
I'm inclined to say Bill could code, just because of his background and upbringing, but being a developer on a joint project doesn't say much.