this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024
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I think its a weird argument to say all landlords are evil because even if they were forced to sell their real estate properties, they would just put their wealth elsewhere. They would instead become shareholders or creditors.
The problem is more so in general with people that have a lot of wealth, regardless of how they choose to hold it.
And furthermore, the problem isn’t even with people that have a bit of wealth, it’s with billionaires. If we taxed those assholes properly then governments could just afford to build high rises which would drive real estate prices down.
Landlords are unique in that they are entirely rent-seeking, ie they create no new value at all and seek to eternally gain income without losing any amount of ownership.
Billionaires are certainly the most excessive, but all Capitalists work against the Proletariat.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_rent
I really want more people to engage with the idea that the utter worst thing a person can do in a economic sense is "rent-seek". The IDEA of turn key businesses, investment properties, money for nothing means you are taking from someone else.
They've attempted to expand this downward into welfare, but that's a ridiculous canard that doesn't examine just how much money is being siphoned from the working class by people who leverage capital against them.
Thanks for the links. I understand these concepts better now.
By that definition shareholders are rent seekers too. They extract way more value from the company than they add to it. Except instead of making money through leasing, it’s through dividend collection, capital gains and share buybacks.
As for loan givers, you could argue their existence provides value because it gives people access to funds they wouldn’t otherwise have had, allowing them to purchase goods they wouldn’t have been able to. However, when the whole system is set up such that going into debt is a requirement then the service offered by the loan giver doesn’t really add that much value to society.
In fact, if loans weren’t so tolerated, the market or government would have been forced, at an earlier point in time, to do something to reduce the costs of things we purchase with loans like real estate, cars and education (in places where it isn’t free/cheap).
Instead, loans artificially increase the cost of things to the point where buying them without getting a loan becomes impossible. For instance, by increasing the amortization period of mortgages from 10 years to 20 years to 30 years, the price of a home increased such that now it is completely out of reach to people looking to buy property without a loan.
Wealth inequality is definitely a huge problem, but the issue with landlords is that they are artificially restricting the supply of, and price gouging an already incredibly limited resource that scene needs to survive. At least with food, someone else can always make more and sell it for cheaper, or you can decide to eat something else. But with how housing is now, it’s not uncommon for just a few companies to snatch up nearly all available houses in an area, and there’s only so much “I’ll just move a little farther out” before you are an unsustainable distance from your workplace. That isn’t true of hardly any other market.
Yeah, buying vegetables gives you the seeds to your own solution to hunger (to a minor degree and with caveats) but renting does nothing to give you the seeds to a house, especially if the rent is so high there is no practical way to save money.
Agreed, in fact renting actively takes AWAY the solution to housing, because you can’t save AND the money you pay in just enables landlords to buy up more property, thus making it all more valuable.
That’s true but what I mean is that the other options for wealthy people are just as exploitative.
Shareholders exploit workers and add nothing to society.
Creditors harass people and exploit the fucked up loan system that regular people are forced to rely on, also adding no benefit to society.
Are there though? Beyond food, water, and shelter— stuff gets a lot more… easy to avoid. Food is something easy enough to shop elsewhere, and it’s possible for competitors to come in and undercut existing brands. Water is (for most of the US) relatively easy to acquire cheaply, or even free. But shelter is something that is pretty much impossible to compete with. Every area has a finite amount of space, and once it’s owned, it’s owned. Sure one landlord might lower their rent to attract new tenants, but it’s effectively guaranteed to never have more than a few competitors before you start moving a significant distance away. It’s one of the few things that’s impossible to avoid. You HAVE to exist somewhere, you can’t choose not to, and you can’t shop around endlessly like you can with other things.
You need to work to get the funds to pay for food, water and shelter. Or you go into debt to afford those things, which is probably worst.
By working you are serving the shareholders that will do their best to exploit you. Their greed will funnel it’s way to you in the workplace through shitty policies or a strict boss or low wages or whatever self serving bullshit they come up with.
I guess being exploited by a shareholder feels less direct than by a landlord. However, if all landlords became shareholders, the injection of of capital into company shares would make upper management have to serve the shareholder’s interests even more, ultimately resulting in an increase in the amount of exploitation we experience in the workplace.
I see where you are coming from with the inherent lack of housing supply, but we are nowhere close to running out of finite space. Especially when we are able to create way more homes by building vertically.
And I’m not saying landlords aren’t exploitative. I’m saying that other forms of ownership as just as exploitative.
Homelessness is worse than debt, just to be clear. You can survive with debt, there is no risk of death. Homelessness can, and often is deadly. This is just a fact.
We are at, and even past running out of space that is in commute proximity to an economic zone capable of supporting a non-impoverished lifestyle for the VAST majority of citizens. There’s tons of space in the middle of no where, but that space isn’t useful to anyone because no one can support themselves there. I don’t mean “find work” support yourself (though that too), I mean “have a grocery store within an hour drive one way from your house” support yourself.
As for working under capitalism, you’re right, it still sucks, but you can choose where you work, and there are choices to be had pretty much everywhere. The same is not true of housing, especially with the rise of suburban sprawl. You can choose to work remotely for any business you want, but you can’t choose to “exist” remotely. You have to take up space somewhere. Sure there’s space in the middle of nowhere, but how will you buy gas for your car with no gas station, food to feed yourself with no grocery store. Most of the country is like this. That is the whole problem, you simply can’t survive outside of an economic zone of a certain size, and all the housing in that area is being hoarded. I’m not arguing against the evils of capitalism, but to claim that not being allowed to exist anywhere isn’t a bigger problem then “I’m not being paid what I’m worth” is just a misunderstanding of the problem.