Unless you're part of a greater organized movement that has the ability to make effective changes, not investing is just screwing yourself over so someone else can make the money. Invest. Buy a home. Save up for retirement. Have nice things. Go on vacations. It's okay to not be the poorest person on Earth. You are not the problem.
this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2024
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I appreciate that take.
I just don't want to be yet another contributor of many to a problem, y'know? Like how even though corporations are by far the largest contributors to climate change, I still try to reduce the excess emissions I possibly produce whenever I can just to help a tiny bit more.
I'm still investing in the stock market regardless, I just want to make sure that diversifying my portfolio won't have an outsized negative impact on others since, well, that would suck. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I believe a single person having two or even three properties isn't an issue. As long as you're a fair and honest landlord. Owning isn't for everyone. Renting is a viable option for many people. Especially if someone is going to live somewhere for only around a year.
There are entire corporations that revolve around slumlording. High rents, poor maintenance, shitty lease terms with hidden fees, kicking out low income renters to raise rates for new tenants, leaving units empty when there are lots of homeless, etc.
John Oliver did a nice episode about these types of slumlords. THESE are the issue. Career landlords. For people owning more than 2 homes if we heavily taxed/fined (like a years worth of rent) empty units (defined as not rented for 4 months out of the year) this would be a start to fix the housing crisis.
Yes, and I appreciate your greater conscience. However, just knowing you functioning with that in mind, I believe you will not be a problem. You will generally behave in a manner that is helpful to humanity. You might make mistakes, but definitely learn from them too.
Also, in my opinion, Lemmy tends to have a rigid all-or-none take on certain matters, such as landlords all being bad. I think that in reality, some people don't want to own homes. They want to rent. So landlords are not only inevitable, but necessary. The relationship becomes exploitative when the situation starts favoring the landlord too much to the point that the tenant is exploited, such as landlords own wayyy too many properties or properties on sale in the market are too expensive forcing people to rent.
However, if you were a landlord in an equitable housing market and I needed a residence to rent for a while, I'm guessing it would he a mutually beneficial relationship.
If you truly believe investing, and especially investing in real estate, is immoral, then you shouldn't do it, the same way you shouldn't eat pork if you keep kosher or halal.
Anything else, especially "it feels more like buying back my own lost value" is such a gigantic cope that I've seen pictures of it taken from the ISS.
Either accept that your beliefs are incorrect, and participate in the market like a normal person, or stick to your beliefs when it's inconvenient too.
This behaviour is morally no better than that of megachurch pastors who preach the immorality of gay sex and get caught paying men to fuck them in the ass.
This behaviour is morally no better than that of megachurch pastors who preach the immorality of gay sex and get caught paying men to fuck them in the ass.
OP didn't say they preached their morals though. Holding morals and preaching them are different things. I'd put this more in the category of people who pray secretly to a different god than the state-enforced religion, since OP is living in a capitalist society whilst not holding capitalist values.
I think there's got to be room for some grey areas in morality. I abhor late-stage capitalism, but I would not rather die than shop at a chain supermarket.
Holding morals and preaching them are different things.
I fundamentally disagree that this distinction exists, and even if it did this is not a situation where it would apply.
Morals regulate your own actions, there is no point in holding a moral value that you don't abide by. That makes you a hypocrite whether you preach that value or not.
Preaching it also makes you a public hypocrite if you get caught, but you're still hypocritical even if you are only betraying a private value, you're just not accountable to others.
And if that's all that matters to you then you don't actually hold that value.
I think there's got to be room for some grey areas in morality.
There is room when you can draw a clear line as to why a principle ought to apply in one situation but not in another, an argument that "it feels different when I do it" is no such standard.
For instance, killing is permissible in self defense, but murder is not acceptable. Easy line to draw that makes the same practical action morally distinct depending on context (aggressor/victim).
I abhor late-stage capitalism, but I would not rather die than shop at a chain supermarket.
And if that's your only option that is a pretty straightforward line you can draw that has nothing to do with your personal gain by ignoring an otherwise inconvenient principle.
"I won't patronise large corporations whenever I have an alternative" is a fair line to draw, as long as you don't immediately walk back on it as soon as it becomes inconvenient by being slightly out of your way or a bit more expensive.
OP said no such thing, however. They straight up went "when I break my own moral principles it doesn't feel as bad as when others break them against me" which is utter horseshit.
You mean to tell me that when you try to kill someone it somehow feels less bad than when someone else tries to kill you? No fucking way, what a discovery!
So yeah, unless OP can actually provide a generalized standard by which anyone can do what they're doing and still maintain an ethical position, they're just finding excuses to placate their own conscience, while pretending to maintain a coherent moral standard, when really they never held anything of the sort, they just don't like to be on the receiving end of the stick.
I fundamentally disagree that this distinction exists, and even if it did this is not a situation where it would apply.
But it does exist; preaching is persuading or guiding others to follow your own beliefs. If no distinction existed then we would be mechanically bound to preach what we believe, and we're not, so it's a choice.
Everyone is a hypocrite to some degree. There are levels of hypocrisy that are breathtaking, and levels that are just meh.
'Thou shalt not kill' is a biblical commandment, not a principle. It comes from the fundamental principle of harm minimisation, and the two examples you gave are different (extreme) applications of that principle, see: the trolley problem etc. It's morality for babies; looking at extreme black and white cases to be able to get a clear, consensus issue. Life is rarely that simple. Morality is never that simple.
They straight up went "when I break my own moral principles it doesn't feel as bad as when others break them against me"
I'm not sure, that seems like another extreme interpretation of something more nuanced.
But it does exist; preaching is persuading or guiding others to follow your own beliefs. If no distinction existed then we would be mechanically bound to preach what we believe, and we're not, so it's a choice.
Let me clarify: there is no such distinction where it pertains to determining the morality of an action. Preaching a value or holding it privately only impacts the perception others have of your transgression, not whether something is a transgression.
Everyone is a hypocrite to some degree.
Everyone who doesn't reexamine their morality to match their actual values and/or does not have a spine will inevitably become a hypocrite given enough time.
If when faced with a moral quandary you actually examine why you are finding yourself in this position of wanting to do something that, by your own moral standards at that point, would be evil, and you stick to an honest self-critique (as in, if it is indeed a moral failure you own it and correct your behaviour) you'll rarely stay a hypocrite for long.
In OP's case, what is happening is one such moment, and they've got nothing on either the re-examination nor the self-critique end. They're like looking to a crowd of strangers for moral absolution to do something they themselves consider immoral/evil.
That is the truest most cut and dry state of moral void, where the individual ignores their own conscience because they were given a pass to do so by someone else, as if anyone has such an authority.
It comes from the fundamental principle of harm minimisation
LMAO get that consequentialist bullshit outta here.
Consequentialism is a fundamentally useless moral framework, you would need to be prescient for it to be in any way useful to you and it can be used to justify literally any action regardless of held principles.
'Thou shalt not kill' is a biblical commandment, not a principle.
You are high if you think any human society was ever cool with murder, (the 6th commandment is more correctly translated to 'thou shall not murder', which tracks given how much killing happens to be not only fine but sanctioned by god himself in the old testament) given how it's almost definitionally wrong to murder.
Also even more ludicrous that you'd think this is somehow something introduced by the torah when we have mesopotamian written laws with explicit punishments for murder and even unjust killing regardless of motive or premeditation.
Humans simply don't want to be killed willy-nilly, this predates the written word and possibly actual coherent language.
It's morality for babies
You're the one who brought in consequentialism, don't blame me for making this conversation basic.
Morality is never that simple.
Nor did I ever state it was.
You think I am claiming it's that simple because you seem to think I'm coming from a place of disagreement with the OP and that's why I argue they're a moral failure.
The problem is that OP is in a place of moral failure to themselves, which is why they're asking for moral license to break their principles instead of doing the arduous work of self correcting, whether by shedding a moral principle they don't actually believe in and accepting their past self being wrong, or by standing firm and accepting the inconvenience that comes from sticking to their principles, and that their present self is wrong.
Regardless of your moral framework, this is the peak of amoral behaviour, as it renders any moral framework fundamentally optional and useless when faced with outside approval.
It makes you a definitionally amoral agent because not only are you susceptible to peer pressure (which is always true to some extent) but you actually seek it out whenever sticking to your principles becomes inconvenient enough, which means you are only ever going to be moral whenever it's convenient, which is just as good as never being moral in the first place.
OP is like an alcoholic looking for enablers, when they know they should be calling their sponsor.
Either accept that your beliefs are incorrect, and participate in the market like a normal person
Yeah?
there is no ethical consumption, just do your best.
If you invest in a broad, market-based index fund like VTSAX, then you're already diversified. Including real estate. Investing in the total stock market (which is what VTSAX is) also includes investing in real estate companies, automatically.
Investing in real estate beyond that would actually make your portfolio LESS diverse, overweight on real estate relative to the market.
As for the moral aspect, stop trying to cope. Either admit that "this is immoral but I want to do it anyway", or admit "this is not immoral". You can't have your pie and eat it too.
Most folks who look at this (economic philosophers?) don't believe that regular working folks are part of the problem. Having a 401k or even working in an oil field isn't necessarily being part of the problem. Being an employee of Walmart doesn't mean someone is objectively a capitalist, they just want to eat and generally survive. I avoid driving, but do, and don't lose sleep over it.
I completely get that.
I mostly have just thought of housing as a different kind of beast, since unlike working a job, I don't have to invest in real estate to save for a house or retirement, but doing so might make it easier to accomplish that.
The biggest problem is definitely going to be full on landlords and private corporate investors, but I don't want to add any more to that problem, no matter how small my impact might be.
For sure! I have rented from small landlords who were great and like family and responsive to problems. Be those people if you are a landlord.
I had landlords like that, it was fantastic. The rental market was super hot at the time, and finding this flat was like a miracle. Eventually I had to suggest that they increase my rent, lol - it was ridiculously low. I was plied with cakes and fine Polish vodka every rent day. When I left they both cried, and said I was like a daughter to them.
The problem is, people who work a full-time job in addition to being a landlord, are not capable of performing the latter job properly. Most successful landlords are scum who do not work otherwise. People who try to do it while continuing to do their "day job" are shit landlords that often cannot even adhere to basic regulations.
A small fight is still a fight. Thanks for trying to be better.
IMO there's nothing wrong with a landlord that charges fair rent (mortgage + well reasoned maintenance costs + a reasonable profit, they do need to live themselves after all) and keeps up with maintenance in a good manner. Remember that not everyone is able to get a mortgage but is able to afford the same amount in rent.
IMO owning property for investment only becomes unethical once you are profiting beyond a "good living"
Property is the safest and largest growth investment that real people can make and the most likely to create generational wealth. Demonising that only advantages the multi-billion dollar conglomerates who have absolutely no ethics.
This is close to my belief. Someone has to own the home and they're worth hundreds of thousands of dollars (I'm not getting into the overblown values right now, one step at a time). Since most people don't have $300k+ in cash (US non-metro), then they're not buying it outright. What's the difference between paying rent to a landlord or mortgage to a bank? Both are making a profit and both can kick you out for non-payment (again, one problem at a time). So, given the current state of housing, you can legitimately provide housing at a reasonable price that doesn't require a 50k+ down payment first. I am not a landlord sympathizer, I am not a landlord. I'm just someone still putting 60% of my monthly mortgage payment into the interest accrued just in the last 30 days (read: new homeowner).
Don't be a dick corpo fuck that buys blocks of houses and let's them sit vacant to drive up scarcity. Don't be a flipper that does a cheap reno to turn $30k of improvements into a $150k upsell. Don't do the cheapest repairs to meet code for your tenants.
Someone has to own the home and they're worth hundreds of thousands of dollars
Public housing. Look at what Finland has done with regards to this topic, and how much it has benefited them.
I look forward to the comments explaining to me why this is impossible in America as if Finland is some magical alternate universe where a mixed-economy works incredibly well.
No matter what you do you'll be able to find someone who says it's immoral. Does investing in the stock market not turn you into a capitalist whose capital exploits labor according to some people? Just do your best, always remember to vote, and maybe read some Henry George when you have a chance.
I feel that using housing as a commodity for building wealth is absolutely immoral. Homes should be owned by those who live in them. But investing is a personal choice. Some people choose to invest in immoral companies or practices. But what you buy with the money doesn't change what you funded to get it.
And just investing in stocks means I won’t have a diversified portfolio that could resist a financial crash as much as real estate can.
That's nonsense. A house would be equally difficult to liquidate in a financial crash than stocks would. Probably even more so. If you have a diversified portfolio and enough savings so that you don't need to touch your investments then you'll handle crashes like that just fine. The stock market has always bounced back up. Always.
I’m someone who believes landlording is immoral
Wouldn't that then mean that there would be no rental apartments available and everyone would be forced to take a loan and buy a home? To me this kind of thinking is just the opposite far end of the spectrum where as what is optimal is likely somewhere in the middle as is the case with most things.
Housing handled by the government leading to removing the requirement to take a loan to buy a house is an option. Landlords are never a mandatory thing, it's absurd to think so.
So the government is your landlord then?
They effectively already are, stop paying property taxes on a property that you own and see what happens. They get to set all kinds of restrictions on what you can do with your property, how and when.
Sounds a lot like a landlord to me.
Having rented before and now owning my own house I can gurantee you that there's a major difference in the freedom between those two.
You think homeowners should not be required to pay property tax and build whatever they want on their property disregarding all safety regulations and building codes? I can definitely see how that would go horribly wrong..
I'm also a former renter, current homeowner, and you certainly get more freedom as a homeowner than you normally would as a renter (although you do sometimes hit the jackpot with a landlord who will let you do anything you want to your rental) but it's not absolute freedom.
The second half of your comment though, is putting words in my mouth that I didn't say. I agree with building codes, safety regulations, permits, etc. I certainly don't trust the morons living next door to me to not blow their house up and mine along with it because they tried to service their own gas line, and I'm willing to give up that bit of freedom for myself because the benefits outweigh the inconvenience.
I am, however, not a fan of property taxes, because I'd like to know that if I someday end up disabled, lose my job, and broke, I'd like to know I'd at least be able tocount on having a roof over my head even if I can't afford to keep the heat and lights on, it would keep me out of the elements and provide some physical security. I like everything those property taxes pay for, but I want it to come out of income taxes.
There's also of course the issue of things like eminent domain and civil asset forfeiture. If the government can just take your home away from you, how real is your ownership of it? Just like how a landlord can decide to evict you or sell the property at any time, sure there's a process they need to go through, but the government has hoops to jump through when they do it as well.
I don't know where you live but the property tax on my house is 200€ a year which is less than half of what I spend on groceries every month. If I end up disabled and without a job, the property tax, from a financial perspective would be among the least of my worries.
In the USA, property taxes are how most towns and cities get the majority of their funding. 200€/year would be crazy low.
In my medium cost of living town (USA), taxes come out to 4, sometimes 5 figures a year. Plus as the area becomes more desirable, property taxes (based on the sale price of a home) go up for recent buyers.
And how crushing would it be if you have no food, no money, no job, and not even a safe place that you're just allowed to exist for want of $200?
Also the taxes in my area, which isn't even a particularly expensive area for the US are something like 10x that.
Well debate about wether taxes are good or not are a whole another discussion. I live in a wellfare state myself so I don't mind the relatively high taxes I'm paying because I've benefited from what the government spends it on my whole life and continue to benefit in the future as well, not to even mention the people less fortunate than me.
If you're broke, disabled and unable to provide for yourself the government will provide you with an apartment and money for food. 200€ a year is pennies compared to the benefits people like this are receiving.
But if it weren't for property taxes, the government wouldn't need to provide me a place to live as a homeowner, every penny of welfare I would need could go to food, utilities, etc. and that frees up the government provided housing for those who don't already have a place to live.
And again, I'm not anti tax, just anti property tax, raise the sales taxes, income taxes, etc. to cover things, especially on the wealthy, my house isn't making me any money until I sell it, so why should I be taxed on it like it is?
As a government employee, I have rented from the government (USA) many times over the years. It is a pretty good deal usually. It includes utilities almost always. Sometimes the house is really bad but usually they are ok, and the price per month (they do it by day) is pretty good.
To be clear, I wasn't talking about liquidations, I was talking about actual market performance. Housing is necessary, even during a financial crisis, whereas unnecessary purchases of goods from corporations become secondary. Thus, housing can stay more stable while stocks crash.
While the market does always go back up, to some degree, I want to be at least slightly more resistant to the possibility of a major failure, (i.e. multiple major tech companies going under from some highly unforseen event) that could lead to entire stocks not existing to go back up again in the future.
I would also theoretically be investing via publicly-traded REIT funds, which could be liquidated in the same manner as stocks.
Wouldn’t that then mean that there would be no rental apartments available and everyone would be forced to take a loan and buy a home?
Not exactly, first off, I mostly mean real estate that is required for survival. Housing, not including the types of places you'd use for a quick vacation stay like hotels, corporate office real estate, etc.
If there weren't landlords, there would be a significant decrease in housing prices, due to a few factors, namely banks now offering lower-rate loans (since the higher-paying institutional investors are out of the picture), higher supply availability (instead of investor hoarding of empty rentals for property value over use by humans), and generally larger amounts of capital available to spend on new homes, rather than rent payments going to alternative asset classes in wealthy investor portfolios.
It also doesn't mean no rentals would exist at all, but that properties wouldn't exist solely for the purpose of being rented. (think someone renting a portion of their existing house, or adding an ADU, instead of buying an entire single-family home solely for the purpose of renting it as an investment.)
Landlording is only a problem because it reduces the supply of housing available for people to own directly, and by the extent of it existing, increases housing values. If existing properties are partially used as rentals by those who have extra space to spare, any of the issues I mentioned functionally don't exist.
But what does it matter if the value of your stocks drop in a market crash? Assumeably you're in it for the long run so you can always just wait for them to go back up before selling. Even if a property might hold it's value better during a crash, which is not guranteed either, that would still be irrelevant unless you intend to sell the house, which again would be difficult during a market crash. If you want something that holds it's value that you can liquidate at any time then perhaps you should buy gold instead.
If you're invested into something such as S&P 500 and something happens which causes a significant number of those companies to go out of business at once, then we're talking about an extremely rare world wide event that'll effect your investments no matter what they're tied into. Keep in mind that the ~7% yearly average growth of the stock market includes events such as both world wars.
TLDR; I want to protect against systemic risk factors, as most of my net worth will be in the market, unable to support me during a financial emergency. It could also carry possible tax benefits, and make it easier to sustain mortgage payments on a home.
I'm mostly trying to ensure that if, for instance, my entire emergency fund is drained from a major medical emergency (or something similar) during that time, I have something I can rely on that is generally more stable to sell during that time, which will overall carry lower tax implications on sale than stocks that have already appreciated significantly more.
Plus, once I get to the point of being close to owning a home, I want to ensure no major financial event could potentially significantly impact my ability to afford mortgage payments.
I plan on investing as much of my income as I can to retire as early as possible, which means the majority of my liquid cash net worth will just be in my emergency fund, with a smaller additional amount in savings. I would prefer some level of extended, more stable assets, that will still grow at least a bit over time to meet my financial goals, but won't be subject to as large drops as the whole market.
I don't plan on investing much of my portfolio into real estate if I do decide to go that route, only 5-10% total, more as a hedge than as a primary strategy. Most of my investing is still in comparatively high-growth index funds.
REITs tend to move like the rest of the market. If there's a big crash they go down like everything else. I think hedging against a big crash the way you're thinking is probably not going to be worthwhile, you're not really gaining significant protection.
Investing in real estate like that is just making it fractional harder for you to ever buy a house too. You can have investment diversity without a reit in the same way you can have a full meal without french fries.
Pardon the whataboutism, but what about things like industrial and office REITs? Would you say that has any impact on the price of housing?
Probably less bad but I might still be a little squicked out by it. You need to talk to someone smarter than me for a clearer and more insightful answer.
There's nothing about small-time landlords that's worse than the evil that many people contribute to the world through their jobs like being a banker or manager of a walmart etc. If you have like 2 or 3 properties you rent out then that's just making your way through the capitalist world we're all stuck in. The evil of buying up properties to rent out comes when you're really hogging up like 5 or more properties. IMO, obviously.
REITs are buying hundreds/thousands of properties for investment
Real estate markets are tied closer to stocks than we like to think
Dont worry as much about having too many egg baskets to diversify as much as having strong egg baskets you are confident they wont break before you reach your goals
I think renting a multiflat out. you know where you live in one unit and rent the rest. is super great for people. your keeping the place up to standards you want to live in and there always needs to be some rental options. Im not answering you question im just saying being a landlord is not always immoral. renting out in abstentia im not comfortable with.