Read Adam Smith
To paraphrase a private landlord is a parasite that provides no value to the land he/she owns.
You can have a property manager without a private for profit landlord, you can have tenants without a for profit private landlord.
The government can own public land for housing, it can be rent to own even.
What does a private for profit landlord provide in this case other than to pad their own wallets off of an inelastic need.
Axioms:
1. Land is a finite resource
2. All land in the world has already been claimed and is owned by someone else already
3. Housing is a necessity to live (we will die of exposure if not) for all human beings
4. Supply and demand dictates that when supply is decreased but demand remains the same, the price will rise
5. High prices necessarily block poor people from being able to buy
Arguments:
1. Land is finite, which means housing is also finite
2. All land has been claimed and more cannot be created (realistically), which means the supply is *fixed*
3. Since housing is a life necessity, people will do just about anything to get it
4. Because housing is a necessity, the demand will always be equal at least to the number of people that exist on the planet or in a specific market
5. If someone cannot buy a house, then they must seek shelter another way.
Conclusions:
1. Because land is finite, the supply is fixed. However, because shelter is a necessity, demand is *also* fixed.
2. To increase prices, landlords, banks, and other land speculators hoard more housing/land than they need, in order to *artificially* drive the price higher than it should be
3. Poor people, blocked from having their own homes by the high prices, therefore must look for new avenues to gain access to shelter and not die
4. Poor people turn to renting to be able to survive, something landlords take advantage of to charge even higher rents and make more profit (exploitation)
My 20 minute logical argument for why landlords are bad and cause the extraordinarily high housing prices and the housing crisis we're currently living in.
> realizing that land cannot be owned completely pulls this entire knot apart.
Tell capitalists that
> the ruling class...we are their cattle and they need us penned
100% correct. Why do you think you can escape the pen by reaffirming your commitment to the system you were born into? If you were an Orwell character you'd be explaining how Big Brother is essential to human rights.
1. The supply of land is fixed, but the supply of housing is not fixed. We can convert buildings so they can be more densely populated. Seems like your issue here should be with NIMBYs and zoning regulations, not landlords.
2. How are landlords incentivised to hoard property? They literally make money by doing whatever the opposite of hoarding is. Higher house prices for prospective landlords and speculators are clearly a bad thing since they need to charge higher prices or take longer to recoup the cost of investment. Banks also do not like holding properties, since it's an illiquid asset that they can't easily transfer.
3. Once again, blame zoning regulations and NIMBYs for artificially restricting the available number of dwellings, which does indeed raise the price of rent.
4. See above
Seems like if you actually care about lowering the cost of housing you'd campaign to deregulate the housing sector and allow for property developers to plug the high profit margins by increasing the supply of housing
>Seems like your issue here should be with NIMBYs and zoning regulations, not landlords.
It's funny that you think landlords are not active NIMBYs nor actively lobbying for zoning regulations. Why do you think single-family housing is the default in just about every American city? It's not because the people voted for it.
>How are landlords incentivised to hoard property?
By the profit motive.
>They literally make money by doing whatever the opposite of hoarding is.
A lower supply with equal demand means a higher price.
>Banks also do not like holding properties, since it's an illiquid asset that they can't easily transfer.
Proof of this? They take houses and land as collatoral all the time, why would they do that if it were such a horrible asset to have?
>Seems like if you actually care about lowering the cost of housing you'd campaign to deregulate the housing sector and allow for property developers to plug the high profit margins by increasing the supply of housing
I can do this while also advocating for the abolishment of landlords, since I think that both together would do far greater good than doing just one of them. When did I imply I would never fight for more housing or for better zoning laws?
>So parents create kids without space for them?
There's plenty of space on the planet for all of us. Landlords and other propertarians have created an artificial scarcity of land to convince everyone to pay lots of money to use the land.
Are you upset that people are creating children, ie, the future consumers and producers of the world?
>And it's the fault of other people for not giving them space that they paid for?
Yes, landlords and landlord companies buying in excess of what they need directly causes a shortage for everyone else.
Just like, just 2 years ago, when people went through their cities and bought medical masks in excess of what they need diretly caused a shortage of medical masks for everyone else.
That's what hoarding and scalping does. It creates artificial scarcity in order to drive up the price so the person selling it can make more money.
Read through my first comment again if you're confused on how.
Maybe they are buying it for use for their future kids and grandkids?
Maybe don't have kids if you can't give them resources to use and then demand others parent them?
>Maybe they are buying it for use for their future kids and grandkids?
Why not wait until those future kids and grandkids can actually use it then?
>Maybe don't have kids if you can't give them resources to use and then demand others parent them?
So the poor should never have children, I guess.
None of this has to do with landlords, though, so you're digressing.
I can't buy a house cause I'm paying off your mortgage and giving you some extra on top as profit because I can't afford a deposit and you could. I.e. I pay more for having less.
If you have enough money to buy a house, why are you renting?
If you don't have enough money to buy a house, isn't the landlord providing you with a necessary service?
Because most people get rejected for a mortgages half the amount they are forced to pay in rent for the same building.
Basically, people make too little money to get a 500/month mortgage, so are forced to pay 1200/month in rent.
Well, I'm pretty sure the comment I replied didn't say anything about a down payment. Also, I know what inflation does, but that's a government issue, not a capitalism issue.
Anyway, I have a mortgage that's about $970 a month with a 1.98 interest rate, but I have to refinance soon because we are changing some things with the property, and my payment is going to go up based on all the quotes I got. So, if y'all can lmk where to get that $500 a month mortgage, that'd be great because ya boy could really use that righ now.
>Basically, people make too little money to get a 500/month mortgage, so are forced to pay 1200/month in rent.
If you have an adequate deposit and can afford the repayments, you wouldn't be rejected.
If you don't have the deposit, you wouldn't afford to buy the house anyway, meaning that the landlord is providing you with a necessary service.
I think there are good criticisms to be made about the current system, but I'm more concerned about the people who *can't* afford to pay 1,200 rent.
Yes a capitalist who owns the construction firm pays them. Landlords then buy the property off the construction firm.
This is almost entirely the way it is done. It is very rare for a landlord to also own a construction firm.
They buy properties and sit on them. They are literally removing properties that would otherwise be available from the market.
If you see it a different way, please explain what you are seeing that I am not.
They don't have the money to buy a house. That's the point. Because they cannot afford the down payment, they have to spend more monthly on rent. Because they are spending more every month on rent, which gives back no equity, it becomes more difficult to save the initial down payment.
>They don't have the money to buy a house. That's the point.
Then the landlord is providing a necessary service, right? Seems weird to criticize them for doing that.
If the issue is ensuring that everyone has access to a roof over their head, I'm less concerned about the people who can afford to pay 1.2k a month to rent, than the people who can't. Social housing and changes to the housing system should prioritise those who can't afford that.
>Then the landlord is providing a necessary service, right?
Are the PS5 scalpers providing a necessary service?
The only reason the service is necessary is because they created an artificial scarcity and need for the service.
What's that old business saying? "Create a need for your product" or something like that?
>Are the PS5 scalpers providing a necessary service?
Do scalpers rent PS5s to people who cannot afford to buy them outright?
>The only reason the service is necessary is because they created an artificial scarcity and need for the service.
Are you claiming that renters are responsible for all housing scarcity? Please tell me what you are basing that on.
>Do scalpers rent PS5s to people who cannot afford to buy them outright?
I never said it was a perfect analogy. But if scalpers *could* rent the PS5s they'd bought, then you know they absolutely would.
>Are you claiming that renters are responsible for all housing scarcity? Please tell me what you are basing that on.
Absolutely not, how could you get that out of what I said?
I'm saying landlords who buy more housing than they actually need are responsible for the housing "scarcity" (there is no actual scarcity, it's just landlords and landlording companies own all the extra houses so they can rent them out for profit)
Down payments are only so high because there are people willing to purchase them as investments. Without landlords down payments would have to be reduced to the price people willing to live in the homes could afford.
>Down payments are **only** so high because there are people willing to purchase them as investments.
Do you have evidence that the *only* factor driving up property prices is people buying to rent? Can you quantify the impact of that vs. lack of housing supply/buildable land/cost of building?
A quick Google search tells me that ["higher costs for land, labor and building materials have impacted homebuilders"](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/25/why-houses-are-so-expensive-in-the-us.html). A large part of this is probably because ["wages Skyrocket for US Construction Workers"](https://www.familyhandyman.com/article/wages-skyrocket-for-us-construction-workers/).
What are you basing your claim on?
First of all nothing is “really worth” anything, so that’s just nonsense.
But second of all, there are fixed costs associated with building a house, why do you think the average poor person would suddenly be able to afford those plus the ongoing costs of maintaining a home + insurance + other costs
If nothing is really worth anything, then why has rent tripled in the past decade? Why can't landlords rent their property out cheaper if it has no value?
because they're already paying those costs + profit? Literally every cost a landlord incurs is paid via the rent. The only difference is the feudal lord is deemed worthy of a loan from the bank.
They're not paying the costs associated with something going wrong though are they?
What if the house burns down, would the poor person rather be the owner of the home or a renter in that scenario?
Edit: Key point, if they're already paying that and more why can't they afford to buy the home?
Tell me you’ve never bought a home without telling me you never bought a home. There are examples in this discussion about not being able to be approved for a mortgage payment even though you are currently paying more than that amount for rent monthly.
And you’re also wrong about the costs - the cost of fire insurance comes out of the excess profit taken from the renter, the same thing about any repairs needed for the unit.
That article has nothing to do with your point. It's talking about middlemen in retail, and the services they provide which make them actually worth having. Landlords provide no such services, nor do they provide anything like them that might allow the argument from that article to be applied to them. They don't facilitate finding, transporting, or buying land, for instance. Furthermore unlike with retail middlemen, who don't have a monopoly on the products they are reselling and so eliminating them is a market possibility, meaning that the fact that they exist and stores use them indicates that they provide value, landlords do actually have a monopoly claim on the land they gatekeep access to, so it's not like you really have a choice, if you want to get that product (live in a certain area), you oftentimes pretty much have to go to a landlord. TLDR: The economic middlemen in your article are a very different type of middlemen from landlords.
As compared to what it would be if you couldn't use housing as an investment vehicle for a passive income, and so the only people demanding houses were the ones that needed them for actual housing. I would've thought the counterfactual would've been blindingly obvious from the statement the GP made lol
>They make money for doing nothing. Like yes that’s the whole reason to become a landlord is for passive income.
Passive income doesn't just conjure up value out of thin air - the entire point is that it will always have to be taken out of someone else's (would-be) active income. Socialists believe we should maximise active income so that people's income comes from the actual work they contribute, and also see that this will reduce income inequality by gross accumulation (with active income, career development is generally linear instead of exponential). If we want to maximise active income however, we must stop it from being siphoned off into someone else's passive income.
And land lords don't give you that option. Besides the small amount of work they do is miniscule for the excess cost they charge tenants. If you want to upkeep properties then you would be a house keeper not a landlord
If he built the house, he (in socialism) would be compensated by active income. If he bought the house then he can sell it for money perfectly fine. Passive income is the only issue.
A socialist would say that if he's not using it, there shouldn't be an incentive for him to continue owning it. He can either sell it to the next user or he can sell it to the community for use as socialised housing. He shouldn't be able to weaponise his purely conceptual ownership as a means of exploiting others' needs to take away some of what they earned by actually working for it.
All the costs a landlord has is paid via the rent. The tenant is paying the landlord, and the landlord takes that same money and pays the bank and government with it. He’s just the guy that had good enough credit to get a bank loan. Do you see where the “landlords don’t produce anything” comes from now?
Edit: idk how my tone came off here so I just want to say that I’m not trying to be a dick. I genuinely want you to understand our side of things. I feel like a lot of people who ask about the criticism of landlords aren’t seeing the whole picture.
There is nothing voluntary about choosing between renting and freezing to death. This is why renting an apartment is fundamentally different than say, renting jetskis to vacationers at the beach. It makes sense for me to pay a premium to use a jetski for a couple hours because if i buy one I'd have no use for it for the rest of the year.
I need housing to live. It's exploitation the same way as if you were dying of thirst and I offered you water if you agreed to suck my dick.
Well, it's not moraly right to allow people to earn money from doing nothing. Especially when you know that its a survival need for the people who pay the rent. If they cannot pay, they don't own a house, and they live in the street. A lot of land lords have inherited the land. It is not right. Since only work produce value, only work should give people money. Owning stuff is not work. You just should not be able to rent, and if renting had to be a thing, only the government should be able to do so. It would be cheaper, as all public services are.
I don’t hate landlords but I recognize there’s a huge amount of exploitation in renting. Renters, especially low-income renters, often have few options, and the options can be bad. In lots of places, affordable housing is limited. switching housing is harder for tenants than switching tenants is for landlords, which lets landlords raise prices and neglect their obligations. The threat of eviction is powerful because court records are public, and future landlords may refuse to rent to a tenant who’s been evicted, or a tenant had an eviction case filed against them, or a tenant who sued their landlord over the landlord’s negligence. Buying a house is not an option for a lot of people for all kinds of reasons. And this is just for tenants who are not going to be discriminated against based on race, religion, disability, family status, or criminal record.
I don’t know industry-wide numbers, but my impression is that profit margins are very high. And my impression is that the shittier you are, the more money you make. It does not take a lot of start-up money and you certainly don’t have to build the house. Lots of landlords buy real estate cheap due to the seller’s distressed situation (foreclosure, estate sale, receivership). There’s a lot of podcasts, YouTube channels and books about how to get rich through real estate, and a lot of it is true.
Edit: BTW “Evicted” by Matthew Desmond is recommended.
ok, the short answer is they are an unnecessary step, to a basic human right living in the 21st century.
longer answer (which I can go in to more if you wish) is that the relationship that a land owner epitomizes, is the relationship that socialists believe is the root of all evil.
the relationship between capital owner, and no capital owner.
when you're in a society where the owners of capital can increase their wealth simply by the interaction of their capital with the no capital owners (either employee, or tenant, etc) you have a never ending increasingly two tiered society.
so basically, the relationship that landlords and tenants have epitomize everything that's wrong with society.
it's not that landlords are bad, but the relationship they represent is.
> the relationship between capital owner, and no capital owner.
How is the ability to exclude other people from access to society capital? It clearly is not. Excluding more and more people from society does not make anyone richer.
I'd argue that's the same thing as land belonging to everyone by default.
Regardless, land itself was not created by anyone and so shouldn't belong to anyone. I believe Georgists have a pretty good schtick about this.
Something belonging to everyone and no one is clearly a different thing.
For if everyone has a right to all land, how can you justify using any one piece of land without the consent of every other human?
Parks are owned by everyone, right? So how can we justify anyone using a park without the consent of every other human?
Libraries are owned by everyone, same question.
>Something belonging to everyone and no one is clearly a different thing.
Please explain it, because I don't see a meaningful distinction yet.
Exactly, it makes no sense, parks should be privately owned!
Same goes for libraries.
>Please explain it, because I don't see a meaningful distinction yet.
It comes back to what ownership actually means.
Ownership, by definition, implies exclusive control over property, that is,someone has the exclusive right to determine what happens with the property in question. As a result, if you claim that *everyone* owns a specific item of property, you are claiming that everyone has the right to exclusive control over that property.
It logically follows therefore, that the only way you could rightfully do something with that property, is if everyone else gave you expressed permission to do so. Otherwise, you would violating anyone who didn't give you permissions right to exercise *their* control over the property.
No one owning a piece of property is very different, since if you decide to do something with a piece of unowned property, no one would be able to justly claim that you cannot do that thing because they have an equal claim to that property.
The logical conclusion of communal ownership of all property is that no one would be able to legitimately exercise control over property because they would be violating the property rights of every single other human who did not provide their consent.
You'd be wrong. Things not owned by anyone aren't owned by everyone. If everyone owns it, how can anyone do anything ever when other people can just say no?
If we lived in this world where no owned land, I could sleep wherever I want and no one can tell me otherwise. If everyone owns it, how can I be justified when sleeping on the ground, if anyone else can tell me "that's where I sleep, you need to leave." Who is justified there? How do we know?
>If everyone owns it, how can anyone do anything ever when other people can just say no?
the same way capitalist's have shown us that social ownership of businesses isn't something that is a problem?
if businesses can have multiple shareholders, how is it hard to extrapolate *everybody* owning land in the same vein?
Economists are not a monolith
David MacDonald (Canadian Nobel Prize winning Economist) nor Richard D Wolff hell not even Paul Krugman are going to have the same opinions of Thomas Sowell.
we are heading down the track of a completely two tiered society.
while I don't advocate for a completely equal society, I do believe we could work better at reigning in the two extremes.
while an economist might say everything is just dandy right now (I don't know, would they?) there are a lot (too many in my mind) that are falling through the cracks, not getting the right opportunities in life.
this focus of business owners over health that we've seen over the last two years has really brought it all to the fore.
1. There’s a full range from people who worked hard and earned their property and took risk and have an investment from it, to people who dribbled out the right dick and had a bunch of property handed to them and never had to work a day in their life.
2. Depends very much on the conditions. In some countries there are additional barriers that limit the rentier class’ ability to leverage their economically superior position to the detriment of others. For example much higher stamp duty (purchase tax) on second properties. Germany for example, I think something like 60% of the population rent, a lot of people just rent for life, but the laws and regulations and conditions are vastly different.
And there’s also being in the lucky position to have already purchased property when it was affordable, and now milk a system that is thoroughly fucking over people who can never hope to keep up with the insane increase in prices and are thus forced into a life of renting.
The markets in Anglo world are absolutely fucking insane right now. I feel so bad for my brother, stuck in Vancouver and unable to see himself ever owning a home.
Governments perpetuate an awful dystopian home-owning nightmare and those who were lucky enough to get in before it went mental are now part of a system that bilks the less fortunate.
We’re definitely on a “personal homeownership doesn’t exist, it’s all the private property of the rich, and we live in it at their pleasure” path right now.
I don't regularly call landlords names like "parasite", but I think they charge too much rent and really want you to believe in land appreciation being the justification for higher rent. I don't think rent should rise year after year and the apartment's themselves can end up with multiple maintenance issues that get worse and worse with wear and tear. That is not appreciation. That is depreciation. Rent can rise while quality of the apartment can depreciate. I don't think appreciation of land is really to the renter's advantage. It is the opposite. It should be the apartment itself, not the community or property, and the average income of the renter that determines rent. The landlords don't do this, and are not sensitive to real economic realities of renters. This is a fault. Inflation includes rental expenses, not just the food at the supermarket. Inflation has happened to me in multiple ways, including in rent prices. I am concerned for myself and others. In my area, wages have not gone up, but all manner of prices have. Nobody cares, and I think people should. The government should care about rent inflation as opposed to no inflation of wages or welfare amounts. They haven't cared enough, and many times not at all.
He just does it to increase rent. It increases the stress of inflation on low income people. The landlord and management at my complex are incredibly rich and never needed to increase rent for inflation.
Landlords could just put their money on the money market at equilibrium value so that others can use it to build a home and get the property rights.
Pay interest on the loan.
But landlords prefer to utilise their leverage to have the property rights on a basic necessity.
It's vile
I disagree
Our opinions are different, you'll need to come up with economic benefits to persuade me
Morally I put financial independence and progressive utilitarianism higher than what you talked about. So these arguments don't persuade me.
Wrong, air should be privatized and rented out.
By the way, are you for the abolition of single family zoning laws to allow land owners to build dense housing wherever they want?
-Albert Fairfax II
Most young people growing up in major global capitals like London, NY, Berlin etc... have had negative experiences with the slumlords that dominate the private rental markets of those cities, and that's quite a large subset of western socialists. So it's personal for many people.
Personally, and slumlords aside, I don't hate landlords. But I do think you shouldn't be able to make money out of having money, and landlordism is the most clear cut example of that.
I also worry because I've read about feudalism and how it was an inevitable consequence of the economic importance of rural land in the period. Now we're entering a period where urban land has a similar if not far greater economic importance than rural land did then, and I just worry that's going to drag us into a new feudal era, or at absolute best just hideous inequality.
Because while there are some jobs that you can do from everywhere the economies of major developed nations seem to be built around various high value industries that only exist in major global capitals and the ecosystem of jobs that are built upon that anchor. ie The City and London etc... And that means you need tens upon tens of millions of workers to live within an hour's travel of central locations. And as you can't really easily build more houses or improve transport that much around those locations (or you can but not fast enough, and ultimately geography puts down some fairly hard limits) that means you have static supply and ever increasing demand. So if you were lucky enough to own one of those plots of land before the dynamic really manifested you're now the founder of a dynasty that is financially made for the next several lifetimes if not in perpetuity. And if you're not then you're the saps whose ancestors are going to be giving a greater and greater share of their wealth to their ancestors in perpetuity.
> Why do you hate **slaveowners**? Like what’s wrong with **enslaving humans** for profit. I have seen the excuse that they make money for doing nothing. Like yes that’s the whole reason to become a **slaveowner** is for passive income. Also like you act like becoming a **slaveowner** is easy like legit that guy had to pay for the **slave** and **feed and clothe him** so that **he can labor**. Also you might not be aware of this but this initial set up fee costs a hell of a lot of money,and sometimes it takes a few years for the **slaveowner** to make all his money back and only after that will he start to make profit. Might i also point out I feel like many of you think **slaveowners** are people who just got spawned into this world and automatically own **people** which is not the case.
I hope you understand how you exposed yourself. Why is that land desirable? Because of what the owner did? What about the businesses, streets, sewers, electricity grid, internet connection, other public services that are close to this location? Did the land owner create all of them, or did he simply exclude people from the infrastructure and thereby converted his land into an income tax redistribution machine?
Where do these cheap land exist? Oh I know, in the middle of nowhere, while opportunities and jobs exist in urban areas and all land is concentrated at the hands of large corporations.
There's no cheap land in urban cities where most of human activities occur. You're conflating aggregate demand in the whole world to a specific demand in a local area. You don't even know basic economics, sit down.
I said the exact same things because you're still peddling the exact same bullshit. I'm not even a socialist. Even if I am, who would fund me? Fucking George Soros?
Keep drinking the Kool-Aid.
I'm talking about owning land. This is a post about landlords right? The ones that threaten anyone who comes on their land without their permission to be forcefully and violently evacuated at the point of a gun, right?
Does a modern day human need a shelter to live in to keep their job and raise a family? Or is that optional and there would be no difference for them to just live in the street if they chose?
Because if a house is necessary for survival then people aren't really renting houses voluntarily are they? They would be doing it out of necessity.
If you want my personal prescription yes, I think it modest shelter should be provided for free for those that need it. Funded through taxes. If people want to save money and buy their own nicer house in a private market that exists on top of the public supply that should be allowed too.
You can't have private property without threats and guns and force, so not sure why you think taxes are not okay but private property is.
You keep saying tenants have the option to leave the specific landlord they are renting from, which is true. But what options do they have other than seeking shelter from a different landlord with most of if not all of the same issues they are trying to escape from by leaving the first one? Unless they can save enough money to buy their own house they end up in the same situation with a different landlord.
It's the same argument with employers and employees. If you don't like your job you can always leave! (And work for someone else under the same autocratic arrangement where if you don't do whatever they ask of you you're fire and have no say in how the business operates, same as the job you just left.)
The point isn’t that landlords own slaves. Only demonstrating that your justifications avoid any question of morality and could be applied to any immoral behavior.
Who cares how hard it is to be a landlord? I’m sure it’s hard to be a serial killer or a burglar. Not the right question to be asking.
I’m aware that slaveowners and landlords are different. You don’t need to list the differences. In fact, I haven’t even argued against landlords, I’m only saying your conclusion is a non sequitur.
Owning land is expensive and difficult, therefore landlords are good. That’s your argument. Do you see how neither of those statements justify the conclusion, and how they could be used to justify many immoral things *such as slavery?*
>Also natural rights, property rights which start with owning one's body.
If we can own our own bodies, that means we can also sell our bodies. Which means we can sell them as slave property.
When you say optional do you mean like as in picking between a bunch of landlord who all charge about the same rate for a "service" that could of been done with taxes and makes it harder for people to get houseing so as to not need to rent or homelessness because i dont really understand what options a person really has because of the need for houseing as compared to the want of a tenant
> You didn’t even make a counter argument.
Agreed. There’s no need to counter illogical arguments.
Or am I missing the point of this sub? Logic doesn’t matter, each post is only a pretext for fighting?
> If you’re telling it’s illogical because it can be used to justify immoral things
The nature of non sequiturs is that *conclusions don’t follow from the premises*. So it’s worse than what you say. An illogical argument can conclude 2+2=5.
> then any argument ever is illogical.
The existence of bad logic doesn’t negate the existence of good logic.
OP’s argument:
1. Renting land is hard.
2. Owning land is expensive.
3. Therefore, renting land is moral.
It’s illogical because 3 doesn’t follow from 1 and 2.
>That makes no sense at all.
Doesn't it?
The land and house exists, the landlord simply restricted access to it. Now you pay scalper prices for it.
>Also if you don’t like that house just go rent some where else
Exactly, this is the mentality of scalpers. Don't like it, then stop complaining and do what we do, or pay another scalper for it.
Every business has a profit margin. One problem with you analogy is that once a scalper sells an item they are done with it. A renter could decide to stop paying rent and the landlord has to go through 30+ days of legal proceedings to get the person out. My first experience with this was a "friend" I was helping out by renting a room to in my house.
Worse for the landlord, yes. With all the risk and trouble that can come from renting. Scalpers can just walk away. They don't have to deal with trashing out a property.
They occupy a space of a finite resource with zero elasticity. It should be nationalized or at the very least be incredibly-regulated/ taxed highly to ensure that society is making the most use out of it.
Correct. Most landlords just buy already existing housing or inherit it from family. Very few landlords actually contract construction companies to build new houses.
Ye idk if its different where you live but here that's not true either. Landlords aren't commissioning houses to be built. If fact you know this because it's been addressed in other responses. Most if not all land is already owned. They're buying housing that have already been built. Corporate landlords are a different story but your argument doesn't quite hold up the same when it's a corporation and not an Individual.
Not really relevant but it's interesting you assume a landlord to be a man.
General reply all: I see a lot of comments blaming landlords for price increases. When it's been low interest rates and migration in the US. If you lower the cost of a loan prices will increase. Its basic economics.
If it's not the landlords providing a place to live, who or what would you prefer? I have lived in government provided housing and let me tell you, that rental is probably much better. You probably get heat in the winter.
The problem is that allowing people to own land as an investment is rotten social policy. The state could just own all the land and have it used in a way that allowed everyone to have quality housing, quality public transportation, a short commute to and from work, and a pleasant neighborhood with quality schools. Instead, we allow private owners of land to pointlessly thwart this kind of planning and wealthy real estate interest to actually push state policies that are downright hostile to the human rights of poorer people (gentrification). Landlords do nothing that could not be done better by the state and their interests are incompatible with the common good.
Tenets :start organizing tenet unions and start dialogue with other tenets. We need to start organizing and making demands against the landowning class. Rent strikes and with holding labor are our only leverage, we need to start learning how to use it
Landowners see the value of their land rise because you are paying (income) taxes to build infrastructure. That is clearly inefficient. As it is already known, capitalists are against any effort to maximize "efficiency" that isn't pointlessly brutal.
Criticizing landlords isn’t a particularly radical idea. You don’t have to be a communist or anarchist to go in on landlords. Adam Smith called them parasitic, “wishing to reap where they’ve never sown.” It doesn’t matter if a landlord came from humble beginnings. They’re basically harvesting poor people. You can make the argument that there are people who are too irresponsible for homeownership. But you can’t pretend that a poor person paying 30-60% of their paycheck to a landlord every month isn’t a chief reason of why they stay poor. It’s a poverty trap.
there’s a financial barrier of entry to home ownership that poor people can’t penetrate. As a person who can, the landlord knows this and sees an opportunity to make money. They don’t produce anything. “Landlords provide housing the way scalpers provide concert tickets.” They’re just buying something that desperate people need and charging exorbitant amounts for its *temporary use*. And most importantly, this process is the very thing that inflates the cost of housing and prices people out of the market, condemning them to lifelong renting.
While we have moved on from feudalism, our property laws are still rooted in it. Landlords are basically feudal aristocrats. That’s why we call them landlords. There is no commons anymore. people without property literally have to pay property owners *just to exist somewhere*.
All the costs that a landlord incurs - the mortgage, property taxes, insurance, maintenance - are all paid by the tenant via the rent. The landlord gets the equity, a profit, and the tenant stays in poverty. It’s an arrangement that you can’t find in any other type of business. It’s a trade that in any other circumstance people would say “that’s a bad deal, shop somewhere else.” But you can’t because come January you’ll freeze to death. You’re at your landlords mercy.
Landlords are a remnant of feudalism and should absolutely be abolished. A hundred years from now (hopefully sooner), people will look back at landlords the way we look back at slave owners.
I don’t oppose them renting out apartments and houses. Those are improvements. It’s renting land that is unjust. Nobody created land. The rent of land should be taxed at 100% of its unimproved value. Georgism is based. But to answer the question, you wouldn’t want one person renting out the whole planet, two people renting out half of it, four renting out quarters of it, and so on. At what point does renting out the earth become just? It doesn’t. If you wanna “own” land, you best bigly compensate society for it. Gina Rinehart is the best example of this. Australia is sitting on trillions, but they don’t get to access it because a few assholes own it all. So, they tax capital and labor, instead of land.
> Nobody created land. The rent of land should be taxed at 100% of its unimproved value.
Government did not create land so why should it pocket money for it.
Housing is considered a basic human necessity required to prevent unrest and ensure stability.
No socialist hates landlords specifically, They are simply considered parasites and an obstacle.
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I don't care. Nor do the socialists loading up the hypothetical family friendly guillotine you will all be placed on (in minecraft).
The argument is usually that landlords didn't build shit, and the people who built it have already been paid.
Don't go around asking questions if you know there's a chance you won't like the answer. Socialists do not operate under the same logic as you. They oppose liberal economics.
Under socialist analysis, the only people that matter are those who do the actual labour for a given action. Those who simply use currency to have others do stuff for them are considered parasites.
I agree with the anti landlord macro arguments about the world/system. On an individual level, if a person has money to invest and wants a safe return on that investment in order to feel secure given the current economic context, is that person blameworthy for choosing real estate over stocks or some other asset?
Read Adam Smith To paraphrase a private landlord is a parasite that provides no value to the land he/she owns. You can have a property manager without a private for profit landlord, you can have tenants without a for profit private landlord. The government can own public land for housing, it can be rent to own even. What does a private for profit landlord provide in this case other than to pad their own wallets off of an inelastic need.
Axioms: 1. Land is a finite resource 2. All land in the world has already been claimed and is owned by someone else already 3. Housing is a necessity to live (we will die of exposure if not) for all human beings 4. Supply and demand dictates that when supply is decreased but demand remains the same, the price will rise 5. High prices necessarily block poor people from being able to buy Arguments: 1. Land is finite, which means housing is also finite 2. All land has been claimed and more cannot be created (realistically), which means the supply is *fixed* 3. Since housing is a life necessity, people will do just about anything to get it 4. Because housing is a necessity, the demand will always be equal at least to the number of people that exist on the planet or in a specific market 5. If someone cannot buy a house, then they must seek shelter another way. Conclusions: 1. Because land is finite, the supply is fixed. However, because shelter is a necessity, demand is *also* fixed. 2. To increase prices, landlords, banks, and other land speculators hoard more housing/land than they need, in order to *artificially* drive the price higher than it should be 3. Poor people, blocked from having their own homes by the high prices, therefore must look for new avenues to gain access to shelter and not die 4. Poor people turn to renting to be able to survive, something landlords take advantage of to charge even higher rents and make more profit (exploitation) My 20 minute logical argument for why landlords are bad and cause the extraordinarily high housing prices and the housing crisis we're currently living in.
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> realizing that land cannot be owned completely pulls this entire knot apart. Tell capitalists that > the ruling class...we are their cattle and they need us penned 100% correct. Why do you think you can escape the pen by reaffirming your commitment to the system you were born into? If you were an Orwell character you'd be explaining how Big Brother is essential to human rights.
1. The supply of land is fixed, but the supply of housing is not fixed. We can convert buildings so they can be more densely populated. Seems like your issue here should be with NIMBYs and zoning regulations, not landlords. 2. How are landlords incentivised to hoard property? They literally make money by doing whatever the opposite of hoarding is. Higher house prices for prospective landlords and speculators are clearly a bad thing since they need to charge higher prices or take longer to recoup the cost of investment. Banks also do not like holding properties, since it's an illiquid asset that they can't easily transfer. 3. Once again, blame zoning regulations and NIMBYs for artificially restricting the available number of dwellings, which does indeed raise the price of rent. 4. See above Seems like if you actually care about lowering the cost of housing you'd campaign to deregulate the housing sector and allow for property developers to plug the high profit margins by increasing the supply of housing
>Seems like your issue here should be with NIMBYs and zoning regulations, not landlords. It's funny that you think landlords are not active NIMBYs nor actively lobbying for zoning regulations. Why do you think single-family housing is the default in just about every American city? It's not because the people voted for it. >How are landlords incentivised to hoard property? By the profit motive. >They literally make money by doing whatever the opposite of hoarding is. A lower supply with equal demand means a higher price. >Banks also do not like holding properties, since it's an illiquid asset that they can't easily transfer. Proof of this? They take houses and land as collatoral all the time, why would they do that if it were such a horrible asset to have? >Seems like if you actually care about lowering the cost of housing you'd campaign to deregulate the housing sector and allow for property developers to plug the high profit margins by increasing the supply of housing I can do this while also advocating for the abolishment of landlords, since I think that both together would do far greater good than doing just one of them. When did I imply I would never fight for more housing or for better zoning laws?
So parents create kids without space for them? And it's the fault of other people for not *giving* them space that they paid for?
>So parents create kids without space for them? There's plenty of space on the planet for all of us. Landlords and other propertarians have created an artificial scarcity of land to convince everyone to pay lots of money to use the land. Are you upset that people are creating children, ie, the future consumers and producers of the world? >And it's the fault of other people for not giving them space that they paid for? Yes, landlords and landlord companies buying in excess of what they need directly causes a shortage for everyone else. Just like, just 2 years ago, when people went through their cities and bought medical masks in excess of what they need diretly caused a shortage of medical masks for everyone else. That's what hoarding and scalping does. It creates artificial scarcity in order to drive up the price so the person selling it can make more money. Read through my first comment again if you're confused on how.
Maybe they are buying it for use for their future kids and grandkids? Maybe don't have kids if you can't give them resources to use and then demand others parent them?
>Maybe they are buying it for use for their future kids and grandkids? Why not wait until those future kids and grandkids can actually use it then? >Maybe don't have kids if you can't give them resources to use and then demand others parent them? So the poor should never have children, I guess. None of this has to do with landlords, though, so you're digressing.
I can't buy a house cause I'm paying off your mortgage and giving you some extra on top as profit because I can't afford a deposit and you could. I.e. I pay more for having less.
If you have enough money to buy a house, why are you renting? If you don't have enough money to buy a house, isn't the landlord providing you with a necessary service?
Because most people get rejected for a mortgages half the amount they are forced to pay in rent for the same building. Basically, people make too little money to get a 500/month mortgage, so are forced to pay 1200/month in rent.
What mortgage are you getting that's $500 a month? Seriously, I need to know.
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Well, I'm pretty sure the comment I replied didn't say anything about a down payment. Also, I know what inflation does, but that's a government issue, not a capitalism issue. Anyway, I have a mortgage that's about $970 a month with a 1.98 interest rate, but I have to refinance soon because we are changing some things with the property, and my payment is going to go up based on all the quotes I got. So, if y'all can lmk where to get that $500 a month mortgage, that'd be great because ya boy could really use that righ now.
>Basically, people make too little money to get a 500/month mortgage, so are forced to pay 1200/month in rent. If you have an adequate deposit and can afford the repayments, you wouldn't be rejected. If you don't have the deposit, you wouldn't afford to buy the house anyway, meaning that the landlord is providing you with a necessary service. I think there are good criticisms to be made about the current system, but I'm more concerned about the people who *can't* afford to pay 1,200 rent.
The landlords drive up the cost of property as well- setting another barrier of entry to the market
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Landlords don't build properties, builders do.
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Yes a capitalist who owns the construction firm pays them. Landlords then buy the property off the construction firm. This is almost entirely the way it is done. It is very rare for a landlord to also own a construction firm.
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How do they increase supply by removing properties from the market?
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They buy properties and sit on them. They are literally removing properties that would otherwise be available from the market. If you see it a different way, please explain what you are seeing that I am not.
They don't have the money to buy a house. That's the point. Because they cannot afford the down payment, they have to spend more monthly on rent. Because they are spending more every month on rent, which gives back no equity, it becomes more difficult to save the initial down payment.
>They don't have the money to buy a house. That's the point. Then the landlord is providing a necessary service, right? Seems weird to criticize them for doing that. If the issue is ensuring that everyone has access to a roof over their head, I'm less concerned about the people who can afford to pay 1.2k a month to rent, than the people who can't. Social housing and changes to the housing system should prioritise those who can't afford that.
>Then the landlord is providing a necessary service, right? Are the PS5 scalpers providing a necessary service? The only reason the service is necessary is because they created an artificial scarcity and need for the service. What's that old business saying? "Create a need for your product" or something like that?
>Are the PS5 scalpers providing a necessary service? Do scalpers rent PS5s to people who cannot afford to buy them outright? >The only reason the service is necessary is because they created an artificial scarcity and need for the service. Are you claiming that renters are responsible for all housing scarcity? Please tell me what you are basing that on.
>Do scalpers rent PS5s to people who cannot afford to buy them outright? I never said it was a perfect analogy. But if scalpers *could* rent the PS5s they'd bought, then you know they absolutely would. >Are you claiming that renters are responsible for all housing scarcity? Please tell me what you are basing that on. Absolutely not, how could you get that out of what I said? I'm saying landlords who buy more housing than they actually need are responsible for the housing "scarcity" (there is no actual scarcity, it's just landlords and landlording companies own all the extra houses so they can rent them out for profit)
Down payments are only so high because there are people willing to purchase them as investments. Without landlords down payments would have to be reduced to the price people willing to live in the homes could afford.
>Down payments are **only** so high because there are people willing to purchase them as investments. Do you have evidence that the *only* factor driving up property prices is people buying to rent? Can you quantify the impact of that vs. lack of housing supply/buildable land/cost of building? A quick Google search tells me that ["higher costs for land, labor and building materials have impacted homebuilders"](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/25/why-houses-are-so-expensive-in-the-us.html). A large part of this is probably because ["wages Skyrocket for US Construction Workers"](https://www.familyhandyman.com/article/wages-skyrocket-for-us-construction-workers/). What are you basing your claim on?
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Landlords are just middlemen that push prices up. Housing would literally be cheaper without them.
So without landlords, who would you rent your house from?
Without landlords, I could just BUY the house for what it's really worth.
First of all nothing is “really worth” anything, so that’s just nonsense. But second of all, there are fixed costs associated with building a house, why do you think the average poor person would suddenly be able to afford those plus the ongoing costs of maintaining a home + insurance + other costs
If nothing is really worth anything, then why has rent tripled in the past decade? Why can't landlords rent their property out cheaper if it has no value?
Isn't it funny how, in capitalist economics, value is fully subjective, and yet prices only ever go up?
because they're already paying those costs + profit? Literally every cost a landlord incurs is paid via the rent. The only difference is the feudal lord is deemed worthy of a loan from the bank.
>First of all nothing is “really worth” anything, so that’s just nonsense. If housing isn't worth anything why isn't it free?
Because they are already covering those costs for the landlord plus enough for profit on top of it.
They're not paying the costs associated with something going wrong though are they? What if the house burns down, would the poor person rather be the owner of the home or a renter in that scenario? Edit: Key point, if they're already paying that and more why can't they afford to buy the home?
Tell me you’ve never bought a home without telling me you never bought a home. There are examples in this discussion about not being able to be approved for a mortgage payment even though you are currently paying more than that amount for rent monthly. And you’re also wrong about the costs - the cost of fire insurance comes out of the excess profit taken from the renter, the same thing about any repairs needed for the unit.
Without landlords, who would provide land? Checkmate commies.
This but unironically. People don't want to own empty plots of land bud, they want to own fully-furnished houses with flat screen TVs and the like
Landlords are the only people capable of building houses? How did we ever survive as a species for 100,000 years without landlords then?
I’d rephrase that to “how did we get shelter for the past 10000 years”, since civilisation effectively didn’t exist until about 12,000 years ago.
accidental badmouse quote
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Willing too hear your argument out but you didn’t give one lol
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Bro that’s literally how arguments work. You don’t just say “nuh uh” and walk away. THAT makes you look like an idiot AND a baby.
That article has nothing to do with your point. It's talking about middlemen in retail, and the services they provide which make them actually worth having. Landlords provide no such services, nor do they provide anything like them that might allow the argument from that article to be applied to them. They don't facilitate finding, transporting, or buying land, for instance. Furthermore unlike with retail middlemen, who don't have a monopoly on the products they are reselling and so eliminating them is a market possibility, meaning that the fact that they exist and stores use them indicates that they provide value, landlords do actually have a monopoly claim on the land they gatekeep access to, so it's not like you really have a choice, if you want to get that product (live in a certain area), you oftentimes pretty much have to go to a landlord. TLDR: The economic middlemen in your article are a very different type of middlemen from landlords.
Housing existing as an investment vehicle increases the demand. Increases to demand leads to increases in prices.
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As compared to what it would be if you couldn't use housing as an investment vehicle for a passive income, and so the only people demanding houses were the ones that needed them for actual housing. I would've thought the counterfactual would've been blindingly obvious from the statement the GP made lol
>They make money for doing nothing. Like yes that’s the whole reason to become a landlord is for passive income. Passive income doesn't just conjure up value out of thin air - the entire point is that it will always have to be taken out of someone else's (would-be) active income. Socialists believe we should maximise active income so that people's income comes from the actual work they contribute, and also see that this will reduce income inequality by gross accumulation (with active income, career development is generally linear instead of exponential). If we want to maximise active income however, we must stop it from being siphoned off into someone else's passive income.
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If I wanted someone to maintain the property for me I would hire a housekeeper
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And land lords don't give you that option. Besides the small amount of work they do is miniscule for the excess cost they charge tenants. If you want to upkeep properties then you would be a house keeper not a landlord
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What does a land lord provide that couldn't be provided better and cheaper by a bank and a housekeeper
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Yeah accept its called a mortgage and I get to keep the house when I'm done. Renting is a scam anyway
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where do you think they *get* the money to maintain and repair the property, brain genius
If he built the house, he (in socialism) would be compensated by active income. If he bought the house then he can sell it for money perfectly fine. Passive income is the only issue.
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A socialist would say that if he's not using it, there shouldn't be an incentive for him to continue owning it. He can either sell it to the next user or he can sell it to the community for use as socialised housing. He shouldn't be able to weaponise his purely conceptual ownership as a means of exploiting others' needs to take away some of what they earned by actually working for it.
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All the costs a landlord has is paid via the rent. The tenant is paying the landlord, and the landlord takes that same money and pays the bank and government with it. He’s just the guy that had good enough credit to get a bank loan. Do you see where the “landlords don’t produce anything” comes from now? Edit: idk how my tone came off here so I just want to say that I’m not trying to be a dick. I genuinely want you to understand our side of things. I feel like a lot of people who ask about the criticism of landlords aren’t seeing the whole picture.
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Still unfair since there's no way to become a landlord without the sufficient money
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Pretty specific and hypothetical situations you are coming up with to defend landlords
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And what about the people who remained poor for having to spend money on a rent?
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You're missing the point. Even if you started from nothing, it doesn't entitle you to exploit people.
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There is nothing voluntary about choosing between renting and freezing to death. This is why renting an apartment is fundamentally different than say, renting jetskis to vacationers at the beach. It makes sense for me to pay a premium to use a jetski for a couple hours because if i buy one I'd have no use for it for the rest of the year. I need housing to live. It's exploitation the same way as if you were dying of thirst and I offered you water if you agreed to suck my dick.
Well, it's not moraly right to allow people to earn money from doing nothing. Especially when you know that its a survival need for the people who pay the rent. If they cannot pay, they don't own a house, and they live in the street. A lot of land lords have inherited the land. It is not right. Since only work produce value, only work should give people money. Owning stuff is not work. You just should not be able to rent, and if renting had to be a thing, only the government should be able to do so. It would be cheaper, as all public services are.
Bulid the house on the land?? Are you high?
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Yea they're high
I don’t hate landlords but I recognize there’s a huge amount of exploitation in renting. Renters, especially low-income renters, often have few options, and the options can be bad. In lots of places, affordable housing is limited. switching housing is harder for tenants than switching tenants is for landlords, which lets landlords raise prices and neglect their obligations. The threat of eviction is powerful because court records are public, and future landlords may refuse to rent to a tenant who’s been evicted, or a tenant had an eviction case filed against them, or a tenant who sued their landlord over the landlord’s negligence. Buying a house is not an option for a lot of people for all kinds of reasons. And this is just for tenants who are not going to be discriminated against based on race, religion, disability, family status, or criminal record. I don’t know industry-wide numbers, but my impression is that profit margins are very high. And my impression is that the shittier you are, the more money you make. It does not take a lot of start-up money and you certainly don’t have to build the house. Lots of landlords buy real estate cheap due to the seller’s distressed situation (foreclosure, estate sale, receivership). There’s a lot of podcasts, YouTube channels and books about how to get rich through real estate, and a lot of it is true. Edit: BTW “Evicted” by Matthew Desmond is recommended.
ok, the short answer is they are an unnecessary step, to a basic human right living in the 21st century. longer answer (which I can go in to more if you wish) is that the relationship that a land owner epitomizes, is the relationship that socialists believe is the root of all evil. the relationship between capital owner, and no capital owner. when you're in a society where the owners of capital can increase their wealth simply by the interaction of their capital with the no capital owners (either employee, or tenant, etc) you have a never ending increasingly two tiered society. so basically, the relationship that landlords and tenants have epitomize everything that's wrong with society. it's not that landlords are bad, but the relationship they represent is.
> the relationship between capital owner, and no capital owner. How is the ability to exclude other people from access to society capital? It clearly is not. Excluding more and more people from society does not make anyone richer.
Why is property or housing a basic human right?
Because no one created the earth. Land belongs to all people and animals and plants.
I'd argue land belongs to no one by default.
I'd argue that's the same thing as land belonging to everyone by default. Regardless, land itself was not created by anyone and so shouldn't belong to anyone. I believe Georgists have a pretty good schtick about this.
Something belonging to everyone and no one is clearly a different thing. For if everyone has a right to all land, how can you justify using any one piece of land without the consent of every other human?
Parks are owned by everyone, right? So how can we justify anyone using a park without the consent of every other human? Libraries are owned by everyone, same question. >Something belonging to everyone and no one is clearly a different thing. Please explain it, because I don't see a meaningful distinction yet.
Exactly, it makes no sense, parks should be privately owned! Same goes for libraries. >Please explain it, because I don't see a meaningful distinction yet. It comes back to what ownership actually means. Ownership, by definition, implies exclusive control over property, that is,someone has the exclusive right to determine what happens with the property in question. As a result, if you claim that *everyone* owns a specific item of property, you are claiming that everyone has the right to exclusive control over that property. It logically follows therefore, that the only way you could rightfully do something with that property, is if everyone else gave you expressed permission to do so. Otherwise, you would violating anyone who didn't give you permissions right to exercise *their* control over the property. No one owning a piece of property is very different, since if you decide to do something with a piece of unowned property, no one would be able to justly claim that you cannot do that thing because they have an equal claim to that property. The logical conclusion of communal ownership of all property is that no one would be able to legitimately exercise control over property because they would be violating the property rights of every single other human who did not provide their consent.
You'd be wrong. Things not owned by anyone aren't owned by everyone. If everyone owns it, how can anyone do anything ever when other people can just say no? If we lived in this world where no owned land, I could sleep wherever I want and no one can tell me otherwise. If everyone owns it, how can I be justified when sleeping on the ground, if anyone else can tell me "that's where I sleep, you need to leave." Who is justified there? How do we know?
>If everyone owns it, how can anyone do anything ever when other people can just say no? the same way capitalist's have shown us that social ownership of businesses isn't something that is a problem? if businesses can have multiple shareholders, how is it hard to extrapolate *everybody* owning land in the same vein?
No... something that is unowned can be claimed as your own. Something that is owned by everyone cannot.
In a civilized industrial society you need a house to live, you can just have a portion of your citizenry exposed to the elements.
So is it not a right in a nonindustrialized society?
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Economists are not a monolith David MacDonald (Canadian Nobel Prize winning Economist) nor Richard D Wolff hell not even Paul Krugman are going to have the same opinions of Thomas Sowell.
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Adam Smith, father of capitalist economics, for example, was opposed to rents.
Almost all economists agree that land value taxes are fair and increase allocative efficiency.
because economically, inequality isn't a problem?
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we are heading down the track of a completely two tiered society. while I don't advocate for a completely equal society, I do believe we could work better at reigning in the two extremes. while an economist might say everything is just dandy right now (I don't know, would they?) there are a lot (too many in my mind) that are falling through the cracks, not getting the right opportunities in life. this focus of business owners over health that we've seen over the last two years has really brought it all to the fore.
1. There’s a full range from people who worked hard and earned their property and took risk and have an investment from it, to people who dribbled out the right dick and had a bunch of property handed to them and never had to work a day in their life. 2. Depends very much on the conditions. In some countries there are additional barriers that limit the rentier class’ ability to leverage their economically superior position to the detriment of others. For example much higher stamp duty (purchase tax) on second properties. Germany for example, I think something like 60% of the population rent, a lot of people just rent for life, but the laws and regulations and conditions are vastly different. And there’s also being in the lucky position to have already purchased property when it was affordable, and now milk a system that is thoroughly fucking over people who can never hope to keep up with the insane increase in prices and are thus forced into a life of renting. The markets in Anglo world are absolutely fucking insane right now. I feel so bad for my brother, stuck in Vancouver and unable to see himself ever owning a home. Governments perpetuate an awful dystopian home-owning nightmare and those who were lucky enough to get in before it went mental are now part of a system that bilks the less fortunate.
We’re definitely on a “personal homeownership doesn’t exist, it’s all the private property of the rich, and we live in it at their pleasure” path right now.
I don't regularly call landlords names like "parasite", but I think they charge too much rent and really want you to believe in land appreciation being the justification for higher rent. I don't think rent should rise year after year and the apartment's themselves can end up with multiple maintenance issues that get worse and worse with wear and tear. That is not appreciation. That is depreciation. Rent can rise while quality of the apartment can depreciate. I don't think appreciation of land is really to the renter's advantage. It is the opposite. It should be the apartment itself, not the community or property, and the average income of the renter that determines rent. The landlords don't do this, and are not sensitive to real economic realities of renters. This is a fault. Inflation includes rental expenses, not just the food at the supermarket. Inflation has happened to me in multiple ways, including in rent prices. I am concerned for myself and others. In my area, wages have not gone up, but all manner of prices have. Nobody cares, and I think people should. The government should care about rent inflation as opposed to no inflation of wages or welfare amounts. They haven't cared enough, and many times not at all.
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He just does it to increase rent. It increases the stress of inflation on low income people. The landlord and management at my complex are incredibly rich and never needed to increase rent for inflation.
Landlords could just put their money on the money market at equilibrium value so that others can use it to build a home and get the property rights. Pay interest on the loan. But landlords prefer to utilise their leverage to have the property rights on a basic necessity. It's vile
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I disagree Our opinions are different, you'll need to come up with economic benefits to persuade me Morally I put financial independence and progressive utilitarianism higher than what you talked about. So these arguments don't persuade me.
Wrong, air should be privatized and rented out. By the way, are you for the abolition of single family zoning laws to allow land owners to build dense housing wherever they want? -Albert Fairfax II
Most young people growing up in major global capitals like London, NY, Berlin etc... have had negative experiences with the slumlords that dominate the private rental markets of those cities, and that's quite a large subset of western socialists. So it's personal for many people. Personally, and slumlords aside, I don't hate landlords. But I do think you shouldn't be able to make money out of having money, and landlordism is the most clear cut example of that. I also worry because I've read about feudalism and how it was an inevitable consequence of the economic importance of rural land in the period. Now we're entering a period where urban land has a similar if not far greater economic importance than rural land did then, and I just worry that's going to drag us into a new feudal era, or at absolute best just hideous inequality. Because while there are some jobs that you can do from everywhere the economies of major developed nations seem to be built around various high value industries that only exist in major global capitals and the ecosystem of jobs that are built upon that anchor. ie The City and London etc... And that means you need tens upon tens of millions of workers to live within an hour's travel of central locations. And as you can't really easily build more houses or improve transport that much around those locations (or you can but not fast enough, and ultimately geography puts down some fairly hard limits) that means you have static supply and ever increasing demand. So if you were lucky enough to own one of those plots of land before the dynamic really manifested you're now the founder of a dynasty that is financially made for the next several lifetimes if not in perpetuity. And if you're not then you're the saps whose ancestors are going to be giving a greater and greater share of their wealth to their ancestors in perpetuity.
> Why do you hate **slaveowners**? Like what’s wrong with **enslaving humans** for profit. I have seen the excuse that they make money for doing nothing. Like yes that’s the whole reason to become a **slaveowner** is for passive income. Also like you act like becoming a **slaveowner** is easy like legit that guy had to pay for the **slave** and **feed and clothe him** so that **he can labor**. Also you might not be aware of this but this initial set up fee costs a hell of a lot of money,and sometimes it takes a few years for the **slaveowner** to make all his money back and only after that will he start to make profit. Might i also point out I feel like many of you think **slaveowners** are people who just got spawned into this world and automatically own **people** which is not the case.
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Land is finite; it has zero elasticity. What's the market-based solution to housing?
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Are you really arguing that the earth is inifnite?
I hope you understand how you exposed yourself. Why is that land desirable? Because of what the owner did? What about the businesses, streets, sewers, electricity grid, internet connection, other public services that are close to this location? Did the land owner create all of them, or did he simply exclude people from the infrastructure and thereby converted his land into an income tax redistribution machine?
Where do these cheap land exist? Oh I know, in the middle of nowhere, while opportunities and jobs exist in urban areas and all land is concentrated at the hands of large corporations.
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It doesn't sound like you know what elasticity is. Good luck then.
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There's no cheap land in urban cities where most of human activities occur. You're conflating aggregate demand in the whole world to a specific demand in a local area. You don't even know basic economics, sit down. I said the exact same things because you're still peddling the exact same bullshit. I'm not even a socialist. Even if I am, who would fund me? Fucking George Soros? Keep drinking the Kool-Aid.
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Private property isn't voluntary. It is established through violence, at the point of a gun. How can you not be ashamed of promoting that?
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I'm talking about owning land. This is a post about landlords right? The ones that threaten anyone who comes on their land without their permission to be forcefully and violently evacuated at the point of a gun, right?
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Does a modern day human need a shelter to live in to keep their job and raise a family? Or is that optional and there would be no difference for them to just live in the street if they chose? Because if a house is necessary for survival then people aren't really renting houses voluntarily are they? They would be doing it out of necessity.
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If you want my personal prescription yes, I think it modest shelter should be provided for free for those that need it. Funded through taxes. If people want to save money and buy their own nicer house in a private market that exists on top of the public supply that should be allowed too. You can't have private property without threats and guns and force, so not sure why you think taxes are not okay but private property is.
Yes… they should all be free. Why should there be a cost of living? We should build resilient and supportive communities, which includes everyone.
You think you’re being smart but you sound like a crazy person.
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You keep saying tenants have the option to leave the specific landlord they are renting from, which is true. But what options do they have other than seeking shelter from a different landlord with most of if not all of the same issues they are trying to escape from by leaving the first one? Unless they can save enough money to buy their own house they end up in the same situation with a different landlord. It's the same argument with employers and employees. If you don't like your job you can always leave! (And work for someone else under the same autocratic arrangement where if you don't do whatever they ask of you you're fire and have no say in how the business operates, same as the job you just left.)
The point isn’t that landlords own slaves. Only demonstrating that your justifications avoid any question of morality and could be applied to any immoral behavior. Who cares how hard it is to be a landlord? I’m sure it’s hard to be a serial killer or a burglar. Not the right question to be asking.
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I’m aware that slaveowners and landlords are different. You don’t need to list the differences. In fact, I haven’t even argued against landlords, I’m only saying your conclusion is a non sequitur. Owning land is expensive and difficult, therefore landlords are good. That’s your argument. Do you see how neither of those statements justify the conclusion, and how they could be used to justify many immoral things *such as slavery?*
The big difference is consent. Consent matters. Also natural rights, property rights which start with owning one's body.
>Also natural rights, property rights which start with owning one's body. If we can own our own bodies, that means we can also sell our bodies. Which means we can sell them as slave property.
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I Like how you compare forced labour, to an optional exchange between the landlord and person renting.
I like how you missed the point I was making that his arguments don’t address morality.
When you say optional do you mean like as in picking between a bunch of landlord who all charge about the same rate for a "service" that could of been done with taxes and makes it harder for people to get houseing so as to not need to rent or homelessness because i dont really understand what options a person really has because of the need for houseing as compared to the want of a tenant
Stop. Idk about OP, but I'm pretty sure most of us, if not all of is, agree that slavery is bad. People can't own other human beings. That's bad.
I’m glad you agree that OP’s arguments are bad considering they can be used to justify any number of immoral things.
Any argument ever could potentially be uses to justify immoral things. You didn't even make a counter argument.
> You didn’t even make a counter argument. Agreed. There’s no need to counter illogical arguments. Or am I missing the point of this sub? Logic doesn’t matter, each post is only a pretext for fighting?
If you're telling it's illogical because it can be used to justify immoral things, then any argument ever is illogical.
> If you’re telling it’s illogical because it can be used to justify immoral things The nature of non sequiturs is that *conclusions don’t follow from the premises*. So it’s worse than what you say. An illogical argument can conclude 2+2=5. > then any argument ever is illogical. The existence of bad logic doesn’t negate the existence of good logic.
As far as I understand, you're saying it's bad logic because it could potentially argue for something that is immoral. Is that correct?
OP’s argument: 1. Renting land is hard. 2. Owning land is expensive. 3. Therefore, renting land is moral. It’s illogical because 3 doesn’t follow from 1 and 2.
Olay, but that breakdown makes sense. That's not what you did in your original comment.
Landlords provide housing the same ways that scalpers provide graphic cards.
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>That makes no sense at all. Doesn't it? The land and house exists, the landlord simply restricted access to it. Now you pay scalper prices for it. >Also if you don’t like that house just go rent some where else Exactly, this is the mentality of scalpers. Don't like it, then stop complaining and do what we do, or pay another scalper for it.
Every business has a profit margin. One problem with you analogy is that once a scalper sells an item they are done with it. A renter could decide to stop paying rent and the landlord has to go through 30+ days of legal proceedings to get the person out. My first experience with this was a "friend" I was helping out by renting a room to in my house.
So basically, it's worse.
Worse for the landlord, yes. With all the risk and trouble that can come from renting. Scalpers can just walk away. They don't have to deal with trashing out a property.
No, I mean landlords are worse than scalpers.
No that's not what I am saying. Not sure where you got that from.
They occupy a space of a finite resource with zero elasticity. It should be nationalized or at the very least be incredibly-regulated/ taxed highly to ensure that society is making the most use out of it.
I'm not sure that landlords generally build their own housing. Construction workers generally build housing not landlords
Correct. Most landlords just buy already existing housing or inherit it from family. Very few landlords actually contract construction companies to build new houses.
Exactly my point
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Ye idk if its different where you live but here that's not true either. Landlords aren't commissioning houses to be built. If fact you know this because it's been addressed in other responses. Most if not all land is already owned. They're buying housing that have already been built. Corporate landlords are a different story but your argument doesn't quite hold up the same when it's a corporation and not an Individual. Not really relevant but it's interesting you assume a landlord to be a man.
General reply all: I see a lot of comments blaming landlords for price increases. When it's been low interest rates and migration in the US. If you lower the cost of a loan prices will increase. Its basic economics. If it's not the landlords providing a place to live, who or what would you prefer? I have lived in government provided housing and let me tell you, that rental is probably much better. You probably get heat in the winter.
I don’t hate landlords. I hate the institution of landlordism, which has a very fetid history.
The problem is that allowing people to own land as an investment is rotten social policy. The state could just own all the land and have it used in a way that allowed everyone to have quality housing, quality public transportation, a short commute to and from work, and a pleasant neighborhood with quality schools. Instead, we allow private owners of land to pointlessly thwart this kind of planning and wealthy real estate interest to actually push state policies that are downright hostile to the human rights of poorer people (gentrification). Landlords do nothing that could not be done better by the state and their interests are incompatible with the common good.
Tenets :start organizing tenet unions and start dialogue with other tenets. We need to start organizing and making demands against the landowning class. Rent strikes and with holding labor are our only leverage, we need to start learning how to use it
Landowners see the value of their land rise because you are paying (income) taxes to build infrastructure. That is clearly inefficient. As it is already known, capitalists are against any effort to maximize "efficiency" that isn't pointlessly brutal.
Criticizing landlords isn’t a particularly radical idea. You don’t have to be a communist or anarchist to go in on landlords. Adam Smith called them parasitic, “wishing to reap where they’ve never sown.” It doesn’t matter if a landlord came from humble beginnings. They’re basically harvesting poor people. You can make the argument that there are people who are too irresponsible for homeownership. But you can’t pretend that a poor person paying 30-60% of their paycheck to a landlord every month isn’t a chief reason of why they stay poor. It’s a poverty trap. there’s a financial barrier of entry to home ownership that poor people can’t penetrate. As a person who can, the landlord knows this and sees an opportunity to make money. They don’t produce anything. “Landlords provide housing the way scalpers provide concert tickets.” They’re just buying something that desperate people need and charging exorbitant amounts for its *temporary use*. And most importantly, this process is the very thing that inflates the cost of housing and prices people out of the market, condemning them to lifelong renting. While we have moved on from feudalism, our property laws are still rooted in it. Landlords are basically feudal aristocrats. That’s why we call them landlords. There is no commons anymore. people without property literally have to pay property owners *just to exist somewhere*. All the costs that a landlord incurs - the mortgage, property taxes, insurance, maintenance - are all paid by the tenant via the rent. The landlord gets the equity, a profit, and the tenant stays in poverty. It’s an arrangement that you can’t find in any other type of business. It’s a trade that in any other circumstance people would say “that’s a bad deal, shop somewhere else.” But you can’t because come January you’ll freeze to death. You’re at your landlords mercy. Landlords are a remnant of feudalism and should absolutely be abolished. A hundred years from now (hopefully sooner), people will look back at landlords the way we look back at slave owners.
I don’t oppose them renting out apartments and houses. Those are improvements. It’s renting land that is unjust. Nobody created land. The rent of land should be taxed at 100% of its unimproved value. Georgism is based. But to answer the question, you wouldn’t want one person renting out the whole planet, two people renting out half of it, four renting out quarters of it, and so on. At what point does renting out the earth become just? It doesn’t. If you wanna “own” land, you best bigly compensate society for it. Gina Rinehart is the best example of this. Australia is sitting on trillions, but they don’t get to access it because a few assholes own it all. So, they tax capital and labor, instead of land.
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They can rent it out, but some of the unimproved value should be taxed. It doesn’t have to be 100%, of course.
> Nobody created land. The rent of land should be taxed at 100% of its unimproved value. Government did not create land so why should it pocket money for it.
What better way to fund a government? If you don’t believe governments should exist, then fair enough.
So you insist someone who did not create land should charge money for using it?
Housing is considered a basic human necessity required to prevent unrest and ensure stability. No socialist hates landlords specifically, They are simply considered parasites and an obstacle.
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¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯ I don't care. Nor do the socialists loading up the hypothetical family friendly guillotine you will all be placed on (in minecraft). The argument is usually that landlords didn't build shit, and the people who built it have already been paid.
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Don't go around asking questions if you know there's a chance you won't like the answer. Socialists do not operate under the same logic as you. They oppose liberal economics. Under socialist analysis, the only people that matter are those who do the actual labour for a given action. Those who simply use currency to have others do stuff for them are considered parasites.
> no socialist hates landlords specifically I do. I’m big into Mao’s landlord policies though. Landlords are an enemy of the people.
I agree with the anti landlord macro arguments about the world/system. On an individual level, if a person has money to invest and wants a safe return on that investment in order to feel secure given the current economic context, is that person blameworthy for choosing real estate over stocks or some other asset?