this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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Sorry, this is just semantics. You're defining "landlord" to include everything that's wrong with capitalism in your particular area, while saying some types of ownership are ok by you.
Being a landlord does not necessarily imply rent seeking.
Being a "landlord" and deriving rent is an inevitable component of life in contemporary society. Like anything, it's problematic when excessive and greedy, but in general it's just part of a healthy economy.
How would you defined a what a landlord does, then?
I'm happy to use a different word if that would help, but whatever you call it, there is a structure in place that allows people who own property to make money by doing nothing. Call it 'land lording', call it 'passive income'.
Yes, but only if it's:
a. Legal, and: b. Some people can accumulate enough wealth to buy up multiple properties, and: c. Some people are too poor to afford any property (or qualify for financing).
Which is the situation we're in.
Well we can agree on this. But I'd go further and say that's always going to be the case, because:
a. Housing isn't something you can opt out of. b. The people who own the homes have all the bargaining power. c. The more money you can accumulate through renting the more power you have.
That's not actually true. They're providing capital. You can call that unfair and invent a new economic system to disallow it or whatever but the inescapable reality is that since the dawn of agriculture controlling land has always required wealth.
We started off by saying that the people that live in a place pay for it to be built, but we skipped over the part where the building needs to happen up front before you can start to live there and it must be paid as a lump sum. We also skipped the part where many people want to use the same land for the same purpose which creates demand thereby increasing costs.
This stuff costs money. Lots of it. Many or most people just don't have it. People with money are always going to derive interest and rent from people who don't have money.
You can complain about landlords all you like, but it doesn't change these immutable facts.