Even the best monarchs do not justify monarchy; it is a position inherently created for abuse. You may have a good king, or two, or ten - even kings who WILL put your wellbeing before their own interests - but invariably they will always be outnumbered by those who seek the position for the sake of abuse, or who succumb to the structure of the position which encourages abuse. Likewise with landlording. The problem isn't with individuals, the problem is with the system.
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The "benevolent king" is a persistent myth isn't it? They feature in so, so many works of fiction
It's a persistent myth because the institution is set up to perpetuate it. Everything bad is the nobles, the lords, the boyars, the merchants. But if the king, all-powerful and distant, only KNEW about these abuses...
Yeah. Benevolent dictatorship is the most efficient government type. The only problem is the odds of getting benevolence plus the impossibility of keeping it.
Every landlord I've had has been "nice" and "friendly." Unless you need something or they're not happy with something you did.
Because they don't see you as a person ... they see you as either a benefit or detriment to their wealth. You are an extension of their wealth and their only interest is in watching to see if that wealth increases or decreases.
I think my landlord sees us as people, he's just fundamentally incapable of understanding what it means to live in a lower income bracket. He's selling the house we live in and seemed genuinely confused why we, as a single earner household paying significantly below market rent, would be worried because "there's only a few situations where they can kick you out". Yes and if they invoke one, which they will because we're a bad investment, we're SCREWED.
Meanwhile he thinks he's being generous by listing for below appraisal when it's still at least double what he paid a couple years ago. Just living on a totally different planet.
I realize that I may be in the minority here, but I used to be a landlord. I never charged full market rate, and I always took care of my tenants. I never kept any security deposit money. One tenant had a breakup, and I showed up that evening with a locksmith to change her locks so he wouldn't be a problem. That cost me some money but it didn't cost her anything. I mean, they're paying for service you need to provide service.
I remember people like you. It's always appreciated but eventually a corporation gets every building.
You did it right, but the only thing keeping most people honest is regulation. Until pro-tenant behavior is properly incentivized for landlords, most will remain shitty and selfish.
And because of that, you made less money. A bastard landlord would make more money and be able to invest that money into buying more properties. Those properties would bring even more money, allowing them to buy even more property and so forth. This dynamic is why the vast majority of landlords (and capitalists in general) are bastards.
Capitalism is a system where the selfish and greedy will always triumph over the selfless and charitable. It is designed from the ground up to incentivize selfish behavior.
Sincerely thank you for being a good person in a harmfully flawed system. You probably won't get rewarded for it. Most likely you'll be punished for it. But someone out there probably thinks you're pretty cool for doing it.
That's not landlord/tenant that's just people/people.
People/people made worse by the system. The system that created the landlord/tenant roles.
Who wouldn’t put their income before your wellbeing when push came to shove?
Context matters. Would you choose to go make a little bit of money or help someone who was about to be killed?
You just invented a scenario where the landlord stands to lose very little and the tenant stands to lose their life.
In any of the systems we've tried since the species got agrarian—especially Capitalism whenever it's Fascism Hammer Time—not the average person that's for a certainty.
They're too busy surviving.
In a proper society where we (the collective We, but really ~2k dragons) used the same tools we used to separate us to instead expand the sense of the tribal umbrella so that the species innate selfish altruism could shine?
A whole lot more folks whose part would be exactly like in the fabric of society, comfortable and without a thought of want for they know We got their backs too.
But also many of them will make someone homeless just because they couldn't provide an extra ten percent of profit this year.
So yeah.
Almost all people will put their own well-being above yours. This isn't a trait exclusive to the upper-class.
Yeah if we're both in the same situation maybe but my income Vs your well-being is a different thing isn't it?
I can accept to be a bit less comfortable to help you live in less horrible conditions.
In an ideal world we'd all treat each other how we wish to be treated. I try to do that in every interaction, not always successfully. But we saw during covid that there are hundreds of millions of selfish-ass people. People that wouldn't even temporarily give up haircuts or Starbucks to potentially save someone's life. Hell man, they wouldn't even wear a thin piece of cloth across their mouth and nose to potentially save people's lives.
I guess I'm saying that I agree with you, but many people don't... at least not in practice.
That's true. However.
The owning class has interests directly opposed to the working class, which makes that "natural" trait toxic to the working class. In addition, the owning class has a lot more power.
Your landlord wants to make as much money as possible for as long as possible. (fair enough right?) The problem is that for that to happen
- demand needs to stay high or go higher which means that
- supply needs to stay low which means that (at the level of class interests, not personal belief)
Your landlord doesn't want new affordable housing to be built in your area. They want you to never own a house, never have any cheaper rent options. They don't want to have to keep renting to you at the price you are paying now.
They don't want to have to invest money in making your apartment/house safe or comfortable.
The problem is not that people will put their own wellbeing above yours, it's that their wellbeing is in conflict with yours. A conflict of interests between classes... class conflict... class warfare. And they have all the guns.
It doesn't have to be this way.
My landlords wife yelled at the plumber for sealing our bathroom wall back up when the shower spigot was still leaking, and then her husband comes in and says "honey stop we don't need to pay to fix the valve if we don't have to". So my shower still leaks and they really fixed nothing because they didn't want to spend $1000 (less than half our rent) to redo the shower.
Wouldn't the leak cause more damage to their property over time?
Yes, but here you are expecting a landlord to actually think about the future.
A passive income earner is definitely going to think about the future, and realize that tens of thousands of dollars in damage is likely going to cost more than the income from renting.
No matter how much you disagree with a demographic, they are still human. Maybe we'd have better chances at improving things if we started seeing each other as human again.
I don't see it happening though after these last few decades of internet caused radicalization
More descriptive title next time please :)
I love lemmy, but these titles make it feel like everything is posted by bots
They are also a bad person