this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2024
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A Boring Dystopia

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Get rid of landlords... (lemmy.world)
submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (3 children)

I have so many questions...

If you built a house, lived there for 50 years, and then wanted to live somewhere else, what happens to the house? Can you sell it to someone else?

What if you only lived there for 5 years? Or 5 days?

Or... what if I want to go on holidays for a year and then come back to the house I built? Am I allowed to rent it while I'm gone?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Great questions!

  1. Yep, you can sell it* to someone else. Or it'll just sit there and then I would advocate for some kind of common sense squatters law to take effect.

  2. Short answer: See 1; long answer: you could find somewhere run by e.g. a housing co-op, or a (long-stay) hotel, or a property management company* and stay there.

  3. Yes I'd be fine with that, caveats:

    • You are also benefitting from someone tending to the house while you're gone, so I'd expect the amount to be commensurate with that*.
    • You're not going on holiday to another one of many other properties you own which you also rent out when you're not in them.

Note: All my answers involve exchanging some kind of value (indicated by *) for money, and that's my key point. If you're actually contributing something then I have no problem with that. But that's not what being a landlord is. A few ways this is evident:

  1. We already have words for all the jobs: Architect, building super, cleaner, designer, engineer, landscaper, manager, plumber. These are useful skills, people should get paid for them, but:
  2. A landlord is different. They make money by rent seeking, per Wikipedia: "the act of growing one's existing wealth by manipulating the social or political environment without creating new wealth". They don't do anything except own a piece of paper (and the blessing of our current laws) which says they can do that.

Now, the water can get muddied when people are both landlords and do the other jobs (e.g. cleaning), but it's pretty easy to think of other examples of this:

I also skim money out of the register, but I also get paid to work in the store. In both cases (rent seeking and skimming) I'm making money, but not actually adding any value.

Or, to my original example: Scalping tickets. I'm not putting on the show, I'm not the talent, or involved with the venue, I'm not printing or shipping the tickets. I'm not doing anything except gaming the system to make money.

Just like robbing a bank, just like ponzi schemes, and just like Sam Bankman-Fried: Gaining money, not adding value (aka creating wealth).

The only difference is we decided (as a society) some are legal, and some are illegal, and I have a good idea why (see Figure 1.).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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'.

is an inevitable component of life in contemporary society

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.

it’s problematic when excessive and greedy

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

there is a structure in place that allows people who own property to make money by doing nothing.

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

I think this is the disconnect.

We have legitimate rental use cases. During college, owning a house would have made little sense since I had no idea where my life would take me. If someone is on an overseas assignment for 3 months, buying a house would be nuts.

On the other hand, out of state companies have bought every house in my neighborhood that has come up for sale over the past 5 years. The tenants I have talked to are there not because their arrangements should be temporary, but because all housing stock is purchased by companies.

So yes, there should be some medium-term rental for certain cases between days to a couple years long. It should not however smother even the possibility of home ownership for people with longer term plans.