No Stupid Questions

I hope these comments make it clear to you that there's never any off ramp for the "eat the rich" ideology. Once they've eaten the very rich, they go after the next cohort, and the next. It's about pulling everyone down to the lowest level. We have repeatedly demonstrated this many times in many countries over the last century. It always ends in many deaths and fascism. The solution to that is free association, free commerce, and democracy. Individual liberty has plenty of drawbacks, but it's far better than all of the alternatives we have tried.

Making money from merely owning things that others need and have to pay you to use as they can't get them otherwise (because you and people like you took them first) - something know in Economics as rent seeking, though it doesn't apply only to housing - is pure parasitism because that person is producing no value whatsoever, merely extorting money from others because they removed free access to a resource from them.

What's with this black and white mentality? They're absolutely leaches, but that doesn't fully define then. They are probably other things as well, that are hopefully good.

if you have one for any longer than a year or two after moving from your rental property to your current home, yeah that's parasitic. if you don't need it sell it and give someone a chance to buy instead of rent.

It's complicated, for me personally having one or two extra properties you're providing a service, not everyone wants to buy a house at every moment, e.g. I recently moved to another city and wanted to live in a neighborhood for a while before buying something. The more you have, the more part of the problem you become, because when someone wants to buy somewhere they now can't because people own it for renting. Also, again personally, if the value of rent is higher than the value of the mortgage, then you're ripping people off, because you're essentially buying the house with their money while they can't buy a place of their own. As an example, I want to buy a place of my own, but every place here is so expensive because people buy them to rent, because the rent is higher than the mortgage so if you have the initial money buying a house is essentially free money, however rent is so high that getting the initial money is really hard and people are stuck with paying more to own nothing.

3-5 small houses to rent are still 3-5 small houses people who actually need it could be living in. So, yes, your aunt is a parasite.

Here's the thing: landlords make a profit, right? Where does that profit come from? There are better and worse landlords, but any time there's a profit there's money being taken away from people.

No one is coming after your aunt, but that's where it comes from. They're leaching money away from tenants. Some are worse than others, but it is by definition parasitic if you're making a profit and not providing a service.

As an sp member in the UK I can give you the parties stance. We aren't going after small business. Your aunt while not giving to society and being a member of the owning class is more a symptom of capitalism and under a socialist programme she would not need to degrade others to live a fulfilling life. Dignity should be afforded to all but we also understand that material conditions govern us.

We go after bigger issues than your aunt.

Well done OP

I reckon if you're doing the work involved in managing a rental property yourself, you're doing work and providing a service.

If you expect an employee/contractor to do all that for you, but to still collect profits: what would you say you do here?