A Boring Dystopia

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Get rid of landlords... (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to c/aboringdystopia@lemmy.world

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[–] archomrade@midwest.social 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'll just copy paste my response from above.

Nobody is saying to “get rid” of home rentals, but they are saying get rid of landlords.

Particularly for SFR homes, there’s no reason for a person who is not living there to ‘own’ the property and extract rent. For those who are transient -as you described- there are community land trusts, cooperative housing, limited equity housing coops, and municipal housing that can all fill the role that would traditionally be done by private landlords. Those of us who advocate eliminating private home rental’s for profit do so knowing it wouldn’t happen by choice, and that alternate arrangements for housing would need to be established alongside any legislation that bans for-profit rentals.

Private landlords are systemically problematic because it inflates home values and locks an increasing portion of the population from the option of building equity (or benefiting from community equity, as it were). Nobody is saying you’re a bad person, only that landlords (the category of private capital ownership that collects rent for the use of property) are perpetuating a huge problem and ought to be banned as a matter of benefiting society as a whole. Just like how towns or neighborhoods are democratically governed, homes should be too.

[–] teejay@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago (2 children)

You still didn't answer the question. So get rid of the landlords means what exactly? You realize there's about two dozen or so industries whose entire commercial existence is tied to landlords and rental properties, right? Do we get rid of all of them? Or just some? Or just the landlord, who is one small cog in a very big capitalist renting wheel?

Everyone is so oddly and furiously fixated on the landlord as some sort of big bad, and therefore assert that getting rid of the landlord position entirely will just magically make everything awesome. It's odd to observe otherwise intelligent people stop so outrageously short of the complete picture.

[–] archomrade@midwest.social 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

You still didn’t answer the question.

Actually, I think I did, you just didn't understand it. What we mean by 'landlord' can be essentially boiled down to 'private ownership'. The problem with landlords as a class is that they exert complete control over a 'property' while having the least use of it. When Adam Smith wrote about 'rent extraction', he was specifically identifying a portion of an economy that was unproductive.

Landlords are defined by their ownership; they could also maintain the property, but what makes them 'landlords' and not 'maintinence workers' is their ownership over a property someone else is using and charging rent for that use. The other arrangements I listed in my previous comment address that inefficiency by democratizing the use of that asset, instead of allowing the monopoly of the landlord.

It’s odd to observe otherwise intelligent people stop so outrageously short of the complete picture.

I would really have to agree.

[–] teejay@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Actually, I think I did, you just didn’t understand it.

No, you didn't. And the drivel you just wrote still didn't answer the question. At this point it's clear that it's intentional.

The problem with landlords as a class is that they exert complete control over a ‘property’ while having the least use of it.

Tell me you have no idea how property ownership works without telling me you have no idea how property ownership works.

I would really have to agree.

"No you". Nice one. Good luck friend, this back and forth is pointless.

[–] archomrade@midwest.social 1 points 6 months ago

Good luck yourself.