For the record, this includes the “nice” landlord in your family who’s “one of the good ones.” We’re actually coming for them first just so you stop posting pro-landlord propaganda.
dont forget nestle and water
And Coca-Cola for hoarding water in Chiapas, not to mention its Colombian death squads and links to Israel
Good landlords are like good cops: they aren’t.
Removed by mod
“I’m as anarchist as they come”
defends the existence of landlords
It’s the exact same argument as with cops, I don’t see how you can come to a different conclusion. Individually they might be courteous, but they choose to be part of a fundamentally unethical system and their very existence is an injustice.
The people aren’t unethical, their actions are. They can knock that shit* off at any time. Then they’re just regular people. People aren’t their professions.
It’s why “blue lives matter” is so offensive. There are no blue lives. No one is born blue.
* edit: By “knock that shit off” I mean they can quit their jobs. I don’t mean, they can be an ethical cop or landlord. Systemically, most things we use cops for should be other kinds of service workers, and I can’t wrap my head around how it would ever be better to have a landlord than to own the dwelling yourself.This mindset has really had a positive impact on how I view my neighbors and the clients I serve. It should be a freeing thought because even though it shows us people are choosing to do ill, they can just as easily choose to do well. It’s helped me overcome some of the Puritanical notions of inherent good and evil I’ve had forced on me my entire life while not excusing bad actions.
I know someone who was a terrible ancap 4channer who made a complete 180 once he stepped outside his basement and started interacting with non-white and queer people.
Everyone has a choice, and it’s never too late to start.
I can’t wrap my head around how it would ever be better to have a landlord than to own the dwelling yourself.
There’s only two situations that I can think of, and one of them kind of only exists on paper.
One is that some people genuinely want to be a bit more nomadic and not be as tied to one place. Getting to the point of signing a lease does take time, but not nearly as much time as closing on a property, so some folks want to rent because it provides them a bit more freedom of movement. I tend to believe this group is very small compared to the genealogy population.
The other is that people will say “oh when you rent you aren’t responsible for maintenance/ repairs/ upkeep because you don’t own the property so you don’t have to deal with those things.” This is true on paper I think, but a lot of places allow lease agreements to shift some of that responsibility back on to the renter, and I’m sure most renters will have plenty of experiences where something breaks and then they have to fight with their landlord for ages and then nothing gets done so they end up just saying fuck it and fix the damn thing themselves so they can just go on living their lives.
Had this happen when my lock broke. The landlord’s response was, “Don’t worry, it’s a safe neighborhood” when the super was a creep who drank blue maui in his car with middle school girls, and I caught multiple people peeping in windows. Bought a lock and installed it myself, and when I moved I put the broken lock back on the door and took it with me.
It was a one-liner joke. You’re not wrong at all, but it was just a single sentence that encapsulated both ideals. It didn’t warrant an exposition.
I was a landlord for about year. We were moving and someone wanted to buy it but couldn’t get a mortgage until their other house sold. We rented it to them for a year with a clause in the lease giving them right of first refusal to purchase at a pre-determined price. I had a full-time job the whole time, though, and the rent covered the mortgage plus $100 more or so. Was I the baddie? I always pictured “landlord as your primary income source” when I think of landlords.
My opinion? Obviously, there’s a sliding scale of exploitation, but housing should be free, actually. The bank you paid your mortgage to was also exploiting you as well (in fact, even charging you interest). Everything is grim under capitalism.
A former landlord of ours gave us rental with option to buy, so the rent would have contributed to the purchase of the home, and we got a portion of that back when we had to move but couldn’t afford a mortgage. Was this better than most landlords? Yes. Does it make it ok to charge people money to live? Hell, no.
I’m not perfect either though. We all have to live with our mistakes.
What are your thoughts on hotels, or similar short-term housing?
I personally favor returning to a gift economy that is more apt to discouraging the exchange of symbolic currency and the inevitable hoarding of resources it creates, but some might have other thoughts on this
Some video games have different currencies for different purposes, which stop you from taking the gold you hoarded and spending it on this other thing for no effort. Or we could copy something like how PTO from jobs works for “buying” things. Idk how well either would work, but I thought they were interesting ideas.
That’s an interesting idea that lends itself to some nightmares, but maybe good things too. But I feel like people would quickly set up exchanges. If I have hotel credits I don’t want to use and you have concert tokens you don’t want to use , we’ll try pretty hard to find a way to trade.
If we’re doing digital currencies, there could be caps or diminishing returns put on things. I don’t really have a problem with people exchanging based on what they prefer, it’s the accumulation of wealth that could result that’s a problem, and it seems like caps could solve that.
Seems like unique currencies for different transactions vs. one standardized state currency would certainly be a step in the right direction.
Isn’t that essentially what we have now with foreign currencies? It doesn’t seem to do much to curb international transactions, except create an industry of middle-men exchangers.
I think a confounding issue is there’s a difference between a landlord that just owns a building and rents it out, and like a property management company that maintains the building.
If I own a building but also tend to the yard, keep the building painted, sweep the lobby, deal with utilities, etc etc, that’s labor and contributing something. It doesn’t give a carte blanc for renting out rooms at sky high prices, but it is in my mind better than someone who does nothing, but happens to legally own the place so they get the money.
Public housing is probably still the way to go, though.
Farmers a little worried after seeing what happened during the Cultural Revolution: …
No one has mentioned Maoism. You might want to question why you thought this.
(The current qualities of corporate farming can be exploitative too though and has had a devastating effect on farmers ability to provide, which I’ve witnessed firsthand here in South Dakota.)
Water’s next.
Enclosure schmenclosure :P
Removed by mod
I’m not interested in debate. I specifically said that to repel comments like yours.
Removed by mod
Your message is hard to read because you didn’t use paragraph breaks.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
deleted by creator
