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this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2024
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No Stupid Questions
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I don't know if I'm leftist, but the US spectrum is well right of most of the world.
The question is multi-layered. Your aunt may or may not be a bad person, I don't know her. Them renting out property may or may not be for good reason, even if they're doing it to "survive" in the capitalistic economy.
The real issue is that capitalism itself is exploitative, and (depending on where you draw the line) participating may fall under being complicit.
My understanding of parasitism is extracting resources for their own benefit, with little to no benefit for the exploited/system.
The first hint of parasitism is amassing resources they aren't using for living. Your aunt and husband made surplus money to be able to afford buying the properties. Unless they did that by extracting resources, refining them, working them and making provisions for them to be recycled and ecologically compensated - others will have had to pay the cost. Either by working harder than them, or suffering more than them, for example due to an imbalance of ecology. This is one form of parasitism.
Another perspective of parasitism is inserting themselves as a middle party. Your aunt almost certainly isn't providing the housing at cost, where rent barely covers their labor and property upkeep. That means they are keeping someone from a home, unless they pay extra to your aunt. Just like a bully.
Now, this doesn't mean that your aunt has any malicious intent. The point is that the system itself is evil, like a pyramid scheme of bullies, where each layer extracts something from each underlying layer. This is useful for making ventures, but at the cost of ever increasing exploitation and misery. Especially when capitalists are allowed to avoid paying for restoring the exploited, or incentivised to do it more. I'm sure you've heard of enshittification.
Now, example time!
I'm sure you've thought that air is important for you to survive. And maybe you've ever worried that traffic or other pollution might make your air less good for you?
Enter the capitalist! For a small premium we'll offer your personalised air solution, a nifty little rebreather loaded with purified air you carry with you all day. The price is so reasonable as well, for only $1/day you can breathe your worries away!
Now, producing the apparatus means mining and logging upstream of your town, removing natural air filtering and permanently damaging your environment, but they only charge for the machines and labor. Restoration is Future You's problem. Selling and refilling the apparatus happens to also produce pollution, making the air worse for everyone. But that makes the apparatus more valuable! Price rises to $2/day.
Competitors arrive, some more successful than others, all leaving ecological devastation and pollution that can't be naturally filtered. Air gets worse. One brand rises to the top, air is more valuable and lack of competition makes it so that air is now $4/day.
Then an unethical capitalist figures that if we just make the air slightly worse, profits will go up! They don't want to be evil, but cutting corners when upgrading the production facility means the pollution gets worse. Other adjacent capitalists see that they also can pollute more without consequences. Air gets worse and price increases to 6$/day.
Air is starting to get expensive, rebreather sharing services, one-use air bottles, and home purifyers crop up, increasing pollution and raising costs, air is now $8/day for most people.
People start dying from poor air, new regulations on apparatus safety and mandatory insurance come up, driving prices further to $10/day. You now also need a spare apparatus and maintain it in case your main one breaks down.
Etc.
The point of the example is that through a series of innocuous steps, all making perfect sense within capitalism, you are now paying $300/month more to live than before capitalism, with little real benefit to you, and no real choice to opt out.
Each and every step is parasiting on your life, by requiring you to work harder for that money, and/or suffer more due to pollution and ravaged environment.
The only solution to not work/suffer into an early grave is to have others work on your behalf, perpetuating the parasitic pyramid scheme. This is where your aunt is, is she evil? Probably not. Is her being an active part of an evil system bad? Yes, yes it is. Capitalism bad.
This defines almost every transactional function in our society.
If landlords are so evil, would their tenants alternatively buy the apartment where they rent? People rent for many reasons - perhaps they can't afford to buy , or perhaps they like paying a fixed amount so someone else can fix the house when things break.
Either way it isn't the landlords fault that many cities have restrictive zoning laws and we are still reeling from missed housing development during the great recession. Demand for housing has well outdated supply and inflation has made the inputs more expensive, thus prices have gone up. More supply will help reduce the rate of increase, but real prices will not decline without another deep recession, and the impact of that would still be temporary.
If landlords are middleman, would you prefer everyone lives in government housing? Explain the alternative in your fantasy land related to housing, not some ridiculous anecdote about charging for air.
My point is, if you read "aunt" as "landlord", my comment is not about the landlords as much as the system.
Without landlords, we'd not have a housing crisis. There would be enough housing for everyone, we have plenty of resources and land to build them. The US, not to mention the world, is still big enough for everyone to have their own plot of land and housing.
How did people live before Capitalism? I've read that housing existed before even banking was invented. Somehow there wasn't a housing crisis back then, until/unless we had exploitation.
You're not wrong in what you're saying though. The basic difference of perspective between you and I, I believe, is that you're viewing this from inside the capitalist system, where landlords do indeed provide a function. But if we'd not have capitalism, we'd still have housing, and with less value extraction/parasitism.
As for the obscure anecdote, let's instead use the simile of marketing. They add no value to you as a consumer, and if there weren't so many marketers finding what you need would be easier and cheaper (as there would be no marketing cost). For the capitalist they add value, for the rest of us they're an ever increasing drain on resources - a parasite.
In self-built primitive mud shacks under a very low population density.
Agreed.
But also in groundbreakingly advanced multiresidential complexes, condos, and palaces for thousands of people.
The world will indeed be different if we have different priorities. Capitalism requires high density to sustain the economic engine, other systems might not.
Under capitalism, capitalisming harder is indeed the only solution. I don't know how to get you to be able to imagine something without assuming capitalism, but humanity and society did indeed thrive even without it.
Maybe. Or maybe it's not so simple. Because:
But would they be built? I'm in no way saying this is "right" but for them to be built builders have to know they are going to make a profit. The smaller that profit the more pressure to build fewer. Now maybe we get lucky and all this downward pressure on prices balances out. But I'd guess that far far fewer homes would be built and so the question ends up being is it still enough? Some say there are plenty of houses already and it would be, but that assumes those who paid the inflated prices are willing to accept less money now.
tl;dr we're fucked.
Profit, price pressures, inflation are not necessarily meaningful terms in a different system.
Homes have been built for many thousands of years longer than we've had those as concepts.
What exactly do you mean by that?
If you include cedar bark as a major construction material then sure. Not knocking cedar bark here - it's great. But not quite the same investment in time or durability.
What exactly do you mean by that?
In a circular or planned economy, those aren't really significant measures, neither in a subsistence living context. Which are strategies that have housed all of humanity until the last few hundred years.
In a post-capitalist economy, we might be able to provide the human necessities without exploitation. I don't know how, but I know it's not through more capitalism.
If you include cedar bark as a major construction material then sure. Not knocking cedar bark here - it's great. But not quite the same investment in time or durability.
As mentioned in the last reply, the Palace of Knossos, as well as the Petra were marvels of craftsmanship and engineering, staggering investments, and have stood for over 2000 years. Would probably have survived longer if maintained properly.
The pyramids, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassos, the Taj Mahal, all are landmark (literally) feats for the contemporary technology and societies.
You comparing them with modern construction methods necessitated by capitalism, and with modern technology seems an unfair comparison, as well as circular reasoning.
Ok, sure - you just said "different" and did not specify.
That involved massive exploitation and slave labor. And let's not forget significant taxation, looting, etc.
I'm comparing them because I'm making the point that profit, price pressures and inflation obviously arise when private entities make huge capital investments.
So now that you've actually specified "different" as meaning non-capitalist systems, it leads me to wonder if you thought King Minos sought out volunteers... or did he pay everyone fairly? Are you really using "public" works built under autocratic rule as positive examples we can replicate?
I've already covered this earlier in the thread
Ah, I see. You really just want to hear yourself talk and are too intellectually lazy to engage with anyone else's ideas.
That was over a decade ago. We absolutely could have covered the gap by now if we were serious about it.
And yes government housing is fine.
Found the landlord.
Yes, it is landlords' fault for zoning laws. Yes landlords are to blame (not solely) for the great recession. Yes, landlords are responsible for the demand for housing outstripping supply.
Landlords are parasites, not middlemen. The alternative to landlords is not everything being government housing, but also that's not an issue if you take away landlords and stop them from having any power to corrupt the legal and political systems of the world.
I'm not a landlord. And you're just incorrect. This is no stupid questions, but there are plenty of stupid answers. The great recession was caused by homeowners and banks making loans they shouldn't have with adjustable rates and predatory practices (ever heard of a NINJA loan?) that greatly increased demand for housing, and then the banks created derivatives on derivatives that all went up in smoke when the underlying loans defaulted. This resulted in many people losing their homes, but more broadly financial markets tightened and housing starts plummeted, which is responsible for the housing shortage today. We had like 5-10 years of development well below replacement.
I would also point out that most local zoning laws make multi-use housing like apartments that we lust for in the 15 minute city difficult to build in favor of the single family home. I would argue that is actually the average homeowner's fault more than a landlord.
"The alternative to landlords is not everything being government housing, but also that's not an issue if you take away landlords and stop them from having any power..."
What the actual fuck does that mean? Do you hear yourself? The alternative is not the thing I said, but something else that still remains imaginary.
You know housing costs money to build right? So, for that to happen, someone has to invest. There are these institutions called banks, maybe they haven't made it to lunatic Island where you live, but they charge interest so you can have money today to build or buy rather than waiting years to accumulate that money.
Now that housing is built, the person that built it wants to sell it. Someone buys it and then someone lives in it for a cost. Without government intervention, what is the alternative?
The problem is not OP's Aunt or even most apartment management companies, but I will give you that Private Equity getting into single family housing is a problem. That should be addressed, and I seriously doubt it will.
Landlord/wannabe landlord - what's the difference?!
No, you are just plain old incorrect - do you even hear yourself??
Landlords have always been the people with money and power and they have welded that influence to create these situations. It doesn't matter if there was malicious forethought - most of them think they haven't done wrong because they're looking out for them and their own - oh and it's just the way the world works so what can they do?!! Lots. If you're not part of the solution, your part of the problem. You need to educate yourself on a lot of things buddy.
Yes, the problem is OPs aunt, and property management companies as well as private equity (which is another name for a group of OPs aunt and property management companies)
Do you know what's so hilarious?
I am willing to bet with actual genuine monopoly money that 95% of the people here who are complaining about landlords will be totally on board with landlording once, later in life, they are in a position to do so.
Edit: Check back in 10 years. You'll see.
I am in a position to be a landlord and choose not to be.
IOW, you are in a position to not need the income. I.e. you could afford the usurious prices for real estate.
I'm curious how that makes sense to you. In theory and practice landlords want to landlord and thus rent out their property, not withhold it from the market.
Dont forget how the secondary real estate market drove prices up and as been doing so since the 70s