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Rent is theft
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026
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Should hotels be illegal too? That’s basically renting out a room by the day. What if you cannot afford to buy a house, or only want to live somewhere temporarily? If you cannot rent any place to live, what would you do?
As with most things, it is a matter of degree.
If they're monopolizing the housing market, absolutely.
There are 16M vacant homes to distribute among around 770k homeless people. With such an enormous housing surplus, why is the clearing price for a housing unit so far above a new prospective buyer's budget?
You posit that people can't afford to buy homes without asking why homes are unaffordable.
Investors accounted for 25.7% of residential home sales in 2024.
I merely pointed out that not all ‘rent is bad’, ‘landlords are evil’.
Among probably many reasons that housing is unaffordable for many is that some persons or corporations are awful scumbags that want to maximize their profit beyond what is reasonable or fair.
Renting isn’t bad. Capitalism isn’t bad. Abuse of these things is bad.
Abuse of these things is a core feature of capitalism. How can you contradict yourself so quickly?
The world is not black and white. I don’t accept the validity of your claim.
Shelter is a fundamental human need, locking it behind an unnecessarily high and ever increasing pay wall is the epitome of abuse. Landlords are leeches.
You gotta look at the nuance here. Yes, high and ever increasing rent is bad and it's because of the abuse and poor regulation of the system. And traditional lords of the land is pretty bad however you slice it. But small landlords now can be providing a needed service. It's a lot of work keeping a house rentable - even if you are 'just' organizing contractors, accountants, lawyers, etc.
Yes it is. But you and I both said it. It is abuse of capitalism.
I would support some idea that corporations cannot own property like single homes solely for the purpose of profit. And any single person should be heavily taxed on rental income, at least beyond a certain point.
And let’s use eminent domain to take back those empty houses and put people in them.
But there’s still lots of people who would prefer to rent than own.
The problem is not landlords. And the problem is not capitalism. The problem is unfettered greed. Greed is not good, despite what Michael Douglas said in that movie.
Capitalism is most definitely bad tho, like come on.
Well, it's a way to incentivize people to use their resources to provide services for others. It would be nice if people just did that on their own, but humans are generally too lazy.
Citation needed.