7 ms·

"Am lucky to have rent control." You are (party to) using the state to withhold justly earned economic value from your landlord.

by fche 11y ago

cbd1984 11y ago
> You are (party to) using the state to withhold justly earned economic value from your landlord. The state is what allows a landlord to be a landlord in the first place, by making a society stable enough that property ownership is a matter of laws and contracts as opposed to guns and groups with guns.
- hugh4 11y ago
  Sure, the state is what allows you to be alive at all, because without it you'd probably have been killed by or enslaved by roving Mad Max style marauders. Therefore you owe your life to the State and they can demand anything at all from you and you shouldn't complain. Right?
  - Apocryphon 11y ago
    Welcome to the social contract
    - Turing_Machine 11y ago
      You (and others on this thread, on both sides) are pretending that there's no gradation between "roving bands of cannibal looters" (the "Mad Max" scenario) and "Tyrannical government controls every single aspect of your daily life" (the "1984" scenario), when in fact there is a very large amount of space between those two scenarios. That is a fundamentally dishonest argument. There are honest discussions of exactly where the boundaries on government power should lie, but this isn't one of them.
- akgerber 11y ago
  Beyond that, the state is who sends a sheriff to evict someone from a house when they don't pay rent to a landlord.
branchless 11y ago
Please try thinking more holistically.
nommm-nommm 11y ago
Renting an apartment isn't the same as buying an iPad. Having a safe place to lay your head at night is something our society has determined extremely important bordering on essential. Housing rentals are highly regulated due (mostly) to this fact.
simoncion 11y ago
> You are (party to) using the state to withhold justly earned economic value from your landlord. And anyone who benefits from the zoning laws in their district benefits from influential parties using the power of the state to -in many cases- artificially restrict the supply of one type of building or another. [0] Frankly, we can play the "No, you're using the power of the state to..." game all night long. :/ > "justly earned economic value" My previous landlords did nothing to improve the value of their property. Indeed, my most recent landlord not-infrequently neglects even the bare minimum legally required maintenance and upkeep. They earned nothing. Force of law created a situation where progressively increasing housing pressure inflated the "market value" of their "asset". [0] Note: I am not railing against zoning laws in general. Segregating heavy industry from residential zones is an obvious good.
- fche 11y ago
  "Frankly, we can play the "No, you're using the power of the state" I don't wish to defend zoning laws, nor humour a "tu quoque" contest. Not necessary for my point. "My previous landlords did nothing to improve the value of their property." That's also beside the point. They made an investment in buying and improving the land. They are not permitted to realize the market value that their investment (foresight / risk-taking) had earned.
  - simoncion 11y ago
    > ...nor humour a "tu quoque" contest. Awful sly of you to indirectly make the claim that I was calling you a hypocrite. I'm not. I'm declaring that everyone who lives in a governed district is a beneficiary of the state's ability to restrict supply of one thing or another. This includes landlords who might have the "value" of their "investment" inflated due to restricted supply. > They made an investment in buying [the land]... Yes. Agreed. > ...and improving the land. No. No, they did not. They paid someone else to get access to the revenue stream that comes from the people living in the building that was constructed roughly one hundred years before they made the purchase. Additionally, the building was constructed more than fifty years before $CURRENT_LANDLORD-2 made his purchase. Neither of them fronted the money and took on the risk to build the only improvement on the land. What's more, $CURRENT_LANDLORD's negligence is lowering the value of the property they purchased. Vermin infestation throughout the building and trash accumulation in public areas [0] are now not-uncommon sights. Essential building services are unreliable and not-infrequently unavailable due to failure to perform regular preventative maintenance. Are you using some definition of "$CURRENT_LANDLORD is improving the land." that remains true when the actions that the landowner takes both damage the pre-existing building on the property and lower its value, actual or otherwise? > Not necessary for my point. It really seems like your point is not valid, for the situation that a renter not-infrequently finds himself in in San Francisco. [1] Because the demand for rental housing is so high, landlords can often get away with failing to perform even the legally required maintenance and upkeep and still have people breaking down their doors to rent their vacant apartments. I don't see how one can -with a straight face- make the claim that a property owner is adding value to a property when they aren't even performing the maintenance required to adequately counteract the natural forces of entropy. Do you now understand what I mean when I say "$CURRENT_LANDLORD has done nothing to improve the value of their property."? [0] Due to not-infrequent failure of building management to swap out the full garbage, recycling, and composting bins with empty ones. [1] Your argument may be (and probably is) totally valid in other situations. San Francisco's housing market (rental or otherwise) is a special bucket of suck.

"Am lucky to have rent control." You are (party to) using the state to withhold justly earned economic value from your landlord.

by fche 11y ago

"Am lucky to have rent control." You are (party to) using the state to withhold justly earned economic value from your landlord.

cbd1984 11y ago

> You are (party to) using the state to withhold justly earned economic value from your landlord. The state is what allows a landlord to be a landlord in the first place, by making a society stable enough that property ownership is a matter of laws and contracts as opposed to guns and groups with guns.

hugh4 11y ago
Sure, the state is what allows you to be alive at all, because without it you'd probably have been killed by or enslaved by roving Mad Max style marauders. Therefore you owe your life to the State and they can demand anything at all from you and you shouldn't complain. Right?
- Apocryphon 11y ago
  Welcome to the social contract
  - Turing_Machine 11y ago
    You (and others on this thread, on both sides) are pretending that there's no gradation between "roving bands of cannibal looters" (the "Mad Max" scenario) and "Tyrannical government controls every single aspect of your daily life" (the "1984" scenario), when in fact there is a very large amount of space between those two scenarios. That is a fundamentally dishonest argument. There are honest discussions of exactly where the boundaries on government power should lie, but this isn't one of them.
akgerber 11y ago
Beyond that, the state is who sends a sheriff to evict someone from a house when they don't pay rent to a landlord.

branchless 11y ago

Please try thinking more holistically.

nommm-nommm 11y ago

Renting an apartment isn't the same as buying an iPad. Having a safe place to lay your head at night is something our society has determined extremely important bordering on essential. Housing rentals are highly regulated due (mostly) to this fact.

simoncion 11y ago

> You are (party to) using the state to withhold justly earned economic value from your landlord. And anyone who benefits from the zoning laws in their district benefits from influential parties using the power of the state to -in many cases- artificially restrict the supply of one type of building or another. [0] Frankly, we can play the "No, you're using the power of the state to..." game all night long. :/ > "justly earned economic value" My previous landlords did nothing to improve the value of their property. Indeed, my most recent landlord not-infrequently neglects even the bare minimum legally required maintenance and upkeep. They earned nothing. Force of law created a situation where progressively increasing housing pressure inflated the "market value" of their "asset". [0] Note: I am not railing against zoning laws in general. Segregating heavy industry from residential zones is an obvious good.

fche 11y ago
"Frankly, we can play the "No, you're using the power of the state" I don't wish to defend zoning laws, nor humour a "tu quoque" contest. Not necessary for my point. "My previous landlords did nothing to improve the value of their property." That's also beside the point. They made an investment in buying and improving the land. They are not permitted to realize the market value that their investment (foresight / risk-taking) had earned.
- simoncion 11y ago
  > ...nor humour a "tu quoque" contest. Awful sly of you to indirectly make the claim that I was calling you a hypocrite. I'm not. I'm declaring that everyone who lives in a governed district is a beneficiary of the state's ability to restrict supply of one thing or another. This includes landlords who might have the "value" of their "investment" inflated due to restricted supply. > They made an investment in buying [the land]... Yes. Agreed. > ...and improving the land. No. No, they did not. They paid someone else to get access to the revenue stream that comes from the people living in the building that was constructed roughly one hundred years before they made the purchase. Additionally, the building was constructed more than fifty years before $CURRENT_LANDLORD-2 made his purchase. Neither of them fronted the money and took on the risk to build the only improvement on the land. What's more, $CURRENT_LANDLORD's negligence is lowering the value of the property they purchased. Vermin infestation throughout the building and trash accumulation in public areas [0] are now not-uncommon sights. Essential building services are unreliable and not-infrequently unavailable due to failure to perform regular preventative maintenance. Are you using some definition of "$CURRENT_LANDLORD is improving the land." that remains true when the actions that the landowner takes both damage the pre-existing building on the property and lower its value, actual or otherwise? > Not necessary for my point. It really seems like your point is not valid, for the situation that a renter not-infrequently finds himself in in San Francisco. [1] Because the demand for rental housing is so high, landlords can often get away with failing to perform even the legally required maintenance and upkeep and still have people breaking down their doors to rent their vacant apartments. I don't see how one can -with a straight face- make the claim that a property owner is adding value to a property when they aren't even performing the maintenance required to adequately counteract the natural forces of entropy. Do you now understand what I mean when I say "$CURRENT_LANDLORD has done nothing to improve the value of their property."? [0] Due to not-infrequent failure of building management to swap out the full garbage, recycling, and composting bins with empty ones. [1] Your argument may be (and probably is) totally valid in other situations. San Francisco's housing market (rental or otherwise) is a special bucket of suck.