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Middlemen get a bad rap, because people don't see that they are providing a valuable service. Your financial resources make the risk acceptable to you. It's pr

Middlemen get a bad rap, because people don't see that they are providing a valuable service. Your financial resources make the risk acceptable to you. It's probably less acceptable to your tenants. In the same way, you choose to keep your capital and not commit it to your own housing, even though your landlord is also benefiting from that relationship. If your landlord is not providing you a valuable service, cut him out. Vertical integration is a time-proven way to remove middlemen that don't add value. The fact you are aware of the alternatives and that they are easy and yet you choose to continue paying rent shows it is valuable to you. We all have incomes that far exceed one person's labor, because of the benefits of specialization and free exchange, which are still fundamental to economics. The stored surplus is capital, which further magnifies productivity, and is necessary for any modern lifestyle - without it, we'd be a lot more equal, but it would be the equality of hunter-gatherers. Those middlemen and providers of capital are why you and your tenants can rent homes, in a city, working desk jobs, and eating turkey sandwiches on demand for $10 instead of $1500 and six months of labor. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLXfVEsLI-qSO5XzEa0pOJyXlNVZJBupK https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLXfVEsLI-qSO5XzEa0pOJyXl...

neonological 6y ago
>Your financial resources make the risk acceptable to you. It's probably less acceptable to your tenants. In the same way, you choose to keep your capital and not commit it to your own housing, even though your landlord is also benefiting from that relationship. No I told you the risk is nothing. I just have capital to make a down payment that's it. Additionally risk isn't an economic product. How risky something is does not contribute extra GDP to the economy. Only productive work contributes to the economy. >If your landlord is not providing you a valuable service, cut him out. Vertical integration is a time-proven way to remove middlemen that don't add value. The fact you are aware of the alternatives and that they are easy and yet you choose to continue paying rent shows it is valuable to you. It is valuable to me. Your statement proves nothing. It's similar to how air is valuable to me. Take the concept of property ownership and place it on air. Now I have to pay some owner of air money because he is providing me a valuable service of letting me breath his air? I'm not providing a "service" to anyone anymore than a hypothetical owner of oxygen is providing a "service" to let people breath. >We all have incomes that far exceed one person's labor, because of the benefits of specialization and free exchange, which are still fundamental to economics. The stored surplus is capital, which further magnifies productivity, and is necessary for any modern lifestyle - without it, we'd be a lot more equal, but it would be the equality of hunter-gatherers. No we don't. I'm not talking about income from manual labor of one hunter gatherer. I'm talking about the average possible income one man can make without hiring any employees or investing in capital in a modern economy. I thought this was obvious, guess not. Many people make less than this, many people make significantly more. The people who make significantly more tend to have had hired human capital to produce output equivalent to multitudes of people. >If your landlord is not providing you a valuable service, cut him out. Vertical integration is a time-proven way to remove middlemen that don't add value. The fact you are aware of the alternatives and that they are easy and yet you choose to continue paying rent shows it is valuable to you. No it's not. Dude. By middleman I'm not talking about some hustler who connects two potential clients together or fronts some kind of risk. I'm talking about people who are sitting on tons of investment capital and just living off the growth of that capital by doing Zero work. Warren Buffet invests in low low risk companies and profits off the growth of these investments by doing no work. Literally if warren buffet didn't exist the world wouldn't really change... If Elon Musk didn't exist on the other hand, the space industry and automobile industry would be very different. Warren Buffet by owning a bunch of stock from a lot of companies isn't contributing anything to the economy. No services, no risk, no nothing. He's just benefiting from the growth of others peoples' work. Both of these people benefit from human capital but warren is the more apt example because he doesn't even contribute anything to the investments he owns. He's just a stock picker. Whatever you think about the economy this much is real: It's already officially known that the wealth inequality is the result of income from capital growing faster than income from productive labor. It's free money in every sense of the word. And because productive capital is the basis of an economy what you get is wealth inequality.
- kbutler 6y ago
  >> choose to continue paying rent shows it is valuable to you. > It is valuable to me. That is the very definition of economic value. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/economic-value.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/economic-value.asp
  - neonological 6y ago
    Does air have economic value? Yes it does. Does that fact help your point in any way? No. If I make a law to allow people to own air, then people start renting out the air and living off of the income of renting air. That's where your archaic Adam Smith model of the economy completely fails. Under your idealistic model there's no concept of an unfair transaction because all parties benefited from the transaction. One person can breath so he's happy, another person got money from renting air so he's happy. Everyone is happy, so the concept of getting ripped off doesn't exist.
    - kbutler 6y ago
      Markets for air already exist where scarcity prevails: - scuba - medical oxygen - submarines - space - polluted areas (search for "beijing canned air") The law privatizing air that you suggest would match rental housing only if you're renting a vacant lot w/o buildings in a place without land scarcity. It's actually most similar to copyright - inducing artificial scarcity to create a market. I already described some criteria for unfair transactions: compulsion or deception. You could also make arguments that if one side captures nearly all the economic surplus, the transaction is unfair (generally maintained via government-enforced monopolies limiting competition). Rather than trying to assert Adam Smith's obsolescence, you should probably try googling "Adam Smith landlord". I expect you'll like the quotes. (I'd recommend learning more about the context more than just the quotes, but hey, it's the internet).
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - 6y ago

neonological 6y ago

>Your financial resources make the risk acceptable to you. It's probably less acceptable to your tenants. In the same way, you choose to keep your capital and not commit it to your own housing, even though your landlord is also benefiting from that relationship. No I told you the risk is nothing. I just have capital to make a down payment that's it. Additionally risk isn't an economic product. How risky something is does not contribute extra GDP to the economy. Only productive work contributes to the economy. >If your landlord is not providing you a valuable service, cut him out. Vertical integration is a time-proven way to remove middlemen that don't add value. The fact you are aware of the alternatives and that they are easy and yet you choose to continue paying rent shows it is valuable to you. It is valuable to me. Your statement proves nothing. It's similar to how air is valuable to me. Take the concept of property ownership and place it on air. Now I have to pay some owner of air money because he is providing me a valuable service of letting me breath his air? I'm not providing a "service" to anyone anymore than a hypothetical owner of oxygen is providing a "service" to let people breath. >We all have incomes that far exceed one person's labor, because of the benefits of specialization and free exchange, which are still fundamental to economics. The stored surplus is capital, which further magnifies productivity, and is necessary for any modern lifestyle - without it, we'd be a lot more equal, but it would be the equality of hunter-gatherers. No we don't. I'm not talking about income from manual labor of one hunter gatherer. I'm talking about the average possible income one man can make without hiring any employees or investing in capital in a modern economy. I thought this was obvious, guess not. Many people make less than this, many people make significantly more. The people who make significantly more tend to have had hired human capital to produce output equivalent to multitudes of people. >If your landlord is not providing you a valuable service, cut him out. Vertical integration is a time-proven way to remove middlemen that don't add value. The fact you are aware of the alternatives and that they are easy and yet you choose to continue paying rent shows it is valuable to you. No it's not. Dude. By middleman I'm not talking about some hustler who connects two potential clients together or fronts some kind of risk. I'm talking about people who are sitting on tons of investment capital and just living off the growth of that capital by doing Zero work. Warren Buffet invests in low low risk companies and profits off the growth of these investments by doing no work. Literally if warren buffet didn't exist the world wouldn't really change... If Elon Musk didn't exist on the other hand, the space industry and automobile industry would be very different. Warren Buffet by owning a bunch of stock from a lot of companies isn't contributing anything to the economy. No services, no risk, no nothing. He's just benefiting from the growth of others peoples' work. Both of these people benefit from human capital but warren is the more apt example because he doesn't even contribute anything to the investments he owns. He's just a stock picker. Whatever you think about the economy this much is real: It's already officially known that the wealth inequality is the result of income from capital growing faster than income from productive labor. It's free money in every sense of the word. And because productive capital is the basis of an economy what you get is wealth inequality.

kbutler 6y ago
>> choose to continue paying rent shows it is valuable to you. > It is valuable to me. That is the very definition of economic value. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/economic-value.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/economic-value.asp
- neonological 6y ago
  Does air have economic value? Yes it does. Does that fact help your point in any way? No. If I make a law to allow people to own air, then people start renting out the air and living off of the income of renting air. That's where your archaic Adam Smith model of the economy completely fails. Under your idealistic model there's no concept of an unfair transaction because all parties benefited from the transaction. One person can breath so he's happy, another person got money from renting air so he's happy. Everyone is happy, so the concept of getting ripped off doesn't exist.
  - kbutler 6y ago
    Markets for air already exist where scarcity prevails: - scuba - medical oxygen - submarines - space - polluted areas (search for "beijing canned air") The law privatizing air that you suggest would match rental housing only if you're renting a vacant lot w/o buildings in a place without land scarcity. It's actually most similar to copyright - inducing artificial scarcity to create a market. I already described some criteria for unfair transactions: compulsion or deception. You could also make arguments that if one side captures nearly all the economic surplus, the transaction is unfair (generally maintained via government-enforced monopolies limiting competition). Rather than trying to assert Adam Smith's obsolescence, you should probably try googling "Adam Smith landlord". I expect you'll like the quotes. (I'd recommend learning more about the context more than just the quotes, but hey, it's the internet).
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - 6y ago