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Hundred percent. I have a personal ethos that believes profit from rent is amoral, but we could probably address housing concerns without meeting my personal et

Hundred percent. I have a personal ethos that believes profit from rent is amoral, but we could probably address housing concerns without meeting my personal ethics standards, which I freely admit are more extreme than most.

cycrutchfield 4y ago
“profit from rent is amoral”. Care to elaborate on this? Does this ethical standard also extend to other human needs as well? For instance should farmers not be able to profit from providing food?
- b112 4y ago
  It's just backdoor socialism, and I say that as a Canuck!
  - serenitylater 4y ago
- account42 4y ago
  If the farmer disappears, the food will no longer be produced. If the landlord disappears, the house will still be there.
  - cycrutchfield 4y ago
    Oh ok, I get where you’re going with this now. Some Marxist bullshit
  - endisneigh 4y ago
    You think houses will stand for long without any maintenance?
    - diordiderot 4y ago
      Landlords don't maintain the bloody house. They use tenant money to pay someone else to do it
      - endisneigh 4y ago
        Yes, they use the money in order to maintain the house. Furthermore owner-occupancy is a thing, where the landlord does some maintenance themselves. However no matter what, no landlord can maintain all aspects of the house alone. You think a single person can be a master of all trades and have all equipment on hand all of the time in an apartment, for instance? Why does it even matter if someone pays others to maintain the house? Do you think there are people who build modern houses alone with no machinery?
        lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
        I believe the argument would be that the tenant might be empowered to pay for their own maintenance if they're not paying rent to a landlord.
        endisneigh 4y ago
        Can’t said tenant just buy a house then?
        diordiderot 4y ago
        Because homes are overpriced, because they're treated as capital instead of a durable good & because all financial / building policy advantages existing homeowners
        endisneigh 4y ago
        Ok, so if you can’t or don’t want to buy you rent. No one is entitled anything. Or you can move to a less desirable area that’s cheaper. Overpriced or not, people still buy.
  - hackerfromthefu 4y ago
    This really is wrong. There's so many contracts the landlord has to keep up with, and pay, the council on various cases like rates, water, upkeep of lawns or council will and bill, keeping up with changing building codes and rules such a fire alarms which update every x years, then insurances, then maintenance of the house structure, the plumbing, electrical .. as well as that the 'money' represents their savings from other work they did. It's serious job and you're not seeing the reality of it if you think the landlord does nothing but profit. It's a bloody business, with work, responsibilities and risks, and if everything goes well the expectation of a profit but not the guarantee. It's also a business that provides significant real value to people - a modern house has so many features and meets so many beauracratic and safety rules beyond just a roof over your head. Living in a teepee is looking more attractive by the day haha.
- dgb23 4y ago
  I feel like there's a difference between making a sustainable profit and squeezing every bit out of a trade or contract. I'm not as idealistic as GP, but think we should aim at improving things. Markets and competition work really well on frontiers in a situation where basic things are covered, because like this more people can participate freely. There are many things that we have figured out to a pretty high degree and that benefit from collaboration and (very) long term thinking. I think housing, transport, basic medicine/treatment and perhaps to some degree food and water belong to that category. You can always have the luxury/explorative version on top with markets and that model works pretty well where it is applied. To contrast, if your under such financial stress so you constantly worry whether some big bill is coming your way or you cannot even afford the very basics, then your stuck in a perpetual loop. Landlords, collectors and even police come knocking. It takes a lot of courage, discipline and enough luck and stamina to get out of this. In my opinion this is a a monumental task and effort _wasted_ on a inefficient and short sighted system of power relations.
- turtledove 4y ago
  A farmer and a landlord are different things. My family are farmers, I've been a landlord. (FWIW, before anyone calls me a hypocrite, I paid back every renter every penny of profit I made from them plus appreciation.) The labor that the farmer puts in should absolutely be rewarded. But the labor of a farmer is absolutely nothing like a landlord who makes money purely because they had enough money to buy housing. Plenty of landlords hire property management firms, and do little to no labor at all, but still make a profit. That modality doesn't exist in farming and food the same way it does in housing today.
  - carom 4y ago
    What if I owned farm land and hired someone to work it, and collected profit?
  - nicoco 4y ago
    >before anyone calls me a hypocrite, I paid back every renter every penny of profit I made I wouldn't have called you a hypocrite even if you didn't pay back anything. Living in the real world™ doesn't mean you can't criticise it. If we can't challenge things we take part in, how do we improve anything?
  - endisneigh 4y ago
    Why should labor be rewarded but not capital? Seems like an arbitrary distinction. Does your family allow anyone to farm and extract value from their land? No? Then they're no different than a landlord. People mischaracterize the ease in which landlords make money. Take the past two years and eviction moratoriums for example. Landlords in the United States in many areas had to allow tenants to rent without being able to remove them for non-payment. Landlords inherently have to be well capitalized in order to properly maintain the house as most individuals are not experts in all trades.
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    > purely because they had enough money to buy housings whence did the money originate? from loot or labor?
  - srean 4y ago
- antisthenes 4y ago
  "Amoral" means neutral, without imposing a moral judgment. So it seems to me he doesn't particularly care about it either way. If he wrote "immoral", then you could ask why he thinks that.
  - turtledove 4y ago
    Not he. But good point, immoral is probably more correct.
andi999 4y ago
Housing in gdr was great wasnt it. In 2000 you could still see bullet holes in the outside walls from the second world war.

cycrutchfield 4y ago

“profit from rent is amoral”. Care to elaborate on this? Does this ethical standard also extend to other human needs as well? For instance should farmers not be able to profit from providing food?

b112 4y ago
It's just backdoor socialism, and I say that as a Canuck!
- serenitylater 4y ago
account42 4y ago
If the farmer disappears, the food will no longer be produced. If the landlord disappears, the house will still be there.
- cycrutchfield 4y ago
  Oh ok, I get where you’re going with this now. Some Marxist bullshit
- endisneigh 4y ago
  You think houses will stand for long without any maintenance?
  - diordiderot 4y ago
    Landlords don't maintain the bloody house. They use tenant money to pay someone else to do it
    - endisneigh 4y ago
      Yes, they use the money in order to maintain the house. Furthermore owner-occupancy is a thing, where the landlord does some maintenance themselves. However no matter what, no landlord can maintain all aspects of the house alone. You think a single person can be a master of all trades and have all equipment on hand all of the time in an apartment, for instance? Why does it even matter if someone pays others to maintain the house? Do you think there are people who build modern houses alone with no machinery?
      - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
        I believe the argument would be that the tenant might be empowered to pay for their own maintenance if they're not paying rent to a landlord.
        endisneigh 4y ago
        Can’t said tenant just buy a house then?
        diordiderot 4y ago
        Because homes are overpriced, because they're treated as capital instead of a durable good & because all financial / building policy advantages existing homeowners
        endisneigh 4y ago
        Ok, so if you can’t or don’t want to buy you rent. No one is entitled anything. Or you can move to a less desirable area that’s cheaper. Overpriced or not, people still buy.
- hackerfromthefu 4y ago
  This really is wrong. There's so many contracts the landlord has to keep up with, and pay, the council on various cases like rates, water, upkeep of lawns or council will and bill, keeping up with changing building codes and rules such a fire alarms which update every x years, then insurances, then maintenance of the house structure, the plumbing, electrical .. as well as that the 'money' represents their savings from other work they did. It's serious job and you're not seeing the reality of it if you think the landlord does nothing but profit. It's a bloody business, with work, responsibilities and risks, and if everything goes well the expectation of a profit but not the guarantee. It's also a business that provides significant real value to people - a modern house has so many features and meets so many beauracratic and safety rules beyond just a roof over your head. Living in a teepee is looking more attractive by the day haha.
dgb23 4y ago
I feel like there's a difference between making a sustainable profit and squeezing every bit out of a trade or contract. I'm not as idealistic as GP, but think we should aim at improving things. Markets and competition work really well on frontiers in a situation where basic things are covered, because like this more people can participate freely. There are many things that we have figured out to a pretty high degree and that benefit from collaboration and (very) long term thinking. I think housing, transport, basic medicine/treatment and perhaps to some degree food and water belong to that category. You can always have the luxury/explorative version on top with markets and that model works pretty well where it is applied. To contrast, if your under such financial stress so you constantly worry whether some big bill is coming your way or you cannot even afford the very basics, then your stuck in a perpetual loop. Landlords, collectors and even police come knocking. It takes a lot of courage, discipline and enough luck and stamina to get out of this. In my opinion this is a a monumental task and effort _wasted_ on a inefficient and short sighted system of power relations.
turtledove 4y ago
A farmer and a landlord are different things. My family are farmers, I've been a landlord. (FWIW, before anyone calls me a hypocrite, I paid back every renter every penny of profit I made from them plus appreciation.) The labor that the farmer puts in should absolutely be rewarded. But the labor of a farmer is absolutely nothing like a landlord who makes money purely because they had enough money to buy housing. Plenty of landlords hire property management firms, and do little to no labor at all, but still make a profit. That modality doesn't exist in farming and food the same way it does in housing today.
- carom 4y ago
  What if I owned farm land and hired someone to work it, and collected profit?
- nicoco 4y ago
  >before anyone calls me a hypocrite, I paid back every renter every penny of profit I made I wouldn't have called you a hypocrite even if you didn't pay back anything. Living in the real world™ doesn't mean you can't criticise it. If we can't challenge things we take part in, how do we improve anything?
- endisneigh 4y ago
  Why should labor be rewarded but not capital? Seems like an arbitrary distinction. Does your family allow anyone to farm and extract value from their land? No? Then they're no different than a landlord. People mischaracterize the ease in which landlords make money. Take the past two years and eviction moratoriums for example. Landlords in the United States in many areas had to allow tenants to rent without being able to remove them for non-payment. Landlords inherently have to be well capitalized in order to properly maintain the house as most individuals are not experts in all trades.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  > purely because they had enough money to buy housings whence did the money originate? from loot or labor?
- srean 4y ago
antisthenes 4y ago
"Amoral" means neutral, without imposing a moral judgment. So it seems to me he doesn't particularly care about it either way. If he wrote "immoral", then you could ask why he thinks that.
- turtledove 4y ago
  Not he. But good point, immoral is probably more correct.

andi999 4y ago

Housing in gdr was great wasnt it. In 2000 you could still see bullet holes in the outside walls from the second world war.