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A landlord in Smith’s day is more or less the same as someone who buys a building and raises rent based on its increased value from the productive economic acti

A landlord in Smith’s day is more or less the same as someone who buys a building and raises rent based on its increased value from the productive economic activity that occurs in and around it, as opposed to anything they do themselves. This is the thrust of his argument, the landlord is an immoral parasite because he “reaps what he does not sow,” i.e, extracts for himself the value created by others through productive economic activity occurring on or around his asset. This isn’t about any semantic drift, but your disagreement with Smith because you like landlords, are a landlord, like rent seeking in general or whatever else. Just say that instead of wasting people’s time with some imagined form of his philosophy that does not exist.

roenxi 2y ago
> A landlord in Smith’s day is more or less the same as someone who buys a building and ... Wealth of Nations is available for free online and Chapter 11 isn't that long [0]. You should probably find a copy and read it - he is talking about a different type of rent. He explains himself in excruciating detail and outlines how "rent" is controlling access to natural factors of production like kelp, timber, cropland (especially cropland, this is a major focus of his [1]), coal, hunting opportunities, yadda yadda. If you want to grep for "After food, clothing and lodging are the two great wants of mankind." you can see he breaks down lodging into the natural elements used to create a house and how they all present opportunities for the person who controls the natural resource to extract rent. He isn't talking about renting out capital which is a significant part of what modern landlords do for tenants. Houses (and apartments) aren't naturally occurring. > This is the thrust of his argument, the landlord is an immoral parasite because he “reaps what he does not sow,” Smith, you and I all agree on that. But we agree in the context Smith was using the word where that was all the landlord was doing. In the modern context, you can take all the parasitic aspects out of the landlord and there'll still be something left behind that you pay money to every month. The house doesn't appear by almost-magic like coal does - someone has to build it and the owner doesn't have to be the same as the beneficial user. [0] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/Chapter_11 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/... - let's use a better link than the Marxists [1] We get this choice quote: "Food is, in this manner, not only the original source of rent, but every other part of the produce of land which afterward affords rent derives that part of its value from the improvement of the powers of labor in producing food by means of the improvement and cultivation of land."
- bugglebeetle 2y ago
  I’ve read it and you still are just engaging in nonsensical special pleading. In Smith’s conception, a free market was to be built on freedom from rent seeking, where labor and capital are deployed to productive ends and not siphoned off to unproductive ones by rentiering. Go watch this talk by UCL economist and historian Mariana Mazzucato for better context. https://iai.tv/video/the-value-of-everything-mariana-mazzucato-capitalism?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=short https://iai.tv/video/the-value-of-everything-mariana-mazzuca...
  - roenxi 2y ago
    > Go watch this talk... She makes some good points, but now you have the problem that even though Smith has left us a large body of work to refer to, you can't support your claims by referring to it. On the other hand, if you look to to Volume 3 Chapter 2 you'll notice that Smith actually dealt with this specific topic (see: "Taxes upon the Rent of Houses") and drew the conclusions that I suggested he would. He breaks the rent up into "ground rent" (aka economic rent, the part that is economically damaging) and "building rent" (the return on capital) and concludes that ground rent should be taxed out of existence but that building rent is necessary and not all that much of a problem (he anticipates it settling at a fair premium of maybe 2% above interest rates, which seems like a reasonable guess that is in line with the actual rent I tend to have paid). He is advocating a demise of rent on land (hence the more classic and literal landlord). Rent on houses (modern urban landlords) is a topic that he has a reasonable and balanced view on that acknowledges the necessity of a return on capital after dealing with the component of the rent that is for land.
    - bugglebeetle 2y ago
      Ah, now we’re getting somewhere! No modern landlord would support the demise of rents on lands, which is why they the same as the parasitic feudal dullards Smith elsewhere decries. Modern, urban landlords want to reap what the do not sow, i.e. the value derived from the productive activity of cities where they buy up houses to maintain an (individually partial, collectively large) monopoly on the availability and use of land. They generally in fact go one step further and leverage this monopoly to obtain loans, premised on the inflated valuations derived from the constraint of supply, and extend it even further. In a Georgist arrangement, they would be forced to reinvest rents on properties into making said properties more economically productive…which is why no modern landlords are Georgists!

roenxi 2y ago

> A landlord in Smith’s day is more or less the same as someone who buys a building and ... Wealth of Nations is available for free online and Chapter 11 isn't that long [0]. You should probably find a copy and read it - he is talking about a different type of rent. He explains himself in excruciating detail and outlines how "rent" is controlling access to natural factors of production like kelp, timber, cropland (especially cropland, this is a major focus of his [1]), coal, hunting opportunities, yadda yadda. If you want to grep for "After food, clothing and lodging are the two great wants of mankind." you can see he breaks down lodging into the natural elements used to create a house and how they all present opportunities for the person who controls the natural resource to extract rent. He isn't talking about renting out capital which is a significant part of what modern landlords do for tenants. Houses (and apartments) aren't naturally occurring. > This is the thrust of his argument, the landlord is an immoral parasite because he “reaps what he does not sow,” Smith, you and I all agree on that. But we agree in the context Smith was using the word where that was all the landlord was doing. In the modern context, you can take all the parasitic aspects out of the landlord and there'll still be something left behind that you pay money to every month. The house doesn't appear by almost-magic like coal does - someone has to build it and the owner doesn't have to be the same as the beneficial user. [0] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/Chapter_11 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/... - let's use a better link than the Marxists [1] We get this choice quote: "Food is, in this manner, not only the original source of rent, but every other part of the produce of land which afterward affords rent derives that part of its value from the improvement of the powers of labor in producing food by means of the improvement and cultivation of land."

bugglebeetle 2y ago
I’ve read it and you still are just engaging in nonsensical special pleading. In Smith’s conception, a free market was to be built on freedom from rent seeking, where labor and capital are deployed to productive ends and not siphoned off to unproductive ones by rentiering. Go watch this talk by UCL economist and historian Mariana Mazzucato for better context. https://iai.tv/video/the-value-of-everything-mariana-mazzucato-capitalism?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=short https://iai.tv/video/the-value-of-everything-mariana-mazzuca...
- roenxi 2y ago
  > Go watch this talk... She makes some good points, but now you have the problem that even though Smith has left us a large body of work to refer to, you can't support your claims by referring to it. On the other hand, if you look to to Volume 3 Chapter 2 you'll notice that Smith actually dealt with this specific topic (see: "Taxes upon the Rent of Houses") and drew the conclusions that I suggested he would. He breaks the rent up into "ground rent" (aka economic rent, the part that is economically damaging) and "building rent" (the return on capital) and concludes that ground rent should be taxed out of existence but that building rent is necessary and not all that much of a problem (he anticipates it settling at a fair premium of maybe 2% above interest rates, which seems like a reasonable guess that is in line with the actual rent I tend to have paid). He is advocating a demise of rent on land (hence the more classic and literal landlord). Rent on houses (modern urban landlords) is a topic that he has a reasonable and balanced view on that acknowledges the necessity of a return on capital after dealing with the component of the rent that is for land.
  - bugglebeetle 2y ago
    Ah, now we’re getting somewhere! No modern landlord would support the demise of rents on lands, which is why they the same as the parasitic feudal dullards Smith elsewhere decries. Modern, urban landlords want to reap what the do not sow, i.e. the value derived from the productive activity of cities where they buy up houses to maintain an (individually partial, collectively large) monopoly on the availability and use of land. They generally in fact go one step further and leverage this monopoly to obtain loans, premised on the inflated valuations derived from the constraint of supply, and extend it even further. In a Georgist arrangement, they would be forced to reinvest rents on properties into making said properties more economically productive…which is why no modern landlords are Georgists!