But on the other hand, this is capitalism. Is it? Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production. Is somewhere to live a "means of production"?

But on the other hand, this is capitalism. Is it? Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production. Is somewhere to live a "means of production"? Sure, it's necessary to live, but it's not "producing" anything. There's no partnership involved. Capitalism is about someone owning the "machine" [1] of production, and someone else being employed to operate that machine, and the owner and operator splitting the profit. In theory, the two of them working together in this way produces more than either would on their own, so everyone benefits. I see the sort of thing in this article referred to as "rentier capitalism", although it's generally meant to be derogatory; a way of marking it out from the beneficial form of capitalism. Oftentimes in capitalism, things look really, really bad. But from a macro point of view, things work out better in the long run. I think you're confusing capitalism with exploitation and rent seeking. They're not the same thing. Not at all. As an aside, I'm sure this use of the word "capitalism" is something Chomsky used to talk about. Now that it's very broadly accepted that capitalism is ethically good and correct and there is effectively no discussion about capitalism, people can gradually move bad behaviour into the definition of capitalism and society will protect that bad behaviour, even against its own interests. If we do want to redefine "capitalism", that's fine, of course, but at that point we have to re-examine its status as "ethically good" or "correct", and judge it in light of this rent-seeking exploitation that produces no value or wealth. In my verdict, under this new definition, "capitalism" comes up bad. [1] Which of course could be an actual machine, but could be just any form of capital that is necessary to produce the output goods.