6 ms·
Eventually we might consider that rent is just outright theft, we're not actually paying for value, landlords are parasites who suck surplus value from the econ
by astazangasta 11y ago
Eventually we might consider that rent is just outright theft, we're not actually paying for value, landlords are parasites who suck surplus value from the economy, etc.
- mooreds 11y agoYou're paying for the location and services (well, with NNN leases, just location). What other value do you need?
- sseveran 11y agoYou could also build/buy your own office. Then there would be no landlord.
- bbcbasic 11y agoProbably not a good idea for startups whose long term success is unpredictable though.
- buro9 11y ago> we're not actually paying for value The value you are receiving is location. If you do not care for location, then rent office space in Tennessee where you can pay less than 1/4 of SF prices.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- _delirium 11y agoThe location is hardly value created by the landlord, though. (The improvements to the land, like buildings, may well be.) Unlike people who earn income by producing something, people who extract ground rent are not adding value. What you're paying for then, is essentially bad luck: due to some complex set of historical reasons, this particular person owns that land and you don't, so you have to pay them a fee to use it. Why do they own it and you don't, when both of you did just as much work to create that land (i.e., none)? Usually you don't want to see how that particular sausage was made; the history of land distribution and acquisition in the U.S. is quite "dirty".
- RogerL 11y agoFine, run your startup in the middle of the street. There's no value in the office, correct?
- LandoCalrissian 11y agoThen don't rent an office? I really don't know what you think the alternative would be. I assume the value comes from not having to work by a flaming barrel down by the river.
- Crito 11y agoAlthough astazangasta is complaining about rent, he doesn't actually want to buy land either. He thinks he is entitled to free land.
- mschuster91 11y agoNative Americans iirc thrived without the concept of "privatized land" for thousands of years. Same for basically other self-sustaining native population in history. Okay, you got the occasional clashes with other clans for land but hey, you could always move somewhere else. That's impossible now, given the massive numbers of humans on this planet.
- Turing_Machine 11y agoSorry, that is not correct. http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/exhibits/aztec/aztec_property.html http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/exhibits/aztec/aztec_property.... I doubt there's ever been an urban culture that didn't have some concept of property ownership, whether by individuals, "nobles", or the state.
- scarmig 11y agoDepends on the particular geographic area you're talking about. In the Northeast, for example, land rights were radically different from the Aztecs. That said, it was never as simple as "everyone holds land in common and can do whatever they want with it individually."
- Turing_Machine 11y agoWere there urban cultures in the Northeast? The largest I've heard of seem more like "towns" than "cities". There were full-scale cities in the Midwest and South, of course, but I don't think we know enough about those cultures to say what their property rights were like. I'd bet money they were a lot closer to the Aztecs than to a typical hunter-gatherer band, though. The Tlingit of the Northwest also had a complicated system of property rights, including something akin to what we call "intellectual property" (though there were significant differences to our system). They also kept large numbers of slaves.
- arielweisberg 11y agoYes and no? They take on risk as well right? They only get to be parasitic when the real estate market is dysfunctional and supply is constrained, possibly artificially. In some sense they are acting as gatekeepers to a limited resource and providing liquidity by setting prices high enough that only those with need are willing to pay.
- Old_Thrashbarg 11y agoLandlords deliver value by managing and providing a physical space to work in, but when the landlords have lobbies and use their political power to artificially restrict the supply of space and jack up the prices to no end, then it is evil. The landlords are therefore parasitizing the economy. Although this article is about commercial space, residential space is just as outrageously priced. I think there should be three things that should never be allowed to be artificially restricted just for the greed of a few: food, water and housing. Here's a good Economist article on this: http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21647622-land-centre-pre-industrial-economy-has-returned-constraint-growth?frsc=dg|d http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21647622-land-centre-...