Comment

Comment on Hexbear federation megathread

ChestRockwell@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

Awoo has already noted some important refutations, but I want to unpack something here.

Landlords and Bourgeoisie are class identities. Importantly, these are not the result of things outside of your control (i.e. ethnic origin, nation, etc.) but instead determined by actions in the world. While one can’t say that one is subhuman because of where they are from, isn’t being a landlord (and thus extracting rent from people for shelter) a behavior? A series of actions and choices? And can’t we characterize a behavior or action as evil/immoral? Basically, when I say “landlords are evil and deserve to die or surrender their assets to the collective” what I’m describing is a particular set of actions. It’s not different from having an opinion on if murderers deserve capital punishment.

Btw, I believe in rehabilitative punishment. However, if we’re going to talk about people who deserve to die, I think capitalists and landlords are up there. A person who kills someone else – either due to mental illness or a crime of passion – is far less damaging to our social fabric than people who, through institutions, contribute to the death of our world and the immiseration of many. For instance, how many unhoused people have gone hungry/died because of the executives at Starbucks who decide that food thrown out should be covered in coffee grounds to be inedible? We don’t have the numbers, but shouldn’t we call this behavior subhuman/evil? I think you’re missing the distinction between saying the executive who designed that policy deserves the gulag – a specific inhuman action that deserves a specific response – and calling all insert ethnicity/nationality here subhuman.

source

Sort:hotnew top

steltek@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
This is highly offtopic flamebait that will trigger a protracted argument of little substance.

Further, how you’ve casually slipped into a debate about capital punishment for enormous swathes of population is disturbing and disgusting. This is the lack of self awareness that others have mentioned here.

source
- ChestRockwell@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Clearly you missed the “or”? Or is the choice to redistribute resources (rather than having billionaires like Bezos accumulating wealth by theft) odious to you on the merits? I don’t mind if Bezos were to turn Amazon into a worker-collective, for instance, rather than accumulate wealth extracted from his workers. Indeed, I would prefer this outcome (and it is in fact the original Marxist approach - the dialectical aufhebung of capitalism into communism).
  
  source
  - hypelightfly@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    @sunaurus
    
    Here is your proof of brigading. Off topic comments massively upvoted by hexbear users. They just can't help themselves.
    
    source
    steltek@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I personally wouldn’t call this brigading per se but I stand by it as evidence of the eagerness to derail things into wildly offtopic discussions that poison the well for everyone else. And no, just because someone says something first doesn’t mean you are compelled to respond until they concede or give up.
    
    After more reading elsewhere, it also speaks to an all too comfortable relationship with political violence. “I’m not saying we put people up against the wall… But if we did, who would go first? The bankers or the factory owners?” The offtopic bit is destructive to community building but the absolute fascination of who dies for what reason is pretty damned concerning.
    
    source
- Catradora_Stalinism@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  This is highly offtopic flamebait that will trigger a protracted argument of little substance.
  
  lots of big words there sir that don’t really have relevance besides dictionary waving
  
  source
Firemyth@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
This is the kind of thing I really hate to see. It’s the reason I’m going to be leaving. You guys make a blanket statement like all landlords are evil because they extract rent for shelter. You don’t give any further reasoning. I’m sure you’ve collectively decided that through some illogical conversations on your home instance but you fail to make a valid point in the wild.

For example:

where are you expecting people to live?

These homes are owned by someone- they worked/paid/built them themselves.

Why do you think these people who have toiled for 40+years should just give you there invested money/work for free?

Why are they evil for using something they have worked for to help themselves?

Inevitably someone like you comes along and just shitposts this same rhetoric you just did with no logical backing behind it other than “evil landlords must die and be redistributed”

How is a house different from a farm? Or a rail system? Or a *insert anything created by someone and used for personal gain"?

source
- alcoholicorn@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  where are you expecting people to live?
  
  In houses. There’s dozens of vacant homes for every homeless person. Just as capitalism requires some people be hungry to maximize profit of food, it requires some people be homeless to maximize profit of landlords.
  
  These homes are owned by someone- they worked/paid/built them themselves.
  
  The people who build houses deserve to be compensated for their labor. Owning a house on the other hand, is not labor.
  
  Why do you think these people who have toiled for 40+years should just give you there invested money/work for free?
  
  Rent isn’t compensation for the construction of a home, otherwise the renter would own the home after 20 years of renting paid off the mortgage.
  
  Why are they evil for using something they have worked for to help themselves?
  
  I’d categorize the parasitic relationship as evil, but as for judging individual people for the poverty and homelessness caused by that relationship, it’s more complicated as we live under capitalism.
  
  Inevitably someone like you comes along and just shitposts this same rhetoric you just did with no logical backing behind it other than “evil landlords must die and be redistributed”
  
  Are you talking about the description of the cultural revolution in that one province in China people post? In the context of generations of peasants seeing their children die of starvation-related disease or conscripted never to return, the people were more merciful and practical than just. It’s easy to criticize any change if you ignore the violence of the status quo. To quote Mark Twain:
  
  THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
  
  How is a house different from a farm? Or a rail system? Or a insert anything created by someone and used for personal gain?
  
  It’s not.
  
  source
  - ChestRockwell@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    My partner and I should have a 50 percent equity in the apartment she rented for 10 years. Instead we were unceremoniously kicked out last year because the landlord’s son wanted to make more money.
    
    source
    Firemyth@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    What in the world makes you think you deserve 50% equity? Did you pay half the down payment? Did you pay half the mortgage and interest to the bank? Did you pay half the property taxes? Did you pay half the maintenance? Did you make any agreement woth the owner up front that this is what you would get? No? Did someone mention communism to you and you haven’t thought twice since?
    
    source
  - ennemi@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    This is a good post, but I think the guy you’re replying to is trying to bait a ton of belief statements out of you so that he can then piss you off by contradicting each and use that as a justification to defederate Hexbear. That, or he’s just going to dig his heels in and you’ll have wasted your time.
    
    source
    Firemyth@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Buddy I’m replying to the things he’s saying. If it hurts your brain that I’m detailing why the things he say make no sense that’s on you. If hexbear is all people like you- that’s on them.
    
    I am new to lemmy and would prefer actual discussion- if certain groups brigade and shitpost in lieu of discussing- that’s on them.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
  - SeborrheicDermatitis@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    At the end of the day ‘evil’ is not a particularly valuable analytical framing if we are being proper social scientists (since, of course, “the capitalist becomes capital personified”, e.g., their actual personality traits don’t matter and they needn’t be sociopathic to do horrible things. Though a disproportionate of landlords are horrible people ofc). On a social media site, however, there’s nothing wrong with using emotive language like ‘evil’ and using venting memes like the guillotine pictures and I guess there is a disconnect in how it’s perceived to the ‘materialist’ mode of analysis that does not focus on individual personality traits + does not see the individual as the supreme and singular unit of analysis.
    
    source
  - Firemyth@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I’m not leaving for an echo chamber. I’m just leaving. It’s your echo chambers I’m exiting.
    
    All these empty houses aren’t producing rent are they? You can go buy one and give it away if you want. Oh what’s that? You don’t want to do that?
    
    What’s the difference if I hammered the nail myself to build the house or if I buy it from the guy who did the hammering. This is the insanity that permeates your argument. I’ve done both by the way- either way that home is owned by someone and rented to someone else.
    
    When did I say rent was compensation for building a home? You say that- and you are wrong for bringing it up. I built a thing- someone wants to use said thing- we make an agreement that we both agree to.
    
    I characterize this insane rationality as evil. You want a thing to be given away for free without compensation. It’s crazy to think this investment I’ve made is somehow going to magically fix something if I just transform it into some other thing you aren’t all brigading over. If it wasn’t a house- it’d be a restaurant, or a clothing business, or whatever. And you’d eventually get up in arms about that too. What you really want is others to give you an equal share even though you haven’t done anything to earn it and I fucking have.
    
    source
    GarbageShoot@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    
    All these empty houses aren’t producing rent are they? You can go buy one and give it away if you want. Oh what’s that? You don’t want to do that?
    
    Personal charity is not a solution to a systemic problem! This will not actually get rid of the problem, it will palliate it! Also, I literally can’t because I personally don’t have the money that would be needed to buy a rental property off of someone who can afford to leave such properties empty, since if we assume they are willing to sell, it’s a high price, but more likely they just won’t because owning an apartment on the fourth floor of an eight-floor complex being someone else’s property seems like a litigation nightmare if there’s literally any type of water damage or anything of the sort that occurs after the sale.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
    macabrett@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    
    What you really want is others to give you an equal share even though you haven’t done anything to earn it and I fucking have.
    
    A core belief most of us have is that workers are very literally not being given what they’ve earned. But we also believe that all humans deserve food, shelter, and care. If you think that’s evil, there’s not much more of a discussion to have.
    
    source
    alcoholicorn@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    
    You want a thing to be given away for free without compensation.
    
    Except I do want you to be compensated, for the labor of building the home. Everything beyond that is theft.
    
    What you really want is others to give you an equal share even though you haven’t done anything to earn it and I fucking have.
    
    You are the one expecting others to work for free. You are demanding a greater amount of wealth from the renter than you’ve produced.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
- a_talking_is2@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  Why do you think these people who have toiled for 40+years should just give you there invested money/work for free?
  
  Amazing logic. I worked so hard to buy this minigun, surely it’s perfectly ok to unload it into a crowd. Don’t tell me what to do with MY money!
  
  source
  - ChestRockwell@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Your post is far better than mine comrade. Much funnier example.
    
    source
    Firemyth@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    This is the following each other around bit.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
  - Firemyth@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    This is the strawmanning I referenced earlier. Goodjob being true to your roots.
    
    source
    a_talking_is2@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    It would be strawmanning if here was a point to make. But here was only only a bunch of cliches to make fun of.
    
    source
- GarbageShoot@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Most of those questions are full of tacit assumptions, but I’d like to answer the general question “Why do you commies dislike landlords so much?” You may restate any of those questions or present new ones if you feel them to be relevant in response.
  
  You complain about people citing Marxist literature, so let’s try citing the central figure of classical liberal economics, Adam Smith:
  
  Wealth of Nations, Chpt 11 -- Excerpts
  >Rent, considered as the price paid for the use of land, is naturally the highest which the tenant can afford to pay in the actual circumstances of the land. In adjusting the terms of the lease, the landlord endeavours to leave him no greater share of the produce than what is sufficient to keep up the stock from which he furnishes the seed, pays the labour, and purchases and maintains the cattle and other instruments of husbandry, together with the ordinary profits of farming stock in the neighbourhood. This is evidently the smallest share with which the tenant can content himself without being a loser, and the landlord seldom means to leave him any more. Whatever part of the produce, or, what is the same thing, whatever part of its price is over and above this share, he naturally endeavours to reserve to himself as the rent of his land, which is evidently the highest the tenant can afford to pay in the actual circumstances of the land. Sometimes, indeed, the liberality, more frequently the ignorance, of the landlord, makes him accept of somewhat less than this portion; and sometimes too, though more rarely, the ignorance of the tenant makes him undertake to pay somewhat more, or to content himself with somewhat less than the ordinary profits of farming stock in the neighbourhood. This portion, however, may still be considered as the natural rent of land, or the rent for which it is naturally meant that land should for the most part be let. > >The rent of land, it may be thought, is frequently no more than a reasonable profit or interest for the stock laid out by the landlord upon its improvement. This, no doubt, may be partly the case upon some occasions; for it can scarce ever be more than partly the case. The landlord demands a rent even for unimproved land, and the supposed interest or profit upon the expense of improvement is generally an addition to this original rent. Those improvements, besides, are not always made by the stock of the landlord, but sometimes by that of the tenant. When the lease comes to be renewed, however, the landlord commonly demands the same augmentation of rent as if they had been all made by his own. > >. . . >The rent of the land, therefore, considered as the price paid for the use of the land, is naturally a monopoly price. It is not at all proportioned to what the landlord may have laid out upon the improvement of the land, or to what he can afford to take; but to what the farmer can afford to give.
  
  Obviously, Smith here is discussing a different type of landlord here, one who rents land for farming (etc.) rather than just habitation, but this contrast is largely to the detriment of the modern landlord as they leave it up to the geographic location of the rented property (i.e. availability of jobs within commuting distance) rather than have the possibility of issuing improvements to the farmland or otherwise assuring that rent can be paid by that individual.
  
  The apologetics around landlords would have a chance if not for the basic fact that they operate on the principle of monopoly, as all of the land has been “accounted for,” it is all publicly or privately owned, and there are extensive efforts to keep people from sleeping on public land. There’s often no camping in a tent, there are specific “public awareness” campaigns encouraging private citizens to report those for destruction, and the settlements that remain are at any time liable to be cleared out by a police squad for the crime of existing. Sleeping on benches, when the benches aren’t specifically designed to prevent this, is “loitering” or “trespassing” (many public sites are officially considered to be closed at night), and in any case is immensely dangerous even if one only considers things like precipitation. Landlords make their profit from the fact that renting land and buying land are the only possible options for someone who doesn’t want to die of exposure or state violence. If there was land open for grabs and it wasn’t being bought up by land sharks, there would be very few homeless because they could at least have little shacks on such land.
  
  Without the power of monopoly, rent would be drastically less, in proportion to the actual maintenance and management labor performed by the owner (or their property manager). We communists have nothing against paying for maintenance or management, but merely owning a vital resource that is monopolized is not a job.
  
  source
  - Firemyth@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Did you just miss that the entire argument rests on unimproved land? By definition a home is on improved land.
    
    Besides I really don’t care what smith or anyone else says- I’m not giving you the things I’ve paid for for free. If you want to use it- you can make an offer. But I’m not evil for not giving you something I worked for. You are for wanting it from me for free.
    
    source
    IzyaKatzmann@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I won’t argue, I will say that Adam Smith is a notable figure who predates Marx, Ricardo, Madison, Stuart Mill, Hayek and Friedman, etc. All of whom were important figures who have shaped our current economic system and form of liberalism.
    
    Even if you don’t care it’s important to note the effect he’s had as it largely effects you even to this day. Warren Buffet, notable capitalist, said one of his two favourite books was Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. Think of it like the Bible of economics.
    
    source
- ChestRockwell@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  If someone’s living in their own home, I don’t have a problem with that at all. The problem is purchasing a home just to extract rents and profits.
  
  And btw, I think all those things should be collectivized and socially available. Landlords contribute no value (as shown by their unwillingness to do maintenance/repairs), and merely extract. After all, what really is the benefit, to society, of a landlord? They serve no purpose (hell, even a CEO has more purpose than a landlord, and they – as Elon shows – don’t really contribute much either). It’s entirely extractive. Your “why are they evil for using something they have worked for to help themselves” is because of how they’re using it. Just like how if you own a gun and defend your home, we consider that moral, but if you own a gun and shoot a person on the street, we consider it immoral. If you build a house and live in it, that’s moral and fine(though, in a perfect world, this would be produced through the government/taxes rather than individual accumulation, but we’re not talking about utopia, we’re talking about moral judgments on our world as it exists). If you build a house or purchase a house, then use it to extract ever-increasing rents from people for a thing we require to live (shelter), that’s immoral.
  
  I think it’s a pretty simple distinction actually.
  
  To return to the starbucks example, the company “produced” that material. Is it “moral” of them to throw it away rather than donate it? After all, they made it - just like your example of houses.
  
  Finally, I’ll just note, the very idea of private property when applied to land, etc. is odious to me on philosophical grounds.
  
  source
  - Firemyth@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    So your argument clearly states that we are living in capitalism… and at the same time states that your moral problem is one of idealism/communism. Your argument cannot exist in one and then transmute half way through to make it fit your narrative.
    
    We live in capitalism. I have worked and saved to buy off my house which I now rent out at market (below market actually) and provide a home that my tenants could not afford to buy on their own. I haven’t increased rent since I started renting.
    
    You are now blanket yelling I should be stripped of my investment. My effort. My money that I’ve worked for. And these other slack-jaws are frothing at the mouth because they can’t conceive of a difference between me and the multibillion dollar company who is actually doing what you are saying.
    
    source
    ChestRockwell@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    
    a home that my tenants could not afford to buy on their own
    
    What I’m saying is there shouldn’t be a situation like this in the first place. Your tenants shouldn’t have to come to you to rent, housing should be freely available to all.
    
    It’s a difference of degree, not of kind. And the goal is to change the relationship to society/production/the state such that this relationship no longer needs to exist. After all, investing in housing/real estate is the one “safe” thing to do under capitalism if you have surplus money. I doubt you’re a true “capitalist” in the sense of having true economic leverage, and the question for you is ultimately, would you side with the workers, your tenants, etc. and willingly join in the socialization of basic human needs? Or will you ally with the capitalists above you and protect private property at all costs.
    
    A difference in degree but not in kind exists historically. Guatemala. The operations of the United Fruit company through exploitation were very profitable. They “built” them. The new government offered to either buy them out at the rate they had claimed on their taxes or reassess their taxes to redistribute their profits more equitably. Instead, the CIA coup’d them.
    
    The question for you ultimately is, if given the chance to exit from the exploitative relationship imposed upon you by capitalism, will you? Would you let the government buy you out or raise your taxes to fund collective housing? Or will you instead employ the forces of reaction?
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
  - PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks [bot] ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Here is an alternative Piped link(s): piped.video/watch?v=r2xakGZvLjI
    
    Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
    
    I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
    
    source
- betelgeuse@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  where are you expecting people to live?
  
  Houses and apartments. Like they do now.
  
  These homes are owned by someone- they worked/paid/built them themselves.
  
  Nope. Not worked/paid/built themselves. The vast majority of homes are made by people paying others to build homes for them. Labor is the source of value, not investors. This is like billionaires claiming to be job creators. You’re extracting the value of their labor to make your investment property. You’re paying them a fraction of what it is worth to you because you happen to live in a society where that is normal. Your lack of imagination beyond your current circumstances is not my problem.
  
  Oh yeah, and even if you happen to build the house with your own hands, it is owned by someone, the bank where you got your construction loan.
  
  Why do you think these people who have toiled for 40+years should just give you there invested money/work for free?
  
  Why do you think people who work and toil away should pay your mortgage on an investment property and then some?
  
  Why are they evil for using something they have worked for to help themselves?
  
  Because helping themselves comes at the cost of someone else, and everyone else.
  
  Inevitably someone like you comes along and just shitposts this same rhetoric you just did with no logical backing behind it other than “evil landlords must die and be redistributed”
  
  You can say what you want about the rest of Hexbear but I can actually explain myself. Yeah, I’m one of those who have actually thought about stuff. In fact, I know more about real estate investing than you do.
  
  How is a house different from a farm? Or a rail system? Or a insert anything created by someone and used for personal gain?
  
  It’s not. They all belong to those who actually made them, the workers.
  
  Why don’t you go build your own house? Why aren’t you giving these unfortunate souls your own place?
  
  I can’t. Investors have inflated the cost of construction and increased the barrier to entry. They snuff out competition. Capitalism is built on lies. They don’t actually like competition. The whole idea is to consolidate and monopolize. If I did try to build low income housing I’d be ran off by all the investors who own everything. Housing poor people next to their investments lowers the value. This is multi-family 101 kiddo. Read a book.
  
  To cap it all- you follow each other around in groups and rather than actually discussing you strawman, point people to communist propaganda, and generally troll anyone who disagrees with you. No one wants to join your club, no one wants to read your Marxism books etc. If you have a point- state it. Don’t point elsewhere and act like you won because we arent interested in your echochamber
  
  The arrow of history disagrees. You probably should study the past sometime. Capitalism creates the conditions that make people want to join our club. It’s pretty much a law of human society.
  
  source
  - Firemyth@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Yes worked/built/paid for themselves. Why does it matter if I personally hammered the nail or paid someone else for the house that he hammered the nail into? Work was done and value exchanged hands. Your mode of thinking means you don’t deserve any thing you didn’t create yourself. I own most of my houses outright as I have mentioned I worked my ass off to pay for them. So yeah…
    
    Oh I’d love to hear all of your education on real estate investing. I bet that’d be fun for everyone. Especially since you’ve already stated you can’t seem to buy any place on your own…
    
    Stating a thing does not make it so- helping myself does not harm anyone else. If anything it helps people like yourself who can’t afford to buy the place to still live in the place.
    
    How do you even begin to think something is owned by the workers when they are not the ones paying for any of it. If those workers were the ones getting the loans, paying the taxes, filing the permits, getting the required certificate, marketing, selling, delivering, etc… you might have the start of a point. As it is- they are the ones receiving a wage to work the land. Physical labor does not equal ownership. Again this mode of thinking means you aren’t entitled to anything you didn’t build yourself. You like that burger? Did you raise that cow? Did you slaughter it? Feed it? Work the soil to make the feed? Etc etc etc.
    
    I think people should pay to use my property that I’m providing for a fee. There’s really nothing more to it. We could transmute that house to a restaurant, a store, a farm and it all means the same thing. I built it. Or bought it. You didn’t. Now you can use it if you want- for a fee. Under no circumstances do you own any part of it unless you and I come to some agreement about it. You are welcome to buy it- or try to make a rent to own deal…
    
    Oh that’s funny because somehow I did manage to do just that… and I didn’t come from money or any special background. I applied for the scholarships, the loans, put in the work, forgo eating out for decades, looked for opportunities, leveraged my meager earnings into extra payments until I finally paid off my first house. Made sure I didn’t make a baby or get into massive credit card debt etc. I went and lived in the low cost areas no one cares to go to. I made the required sacrifices to eventually get to a better position.
    
    So yeah in conclusion- you just said a bunch of rhetoric with no backing and also no solution. Fairly typical if less vitriolic than normal
    
    source
    betelgeuse@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    
    Why does it matter if I personally hammered the nail or paid someone else for the house that he hammered the nail into?
    
    Because that’s the definition of building it yourself.
    
    helping myself does not harm anyone else.
    
    Stating a thing does not make it so. Just stating you’re doing no harm doesn’t make it true. I can explain why you’re doing harm but you can’t explain why you’re not. Explanatory might makes right. We’re talking about the science of society, not vibes.
    
    How do you even begin to think something is owned by the workers when they are not the ones paying for any of it.
    
    Value comes from labor. A forest is nothing without the lumberjacks. A pile a logs is nothing without the workers of the saw mill. A pile of lumber is nothing without framers. A frame is nothing without drywallers, roofers, plumbers, electricians. The ownership you claim is just a piece of paper given by the state based on historical premises of property rights. It’s not a default state of nature nor a universal truth.
    
    Wages are specifically designed to not pay them the full value of their labor. If you own a horseshoe factory that produces each horseshoe for $1, then you can’t pay a person $100 an hour to make 100 horseshoes in that hour. You wouldn’t make any money as the factory owner. So you must pay them less than the value they’re producing. It’s how businesses work. Likewise you can’t rent a house for profit without charging more than its worth. You can’t afford to build all those investment properties unless you pay the people who actually built them a fraction of what the house is worth. You exploited the people who built the house so you can sit on your ass and exploit workers who need a place to live. It’s quite simple.
    
    Oh that’s funny because somehow I did manage to do just that… and I didn’t come from money or any special background. I applied for the scholarships, the loans, put in the work, forgo eating out for decades, looked for opportunities, leveraged my meager earnings into extra payments until I finally paid off my first house. Made sure I didn’t make a baby or get into massive credit card debt etc. I went and lived in the low cost areas no one cares to go to. I made the required sacrifices to eventually get to a better position.
    
    There’s two ways to build wealth under capitalism. One is to get a bunch of people to work for you and pay them less than their labor is actually worth. The other is to leverage your capital, buy property and then become a rent-seeker and/or lender. That’s what you did. You were fortunate enough to be able to get loans and leverage your debt and get scholarships. Most people don’t get all that. The people you rent to don’t get that.
    
    I said a bunch of arguments against yours. You can’t demand an argument from everyone and then when someone gives you wave it off as mere rhetoric. Yes it’s rhetoric. That’s what the word means. I think you’re just saying stuff based on vibes. You don’t actually know what words mean or have any real sense of your own position. You just know that you feel a certain way and want that to be as valid as my rational argument. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way.
    
    It’s also funny how you think not eating fast food and living in a place nobody wants to go is some grand sacrifice and the reason for what you have. Dude millions of people live without McDonald’s or a suburban home in the nice part of town. They also don’t get loans and scholarships. Their prostrations before capital go unnoticed.
    
    Rather than demanding we disprove your views maybe you should spend some time thinking about why you believe them beyond “I’m a hard worker.” Like do you really think you’re the only person who has ever worked hard? Do you think that the reason why most people don’t have rental properties is because they’re not hard working? Imagine the hubris to think something like that.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
- PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Well the Communist argument is that the government will provide all of the infrastructure and services. In real life, a good chunk of infrastructure are provided by the government. However, as far as services are concerned… It can be a pretty mixed bag depending on how functional your government is.
  
  When I was young, edgy and anti-business I used to believe that government was absolutely the answer to all of our problems. Did I voted for something like 15 tax increases and saw my quality of life and the city itself just go down the drain. Wait no, it became a dumpster fire. Cost of living has skyrocketed about 500%, crime and homelessness are up 300 to 1,000%, and there hasn’t actually been enough housing constructed to house people. We still don’t have a social safety net and medical prices are astronomically high as well.
  
  The fact is that the world is a complex place and whenever there is a disproportionate amount of economic disparity between classes, it doesn’t matter who’s running the show but there’s going to be a lot of unhappy people.
  
  source
  - Firemyth@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Sure. That’d be great. Just curious why that hasn’t been implemented yet.
    
    source
PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
On topic, but I’ve actually had a couple of good landlords over the years. One guy would stop by once a month to check on the house and do landscaping. We used to have really good conversations when I saw him, and we would talk about how the neighborhood was doing, any issues with the house and so on and so forth. Whenever I had a maintenance issue, he would be there within a few days to handle it. He even kept rent increases to below inflation.

On the other hand, I’ve also heard people denigrate architects, lawyers, engineers, and tech support people. But landlords and lawyers in particular make great punching bags.

source
- ChestRockwell@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I mean ironically, the guy who kicked us out’s mother was totally fine. Just an old lady who needed the rent to supplement her fixed income. When she died, 6 months later the “I’m selling the place, you need to be out by X day” email came.
  
  source
Slacker@marsey.moe ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Pay rent rentoid. Landlord rights are trans rights :marseycapitalistmanlet:
source
- LodedDiaper@marsey.moe ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  In both cases those people have the same rights as anyone else by default.
  source