Comment on Rent is theft

BenderRodriguez@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• DirtSona@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  What is a fair rent?

  Why do you even use the word fair in an economic context?

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  • BenderRodriguez@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    A price that isn’t gouged?

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    • DirtSona@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      What is a gouged price? This looks like it will be a circular argument.

      There is no fair price. dhspriory.org/kenny/PhilTexts/…/me19_247.htm

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      • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        a gouged price is a price that exceeds the fair market value, due to a short term scarcity or other circumstance, that typically can’t be changed under normal circumstances.

        but i’m guessing you don’t want a clear definition?

        a fair market price is a price set under normal market conditions of supply and demand. Where I live a fair market rent for a 1 bedroom apartment is 3,000. Maybe people find that unfair because they can’t afford it. I can and I find it fair, and the vacancy rate in my city is below 1%, so 99% of people here also find that fair.

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      • BenderRodriguez@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        What is a circular argument?

        I just used your debate tactic against you. Just keep asking people to define things and you’ll never have to make a point. It’s that easy.

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• JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Most of the people that I have rented from have been pretty kind, decent folks. I lived in one apartment building, that definitely sucked, and one 3 level that was section 8 besides us, and that landlord was on the scummy side, but didn’t argue about fixing things. Other than that, just people renting their first house that was too small after a point and they bought another. And I bought my house from the last one 40k under market because we were good tenants and had become friends.

  Are the people that sold me their extra house 40k off evil?

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  • BenderRodriguez@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Exactly. You rent a house? You are the equivalent of Jeff Bezos!

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  • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    well it wasn’t really a 40K discount if that transaction didn’t require real estate agents, it might have actaully netted them more money.

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• 3abas@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  It’s hard to grasp this when your mentality is coming from a lifetime of capitalist propaganda, but yes, you’re stealing from someone.

  Imagine a perfect world, where spacious modem homes are constructed in a responsible manner, and where anyone can live anywhere that’s available. No rent, no mortgage, no housing payments at all; housing as a right, funded by the public, and you live in a unit that suits your family in an area close to your workplace.

  Now, we don’t live in this perfect world, but to complete the vision just to rule out common talking points: In this perfect world, the housing units are modern and spacious, since they aren’t produced by corporations for profit, there is no pressure to cut corners and no incentive to deliberately keep housing scarce. Construction is planned around need instead of return on investment: durable materials, good insulation, safe wiring, accessible design, decent sunlight, green space, and maintenance that’s done because people live there, not because a spreadsheet says it’s “worth it.” Neighborhoods aren’t carved up by speculation, and empty units aren’t treated like “assets” to hoard; if something sits vacant, it’s because it’s being repaired or repurposed, not because someone is waiting for the market to rise.

  And here’s the part that matters for your question: in that world, you moving to a bigger home doesn’t create a private opportunity to extract money from someone else. It just means a smaller unit becomes available to someone who needs it, at no cost, because shelter isn’t a commodity.

  But in this world, housing is artificially turned into a revenue stream. When you move up and keep the smaller place as a rental, you’re not “providing housing” the way a builder or a maintenance crew provides housing, you’re controlling access to something people must have to survive and charging them for permission to exist there.

  The “fair price” argument only works if the market itself is fair. It isn’t. It’s shaped by scarcity, wage stagnation, barriers to ownership, and the simple fact that people can’t “opt out” of needing a home.

  So yes: the theft isn’t that you’re charging above some moral ceiling, like you’d be fine if you just found the perfect number. The theft is the extraction itself, taking a cut from someone’s paycheck not because you produced their home, but because you happen to hold the deed while they have no real alternative. They pay, not out of freely chosen exchange, but because the alternative is displacement, overcrowding, or homelessness. That’s coercion dressed up as consent.

  If you want a concrete way to think about it: imagine any other necessity, e.g., water, insulin, oxygen. If you had extra and someone needed it, charging them monthly for access because “that’s what the going rate is” would still feel like exploitation, even if you charged less than your neighbor. Housing is just as necessary; we’ve just been trained to treat the tollbooth as normal.

  And to be clear, I’m not saying you’re uniquely evil, or that you invented the system. I’m saying the system makes it easy to feel innocent while benefiting from harm. The moral question isn’t “am I kinder than other landlords?” It’s “am I participating in a structure that turns someone’s need into my income?” If the answer is yes, then whatever the price, you’re taking something that should never have been up for sale in the first place.

  The solution doesn’t come from small guys like you giving up their rental properties, because we know the corporations won’t give up theirs. The solution would be a move to that more perfect world, which forces both corporations and small landlords like yourself to give it all up at once.

  I don’t blame you for trying to find a way out of the wave slavery situation we all face, but you’re trying to get out of it by becoming part of the problem. The problem is capitalism.

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  • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    perfect worlds don’t exist.

    people in them would have to be perfect, they wouldn’t be people.

    maybe you could have such a society if it were made of precisely programed robots, but people aren’t like that. They have this thing called free will.

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  • BenderRodriguez@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Lol ok

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    • 3abas@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      What part of what I said did you find humorous?

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      • StupidBrotherInLaw@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        They’re just a troll. I recommend reporting and judicious heckling.

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      • BenderRodriguez@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Dude, I was laughing at the fact that you typed all that out. It’s a stupid online forum. Go out that energy into more important things

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• TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Hey man, we can’t have reasonable normal discourse in here.

  Everything has to be vastly oversimplified and moralized into a hyperbolic statements measure against some ideal utopia society.

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  • BenderRodriguez@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    But the current system is broken and it can never be fixed and the only alternative is Star Trek utopian society.

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    • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      do they murder and kill all the conservatives, moderates, and white people in Star Trek?

      last time i saw it all the captains were white guys…

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• AHamSandwich@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  What if you put your hand upon my hip, when you dip, I dip, we dip?

  What if I’ve got a girl named Rama Lama, Rama Lama Ding Dong?

  How about oo-ee-oo-ah-ah-ting-tang-walla-walla-bing-bang?

  What then?

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  • BenderRodriguez@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Valid point.

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