ChestRockwell
@ChestRockwell@hexbear.net
- Comment on Hexbear federation megathread 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.
- Comment on Hexbear federation megathread 1 year ago:
Our spirit animal: ::: spoiler spoiler posting
- Comment on Hexbear federation megathread 1 year ago:
Friendly note that you should respect hexbear users’s pronouns and not misgender. I’ll assume this wasn’t malicious, but just a friendly reminder.
- Comment on Hexbear federation megathread 1 year ago:
I did note later in another thread, a comrade had a good revision. The relationship is evil, not the actual person. Here’s what was said:
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.
Again, I’ve got some salt because my landlord kicked me out last year just because he couldn’t extract enough profit from me. Needless to say, his anger at basic tenant protections has stuck in my craw ever since.
- Comment on Hexbear federation megathread 1 year ago:
Yeah, I just had to give props though, it’s such a good example, way better than my lame one t.t
- Comment on Hexbear federation megathread 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?
- Comment on Hexbear federation megathread 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.
- Comment on Hexbear federation megathread 1 year ago:
Your post is far better than mine comrade. Much funnier example.
- Comment on Hexbear federation megathread 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.
- Comment on Hexbear federation megathread 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).
- Comment on Hexbear federation megathread 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.
- Comment on a healthy society is our starship 1 year ago:
