FunkyStuff
@FunkyStuff@lemmy.ml
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 day ago:
I can’t answer that question unless you answer mine. The answer is contingent on the rate at which you rent it out.
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 day ago:
I suspect a lot of the people making basic errors in this thread get their knowledge of politics from memes. A lot of people saying stuff like “big corporations are the problem, not mom & pop landlords” which, if they read something like this single page from Wage Labour and Capital they’d understand is false. Capital is capital, and its relation to labor is the same regardless of its size!
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 day ago:
cause on one hand, buying property to rent out is one of the ways out of wage slavery
This is not complete thinking. It’s not a way out of wage slavery when you’re just pushing the can down the road and making the condition of someone else’s wage slavery worse. You have to realize that your condition as a worker and a potential tenant’s condition is one and the same, and the way to abolish that condition is to unite as a class to seize and exert political power.
I also don’t really think the answer is all property being state-owned, but what do I know
It really doesn’t have to be. There’s already countries where they have a 95% homeownership rate and that’s been achieved by heavy regulation of housing and real estate speculation, and expropriation programs (also a lot of liquidation of the landlord class).
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 day ago:
You’re right. It’s also true that if I don’t wish to expend my labor power in exchange for compensation, I can also buy a factory where I buy materials and labor and sell them for more than they cost.
Can you think of any reason why, when done at scale, these sorts of activities create a class system where not everyone can simply buy a plot of land and build a house, or be an industrial entrepreneur? That there will actually have to be many times as many people who have to sell their labor and pay rent?
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 day ago:
The $8000-9000 municiple taxes, utilities, upkeep, are all supposed to be paid by the landlord at a net loss.
Can you link to the comment where anyone said this? On my own, all I’ve said is that if you do rent out a property and generate a profit, that profit is appropriated surplus value.
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 day ago:
The part where you call any and all profit theft
Who is generating the surplus value, then?
Also the part where you are attacking individuals for trying to improve their lives while the entire mess is caused by corporations and billionaires.
I’m not attacking anyone, I’m explaining how the system works. I explained in another comment that I believe the solution to this problem is the abolition of private property, not stringing up anyone who has ever made any profit in a transaction.
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 day ago:
Say you pass down all the recurring costs (I said damage in my comment above but sure, include utilities and upkeep too) to the tenant.
As for property taxes, consider that the purpose of property taxes is to slow down the rate at which the owners of land accrue wealth. Without them, there is no friction on land speculation, and landownership becomes too attractive as a source of income, which impedes the flow of capital to industry. This means that (in theory) property taxes correspond to appreciation of land. This means that paying property taxes on property ought to fall on the owner because they’re the ones that benefit from the appreciation anyway.
If you disagree with that, then say you pass down the property taxes to the tenant as well.
In total, you’d be making 0 profit, with some debate on the subject of the appreciation of the home. This situation is more or less fair. Any profit that you would be making is what comes out of appropriating surplus value, that was my point.
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 day ago:
You simply don’t think economic relationships should exist at all
We’re criticizing the economic relationships engendered by the existence of private property and industrial capitalism. Those relations will be superseded, and already have in parts of the world. There is nothing eternal about the present state of things.
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 day ago:
No, they’ll be overthrown in a social revolution that abolishes the present social relations and conditions of production. The state established after that point will seek out a program of expropriation of all private property.
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 day ago:
What’s different about grandma and grandpa owning a condo and generating profit off of doing 0 work and a larger corporation doing it? It’s the same economic mechanism, and if you had replaced the single corporation that owned 5000 condos with 5000 grandpas who own one house each they’ll still be leeching off the tenants the same amount in total. The relation between capital and labor isn’t any different just because capital would in one case be owned by more or fewer people.
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 day ago:
If the payment received exceeds the costs a profit is generated. That profit represents appropriation of surplus value. Surplus value corresponds to the uncompensated (or in this case, compensated but later misappropriated) expense of labor power.
What specific part of this argument do you think is objectionable?
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 day ago:
Why don’t you rent it at exactly the cost of maintenance?
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 day ago:
In every capitalist country the world, the ruling class is organized to ensure its continued ability to appropriate surplus value and leech off labor. I assure you any transient condition that is presently causing the profits of real estate speculators to falter is going to pale in comparison to the massive amount of profit they are set to make over the next decades. It’s no different than the temporary valley in 2008 which was only an opportunity for capitalists to move money into the real estate market.
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 day ago:
Does “dishonestly” include a situation where the state’s monopoly on violence is utilized to leverage someone into a bad deal?
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 day ago:
Money isn’t itself evil. Appropriating surplus value is what’s being criticized.
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 day ago:
What’s your definition of theft?
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 day ago:
It does.
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 day ago:
I’m currently a home owner and not a landlord, but if I would become a landlord, it wouldn’t be in my power to implement any of your solutions, leaving in the middle whether they have merit or not.
It would be in your power to set the rent. If you set the rent at the cost of maintenance + any other recurring costs, then yes, it’s totally fair. If you set the rent such that you make a profit, you’d be earning money for doing nothing.
Like, I’m just a wage slave myself and there’s literally over 250k of my own money in my house … why should I have to give that away for free?
The property that you worked 20 years to pay off and 10 to pay the down payment for is yours, you get to keep it. You don’t have to give it away for free, you’ll either sell it for a fair price and keep that money, or your heirs will have it. All that the opponents of rentseeking and landlordism are asking for is that you not use the property to make profit between now and when you sell it or die.
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 day ago:
When you rent it out, will the rent be less than or equal to the sum of the depreciation of the property and the maintenance?
If not, if you will be making a profit. You’ll pay taxes for the property that are intended to make up for the value the property is gaining^[If it doesn’t gain value then you can run the numbers again allowing yourself to pass down the taxes to the tenants.] That surplus amount corresponds to no actual value. The tenants would be paying for nothing, and you’d be getting money for doing nothing.
Whether that’s theft or not depends on your definition of theft. I personally subscribe to the idea that if someone get an euro that they didn’t work for, that’s an euro someone else worked for and didn’t get to keep. I don’t believe this situation to be different from if you were to buy a stake in your local grocery chain which is making money out of putting commodities on the market which have in them the objectified human labor of everyone in the supply chain, and paying those people less for their labor power than what it’s worth. The common term for that is “exploitation.”
I also don’t mean to make this a moral judgment. I don’t know if you’re gonna go to heaven or not, that’s really not the crux of the issue here. I’m trying to give you an analysis of the economic forces at play, and if you ask me, the solution to the problem isn’t for individuals to change how they behave on an individual level, it’s for the working class to seize political power and abolish private property.
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 day ago:
I’ve left a ton of comments in this thread that essentially boil down to this. You’re exactly right. Owning a property comes with some operational costs, renting it out adds some operational costs too, but the whole point of being a landlord is that rent exceeds the sum of the operational costs, then there is some surplus that goes toward covering the capital expense of buying the property in the first place; once the capital is paid off, that surplus is pure profit that goes to the landlord for providing absolutely 0 value to the world.
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 day ago:
We all gotta start reading beyond volume 1 of capital :( there’s a lot of useful stuff in 2 and 3!
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 day ago:
You’re theoretically right about those examples. In a competitive market, the proprietor of some depreciating and universally available property with a finite useful life like a car renting it out to people who only need it for a short period of time isn’t exploiting them. It’s no more exploitative than selling them that car. In theory, the ability for a competitor to buy a car and rent it out for a competitive rate means that you can’t exploit consumers in this industry. The profit would have to come from the labor power involved in the rental industry, like any other industry.
In practice you’re describing an industry that is highly financialized and that operates inside imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, where monopoly rents are the norm. So the rental company and Uhaul aren’t making all their revenue out of the theoretically fair arrangement where their clients are essentially just paying off the depreciation and operational expenditure that goes into their property, they’re also paying some ground rent or monopoly rent.
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 day ago:
The fact that there were profits to be made by owning a house and renting it out, even if those profits used to be smaller, is itself the problem. That $400 exceeded the cost of maintenance and property taxes (if any) that the landlord paid. That’s profit a landlord is making for doing no work. You know what happens when you can accumulate money without putting in work? You can freely invest that money in more capital to make even more profits ad infinitum, and the rate at which you can do this isn’t bound by the rate at which your labor power replenishes.
In total, that system creates a process where landlords and all others who own capital can have unbounded and relentless growth. It’s not fundamentally different from the factors at play that allow an industrial entrepreneur to start a business expending coal, labor power, and thread to make textiles, turn a profit, and expand that business; over several hundred cycles of production that process culminates in that industrialist (or their heirs) to amass an incredible amount of wealth and even a monopoly.
In either case, it would be insufficient to look at the system 100 years in where the rot had already set in and say that the problem is the system in that instant. No, the problem existed before. There is no time and place for rent and landlords or capitalist exploitation of any kind.
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 day ago:
There already are countries with extremely high homeownership rates (95%+) that have figured out a housing system that’s based on a mix of heavy regulation, charging rent to the state for the land, and expropriation of the landlord class’ property. This is a problem that is solvable.
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 day ago:
Class is objectively measurable. There are people who subsist off of sale of their labor, and there are people who subsist off of earning profits out of the capital that they own.
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 day ago:
immigrants should just learn place and forever rent and be miserable and poor so they can joint the glorious proletariat revolution! not be evil greedy capitalists who want to provide for their kids!
Immigrants can buy a home and live in it. There’s nothing exploitative about that.
If a person, regardless of their background, buys a property and makes profit off of charging rent for that property, the profit is extracted from the work that other people are actually doing. They’re leeching off of others. This is simple, it doesn’t depend on whether the landlord is a mom & pop landlord or if it’s a giant private equity firm. Every dollar someone earns that they didn’t work for is a dollar someone else worked for and didn’t get to keep.
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 day ago:
The personal demeanor or intention of a landlord doesn’t change the nature of the arrangement. The nature of the arrangement is one where the landlord makes money that they’re not working for, and the tenant must give up money that they did work for in exchange.
If a landlord makes a profit from owning a property after all is said and done, the amount of property maintenance is irrelevant. No landlords would exist at all if there wasn’t profit to be made from charging rent, they aren’t gonna do it for charity.
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 day ago:
When someone rents that apartment and they pay the landlord rent, the landlord is making money without working. The landlord isn’t actually providing any value or service, they’re only refraining from using the state to remove the person living in their property because that person is paying them.
If a person were to occupy the property without that landlord’s consent or awareness, it would cost the landlord literally €0.
Is there any reason why this landlord ought to receive payment for providing 0 value? Let alone enough payment to fully finance the property over the course of a couple of decades, during which time the tenants are effectively paying for the landlord’s mortgage without receiving any stake themselves.