Facts that concern me:
- they are on Twitter
- they use a combined username (gross)
- they list vacations as number one
this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
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A Boring Dystopia
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All so that none of their tenants can afford any of those four things without constantly struggling!
I remember looking up just the air b&b’s in the Portland metro and there were over 4,000…..
A large majority of the rest were being rented.
The wealthy are buying it all with no regulation.
There should be one home per family in the suburbs. One vacation place and your house. No one needs 10 properties, get rich another way you greedy terrible fucks.
Rich people outbid regular folks for real resources (homes), taking away any chance at intergenerational wealth building. the only (legal) answer at the moment is taxation of the rich.
Gary Stevenson has some worthwhile insights on what we can do and how to convince working class people that the rich must be stopped or else your kids and grandkids will all be homeless renters.
inequality is sharply risinh all around the world. and it's getting worse. this is arguably the most important issue of our time.
the only (legal) answer at the moment is taxation of the rich.
I used to have my own place before my wife and I got married, and she had her own house too. When I moved in with her I decided to rent out my place to a friend, otherwise I'd have to still pay like $650 a month for my mortgage. I set my friends rent at $900 a month for him and a friend, with cats. I paid my mortgage and had some extra to save up in case a repair was needed. Average rent for an apartment (not a house) was 1200-1500 in the same area. My renters ended up taking better care of the house than I ever did. It was beautiful when they lived there. I ended up making about 5k to 10k extra bucks over the course of a few years and my mortgage was paid for me. Eventually they had to move out due to some issues between the two at which point I sold the house and made over six figures(net profit, not gross), off a house that cost less than $80,000 when I bought it.
See what I did there? I charged a reasonable rent and still made a totally stupid amount of money off of just one property. I wasn't a goddamn parasite who tried to bleed my tenants for everything they were worth.
People like these total shitbags. They're the reason why America's youth have no future
Using my “friends” to pay off a personal debt while making $250/mo in profit off them. See, it’s possible to be a good landlord, everyone!
Did you share any of what you made from the sale with your “friends” who helped you pay for it and kept it in good condition for you?
Did those friends run the risk of having to pay for a new roof or anything else that can go wrong with a house? Tell me you've never owned a house without telling me you've never owned a house
You still take someone elses money, just less of it.
See, when the Landlord charges reasonable rates, and actually provides services in exchange for that rent (helping update appliances to newer, having paperwork on hand for any code/inspections needed for property changes (that the landlord would ultimately benefit from,) and in general treating it as a matter of 'I have obligations' instead of 'I will do nothing but I will absolutely blame the tennants for the inevetable crumbling of the property.'
I dislike the concept at base level, but that is a someone who is trying to not be a scumbag.
Someone who needs a place to live in and doesn't have the money or doesn't want to buy their own place. IMO, it is a fair trade as long as the landlord isn't a cunt. The reasons to why they don't have enough to buy their own place have nothing to do with a single landlord, some people don't want to take roots in a single place. If you wanna go to war with someone, go to war with companies, ban companies on owning and renting places, not people.
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If it would destroy the economy if everyone did it, then it should not be doable in the first place.
What? Your comment doesn't make sense. If everyone did any profession solely we would destroy the economy. If everyone became doctors, there would be no engineers or pilots. We would still be doomed. A diversity of vocations are necessary regardless of which vocation.
*Edit. I was thinking maybe you mean investments. But the same holds true there. AND because of hedgefunds and private equity it's becoming more and more of all the money funneling into a handful of companies. All the economists are sounding alarm bells on this. But considering the direction our leaders are taking us, I think this is all part of the plan.
Landlording is not a profession.
Handyman is a profession. Real estate management is a profession. Landlording is simply siphoning money through the act of owning something.
The economy can tolerate a finite number of leaches before dying. We currently have too many. The ideal number is zero.
Landlording is simply siphoning money through the act of owning something.
This actually applies to most all investments.
Getting a paycheck automatically means that someone has more money before a product, or service is delivered. So I'm gonna stretch this a little.... If we like jobs that pay money then we gotta live with rich assholes. But if we want no rich assholes and truly everyone's time is worth exactly the same amount, then we need something other than capitalism. We need socialism. But how do we prevent kings or rich politicians in either scenario? Tax them in capitalism for one. In socialism we just downright make that illegal.
Instead of a rich asshole, you can have worker owned cooperatives and such.
everyone’s time is worth exactly the same amount
That's just objectively not the case. Some people are able to provide more essential or better quality services and labor than others. There are also more and less enjoyable activities.
Everyone's time can be worth the same amount for the same activity at the same quality level.
how do we prevent kings or rich politicians in either scenario? Tax them in capitalism for one. In socialism we just downright make that illegal.
You will always have people in more powerful positions and some will take advantage of it. What you can do is rotate people with term limits and such. However that can also have downsides in effectiveness and efficiency.
You can also impose limits on how much stuff a person can own. There are ways to circumvent this with non profit NGOs and such.
Socialist economies also need taxes to pay for infrastructure and the operations of the state.
This is basically where not even I believe in myself.
Cooperatives.... A few billion of us get together to build a rocket...never gonna happen. A few of us build a power plant...yeah right! Never gonna happen.
What about life? My life, how much is my life worth? Is it worth more than yours or less? Divided into life/second, if I'm worth the same as you are, then I should get paid the same as you no matter what I do... I could be a painter or a seamstress or a cook or a bricklayer. I should be worth the same. Even a bum who wants nothing to do with anyone should be worth the same as the most smartest person to ever live. Its a life. You don't get to be worth more by being smarter or making more stuff.
I would definitely not want to live in a society where my kids will be homeless even though I am the hardest working worker. If my kids are lazy I still want to ensure they live better than I did. So although I don't like this consumerism centric capitalistic society, that socialistic society sucks.
I much rather be in a society where you can own things and give them to your kids, and have those things hold some value. I don't want the government limiting what I can and cannot do. To some extent I think this sort of capitalism is possible, but the billionaires have got to go puff. I would love living a grand life with a big house in a sunny part of California. That's impossible now no matter what I say or do. Meanwhile some billionaire could just buy California if he wanted to. That sort of money accumulation I'm totally against.
ALL forms of making money from having money need to be abolished completely.
If you're not creating/selling a product or providing a service, you're not EARNING money. Furthermore, rich people getting richer through passive income is the #1 thing diminishing the returns from actually worthwhile endeavors.
I somewhat agree with you. And I 150% agree that "rent seeking behavior" doesn't add to society.
But what if you want to sell a product you designed but can't afford to create it or to setup a factory for it, so you want funding, so you try to get investments, maybe by selling equity in your company. Is that not valuable to society? The people that take the risk that your product may not sell?
How did anyone do anything before currency was invented?
Your comment implies that what you describe is a requirement for a functioning society
It isn't.
Before currency was invented might be a stretch— back then, which was a long long long, time ago we likely didn’t even have professions in the same sense. Albeit Dave might have had a knack for fishing, Kendra for making canoes etc.
There was plenty of space in the wilderness you could just go live for free. Now we have a lot of people, we need agriculture to support that population; there isn’t enough land for hunter gatherer societies to exist without a large population collapse first.
Now to your point I suppose we could have a society without money; yet I think there is some freedom in currency even if everyone gets a UBI. It allows two random strangers to come together and have one person buy something without having to trade an item that the other person wants, then the seller can go buy something they want.
Without currency we would have to have a somewhat complex trading system, which inevitably would see certain items of rarity never traded, or traded for so much surplus goods that a new ironically materialistic moneyed class would develop. It would make for an interesting book, but I think so long as people have varied interests and desires, and create creative works, money is a useful thing.
Without money, money is reinvented. For practicality reasons you want a fungible means of exchange that also lasts. Being small, portable, and not spoiling is also desirable.
That means precious metals or vouchers for something. If you standardize these, you end up with money again.
Without a standardized currency, you end up with a bunch of parallel currencies. That means there will be businesses, who only deal with exchanging one form of currency for another. They could even give out their own vouchers.
Now, the state also wants to collect taxes. Collecting a bunch of different vouchers and coins is a headache. So the state issues their own vouchers, which you have to use to pay taxes. Then we are back where we started.
An interesting approach to money would be, if money had an expiration date. So you have to spend it, or lose it. That keeps it in circulation, leading to more economic activity. Inflation serves this purpose as well.
if money had an expiration date.
That'd just lead into investment into non-monetary things. For example, buying precious metals or bonds or stocks or property and selling them as needed.
To actually fix problems with wealth disparity, you need a wealth or property tax.
It's funny that one probably-landlord downvoted this. You know who you are, scum-sucking leech.
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All i had to do was just buy 4 houses? Damn. I'm rich!
Step one: Have a shitton of money to buy property to rent out.
Oh, you don't have enough money? Hhm, have you tried not being poor?
Same people will be looking for a govt bailout when the real estate market collapses.
I don't understand. What exactly is the complaint here? That they're over charging or charging at all?
Or is this just bandwagon hate on a common and ancient business practice?
Because there is nothing immoral or unethical about having multiple rental property.
And don't give me this shit about how they're evil for over charging. The middle class holds all the power all we're lacking is organization and education.
Because there is nothing immoral or unethical about having multiple rental property.
You're charging someone for you doing nothing so they can have a basic need to survive. It's very immoral
If you're gonna try to defend an immoral act with
Or is this just bandwagon hate on a common and ancient business practice?
Then Ill assume you're pro-slavery and move on
Charging for housing isn't immoral just because it's a necessity. By that logic, grocery stores are immoral for charging for food, and doctors are immoral for charging for healthcare. Property ownership and rental markets exist because providing and maintaining housing costs money. If your argument is that the system should be reformed, fine, let’s talk solutions. But calling all landlords inherently immoral is just lazy thinking.
Also your comment on slavery is offensive which I believe is the only reason you added it which makes you sound even more stupid.
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I had to rant in a couple of comments because I drives me crazy when people defend leeching.
On a more constructive note: Housing cooperatives. I think they should be more widespread. Some people come together to build a house and then live in it for the cost it takes to actually support it. No crazy big apartments with a reasonable amount of people (roughly one bedroom per person), shared luxury such as gardens, in house shops, hell even a pool if you want. There is no leeching, just collective ownership.
What if some people do not fit into some pre-made construction of how some dictator imagines a "nice living situation"? Every person is an individual with individual needs. Presuming, that a single bedroom is big or small enough for every single person is absolutely undermining the fact of how diverse people actually are, as are their visions of their own lives.
Cooperatives are democratic, the members vote on what it means to have a nice living situation.
If there are ten people with ten different expectations, they would all vote for something, in summary/conclusion, "in the middle", which would make nobody happy. The best would be, if everyone could choose for themselves and that is the case right now, except many people perhaps cannot afford, what they'd wish for. Still, better than having a "democracy", where nobody is truly happy.
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The appropriate criticism here is about corrupt markets resulting from restricted/scarce housing supply. Fair markets that encourage abundant housing supply, are ones that would lead to "perfect competition" and fair ROI on capital. The oligarchist/capital supremacy model of US/west corrupts markets against abundance, because extortionist profits fund politicians to protect extortionist profits.
UBI, not democracy, is the important freedom that can address structural corruption, but still the option to rent still needs to pay for the capital/expense investment in allowing you to rent.
corrupt markets resulting from restricted/scarce housing supply
Housing has a hard limit as there is only so much ground available in desirable locations. Building houses also needs resources and labor and takes a while.
We can go pretty high, but 3-5 stories has easier construction, and doesn't need expensive elevator system. 4th and 5th floor without an elevator advantages young people, but reduced rent still can be profitable vs stopping at 3 stories.
If nobody is allowed to own more than one property, should everyone be forced buy? Where would renters get apartments from?
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