this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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Some people do work hard. My aunt and uncle in law have an airbnb that they spent like 9 months renovating.
Not every landlord is a money hungry corporation.
My other uncle in law is only a landlord because he inherited the property.
that still ain't a job. your aunt and uncle didn't work to renovate that house because the renovation would pay their bills, they did it so they can own a nice property and rent it to other people in perpetuity. all the money they make is gonna come from them owning something, not doing something.
ah yes, the hard hard work of inheriting land. he isn't being forced to be a landlord. he could just sell the land he isn't using.
the problem people have with landlords isn't that they're "money hungry corporations", its that they're leeches, holding land they aren't using so that they can suck money out of people who don't have any land to hold, in large enough quantities that people who want to have their own land to use for their own life can't find any, cuz its all bought up by fucking landlords. being a landlord means taking from people who have less than you, and you only ever get in that position by having more wealth than most people ever have.
Dude we live in a world with actual billionaires. I don't think we're going to get anywhere calling people whose net worth is under $1mil "leeches". If you get all these small-fry landlords to feel guilty and sell off their land, then the billionaires and corporations will happily shrug their shoulders and snap it right up, leaving us even worse off.
This honestly feels like that Oreos meme. "Pay no attention to us billionaires, it's that guy's uncle's fault!"
i'm an anti-capitalist. i have a systemic critique with the systems of power which allow people who own things to acquire wealth on the basis of that ownership. billionaires are products of the same system which allows uncle landlord to impose rent on people who have no other option but to rent, because their obscene wealth comes from the exact same mechanism of ownership.
even if we didn't have billionaires and corporate ghouls buying up every piece of property, and it was instead all owned by nice old uncles and aunties, the actual practice of owning land you aren't using so people who need land have to pay you for it to live is still morally bankrupt, and is likely to reproduce new billionaires and corporate ghouls as those uncles and aunties consolidate their excess land into investment firms and property management companies to maximize the economic output of the land they own. the problem isn't that billionaires exist, its that our economic system is set up to funnel resources towards the people who start out with the most resources.
i'm not saying that him selling the land is a good or morally preferable option, either. i just found the notion that a person is only a landlord because they inherited land a silly argument. there's plenty of things you can do with land that isn't renting it.
If they truly cared about it, they'd admit it was a hotel, pay for the zoning change and pay their due taxes.