Current Events > Check out this evil landlord

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Shablagoo posted...

No they dont. They are middlemen between humans and our god-given right to life on Earth, slyly swindling a profit.

The only right you have is to be alive. You have no right to continue living, or a right to a place to live. You either stake out a claim and protect that claim, or you submit to some form of government that seeks to grant you more rights through a collective understanding. You can argue that a government powerful enough should provide a place to live for all under its governance, but you have absolutely no natural right to it.

nemu posted...

The only right you have is to be alive. You have no right to continue living, or a right to a place to live. You either stake out a claim and protect that claim, or you submit to some form of government that seeks to grant you more rights through a collective understanding. You can argue that a government powerful enough should provide a place to live for all under its governance, but you have absolutely no natural right to it.

Allow me to rephrase, then, and say that landlords offer nothing inherently. Owning property and forcing people to pay you a toll to reside there is not offering anything.

Now, building a house, repairing a house sure, those are helpful services. But you dont have to be a landlord to do those things, and probably the vast majority of landlords did not build the housing they own.

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Shablagoo posted...

Allow me to rephrase, then, and say that landlords offer nothing inherently. Owning property and forcing people to pay you a toll to reside there is not offering anything.

Now, building a house, repairing a house sure, those are helpful services. But you dont have to be a landlord to do those things, and probably the vast majority of landlords did not build the housing they own.

But then you need to completely refine the cost and means of home ownership. Homes would either need to be insanely cheap, which doesnt work with the cost to make them, or the government would need to provide them. You can certainly talk about the government paying for them, but I think that is completely unrealistic once you reach the hundreds of millions of people mark. The best result for that would be assigned apartment blocks. Nobody is going to get a nice house under that system. The current system is far from perfect, but landlords allow for a marketplace where people are able to decide where they live so long as they have the means.

There are certainly places to fix under both renter and landlord rights, but I dont think there is any realistic fix that would involve abolishing said system.

nemu posted...

There are certainly places to fix under both renter and landlord rights, but I dont think there is any realistic fix that would involve abolishing said system.

I'd love to see the following idea proposed, if only to see how everyone reacts. I don't think it'll ever happen, but it DOES fix quite a few issues:
The government creates an actual free housing program. They will provide you with a complete, (minimally) furnished home at no cost that it's on you to maintain. Maybe they even provide a small repair subsidy each year for unexpected problems. Here's the catch, though: the government uses this to build up areas that could benefit from a population boom, meaning those free homes are going to be in less desirable midwest states, probably just off or cut through by a major highway. They'll work with industry to make sure these new towns have jobs by offering per-job-added rewards to companies that move into that area and rely on that work force, and take advantage of critical mass population explosion to hit that level of self-sustainability necessary to keep these towns afloat.

There are lots of details to work out, but my main curiosity is if "here's an actual free house" is sufficient incentive to move people out of major cities or whether it becomes a "beggers can in fact be choosers" situation and it'll be wholesale rejected because people want cheap or free housing, but only in the places they most want to live. Also, to see how the "landlords are leeches" crowd responds to giving people a free home but putting it completely on them to maintain their own home and if they ruin it that's all on them.

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Shablagoo posted...

Allow me to rephrase, then, and say that landlords offer nothing inherently. Owning property and forcing people to pay you a toll to reside there is not offering anything.

Now, building a house, repairing a house sure, those are helpful services. But you dont have to be a landlord to do those things, and probably the vast majority of landlords did not build the housing they own.

How do you feel about car rental companies

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