a genuine question about landlords=bad, long-ish
"All landlords are bad and should be eaten" seems to be a predominant mood on fedi, but I wonder if it implies that the barely affordable housing should become unaffordable, forcing people who would be able to be homeowners living in their own homes into being lifetime tenants?
Decent housing seems to be straight up unaffordable for almost everybody (like... a family with a child would have to pay, like, 3k euro per month for mortgage for an apartment suitable for a family with a child, in all the major cities, and that's if they somehow managed to save for a downpayment for such an apartment).
But for somewhat noticeable part of "middle class" people, it is possible, with the help of mortgage, to buy _some_ apartment _somewhere_. Maybe it will be a tiny studio in another cheaper city. It will definitely not be suitable for a family with a child, especially if they want to continue having their jobs in order to pay for that mortgage. Or maybe it is suitable for this family, but there are no well-paying jobs in that city, so they can only afford the mortgage while living in a larger city, and can only afford to move once the mortgage is paid out.
But then there is a dilemma.
Living in your own home is OK.
Keeping your own home empty is definitely not OK, because there is a deficit of housing, and so many people in need of a housing, so owners of empty homes are universally loathed (and for good reason).
But renting out your own home is not OK, because landlords should be eaten.
If you were renting a tiny apartment in a cheaper city from someone else, and then decided to move into a larger apartment in a more expensive city for work/family reasons, and pay X euro more for the rent, and someone else would rent the first apartment instead, it would not be problematic.
If you were owning a tiny apartment in a cheaper city and living in it (which is from my mathematician point of view is basically the same as renting it from yourself), and then decided to move into a larger apartment in a more expensive city, and pay for that the same X euro (difference between the rent for the tiny apartment and the rent for the larger apartment), you are a landlord and should be eaten. Even though literally the only difference between this scenario and the previous one is that you're only barely wealthy enough to barely afford to own _an_ apartment. Even though the net effect is the same.
I've also heard people saying that if the mortgaged apartment is rented out, this means that basically the tenants are paying the mortgage for the owner, so tenants should have more claim to this apartment than the owner. And this might well be true for owners with a lot of apartments.
But if the owner lives in a rented apartment themself, then it is just a matter of perspective; changing the order of addends does not change the sum.
The owner has to pay the mortgage _and_ the rent for the apartment they live in. They also receive the rent for the apartment they own. We can say that the rent they receive goes towards repaying the mortgage; but we can just the same say that the rent they receive goes towards paying the rent for the apartment they live in. We could say that the tenants are paying for the owner's mortgage; or we might just as well say that the owner pays a difference between rents for living in the larger apartment.
I've also heard some people saying that nobody should be allowed to buy the apartment they don't live in; but doesn't that mean that only very rich people are supposed to ever hope to buy an apartment? Of course, if the system was changed, if there was a law preventing people (and companies) from owning housing they don't live in, the prices would probably go down, and the housing would become affordable. But people live under the present system; does this mean that for people who are not _very_ rich, the only way to maintain their moral integrity (according to what I hear about landlords on here) is to be lifetime tenants; that only people who are _very_ rich can have a hope of ever living in their own apartment without sacrificing their moral integrity?
Or am I missing something?
re: a genuine question about landlords=bad, long-ish
One comment gave me an idea for even better example / thought experiment.
Assume that somebody owns a single apartment and nothing else (maybe they inherited it, maybe they purchased it long ago and paid off the mortgage, whatever). Assume that the typical rent rate for similar apartments is 600 euro (this could be any number). Assume that there are no problems with finding a rental apartment (i.e. it is not Berlin).
This person lives in their apartment. So far, so good, everything is ethical.
But then they find a new job at the opposite end of the city, and want to spend less time commuting, so they start renting an apartment there, for 600 euro, and start renting their own apartment out, for the same 600 euro. Basically, they just move from one end city to another, just as any tenant can do. If we just ignore this person, the number of people who rent does not change, the amount they pay for the rent, combined, does not change, the number of rented out apartments does not change, nothing at all changes. Basically, this is just a move from one end of city to another. But suddenly this person is an evil oppressor now and should be eaten?
What if they find someone who rents an apartment at another end of the city and wants to move into this end of the city, and sign up some swap agreement, so that this new person will continue paying rent to their landlord, they will just swap their actual place they live in with the homeowner? This is literally the same as the previous scenario, the only difference is a legal technicality, but suddenly the homeowner is not evil and should not be eaten anymore?
Basically, whether the homeowner is an evil exploiting oppressor and should be eaten, or not, is determined by whether complex swap agreements are legally recognized in this country, or they should be concluded as separate rent termination/rent conclusion agreements (even though the effect is absolutely the same, the only difference is in the way how it is legally formalized)?
This just does not make any sense to me.
re: a genuine question about landlords=bad, long-ish
@IngaLovinde landlords=bad comes from the observed reality, not mental experiments. It's clear that some Russians that oppose the regime exist, but there's sub-1% of them, so russian=bad is almost good science.
re: a genuine question about landlords=bad, long-ish
@jonn there is a class of wealthy capitalists, and then there is a class of working people. My mental experiments concern the only way for (upper) working class to escape being lifetime tenants, and I'd say it's not 1% of them. And my question was basically: does this mean that any working class family that tries to escape that trap by the only way available for them is bad for trying, even though their attempts literally do not affect the net exploitation in the short term and decrease it in the long term?
I don't really care about statements like "Russians are bad" (I even support them most of the time, depending on the context), but I would be deeply disturbed by statements like "all Russians are bad and should be guillotined, every single one of them, no exceptions" from my mutuals, being a Russian myself (could I have done more to fight the regime while I lived there? Probably; there is always more to be done - I didn't do enough to be executed by government thugs or to be thrown to rot in jail for twenty years. Does not mean a European/USian person has any fucking right to criticize me from their couch for not doing enough.)
And what would statements like that imply? That I should leave fedi? That I should hide the fact that I'm Russian from everybody including the closest friends?
re: a genuine question about landlords=bad, long-ish
@IngaLovinde yup, 100% agree with you. I didn't run the numbers on ethical landlordship though. I guess my point was that extremists (socialist, anti-Russian) will reject it anyway because of the majority argument. FTR, I think that "eat the rich" extremists would better not live in the citites if they want to be intellectually sound :-)
re: a genuine question about landlords=bad, long-ish
@jonn not saying landlordship can be ethical, but in these mental experiments it seems to preserve netto unethicality in short term (and decrease it in the long term), since in short term such a homeowner is basically a proxy between their tenant and their landlord.
And again, I have nothing against the majority argument; this thread was born because instead of the majority argument, I often see "every single one, no matter the circumstances, no exceptions" argument on my timeline.
re: a genuine question about landlords=bad, long-ish
@IngaLovinde oh! But that's extremist thinking! "Majority is bad, so we'll eradicate them all and the minority is a sacrifice we'll have to make along the way". Extremists are zealots, so they won't care. That was my point, yeah. For instance: I'm an extremist when it comes to gender and sex inequality. I think that males should pay reparations to females for the pay gap, and if it happens to affect poor males, it's ok.
re: a genuine question about landlords=bad, long-ish
@IngaLovinde I'm also an extremist when it comes to gambling: I think that companies that facilitate games, where the outcome isn't predicted by skill should have property destroyed, employees listed, ad agencies advertising this stuff should have their billboards vandalised. Someone else is zealous about other stuff. The question is whether or not they have the time and resources to act upon it. Theoretical extremism is funny.
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