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this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2024
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Don't take it personally, but landlordism is fundamentally parasitism. It's a matter of fact that private property, whether it's a townhouse or a factory, enables its owners to extract value from working people. If people personally resent landlords like your aunt, it's probably not so much because that's where the theory guides them as it is that almost everyone has had a bad experience with a landlord or knows someone who did. Landlords have earned a bad reputation.
For most of my life I was not interested in owning a home. Owning meant I couldn't pick up and move or travel when I got the urge, which I did several times. One time while in a foreign country for a stay of undetermined length, I was able to contact an old landlord and secure a place to stay when I learned my return date. How would I have had a place to stay if landlords did not exist?
"Land contract".
A land contract starts out similar to a rental agreement. You make fixed monthly payments. If you stay in the home for 3 years, it automatically converts to a private mortgage, and the first three years of "rent" becomes your down payment. If you leave before a year, you forfeit your "security deposit", just like renting. If you leave before 3 years, you gain no equity; again, just like renting.
If you ever do decide to settle down in one spot, you're already well on your way to ownership.
I would solve the rental problem by creating a massive, punitively high tax rate on all residential properties, and issuing an equivalent tax exemption to owner-occupants. A land contract is recorded with the county, much like a deed or a lien, and the buyer/tenant would be considered the "owner" for tax purposes.
Is this actually a thing or are you saying it should be?
Land contracts are an actual "thing". They are legal agreements, recorded in the county register like a deed or a lien. You can buy or sell a home through a land contract right now, if you want. Currently, they aren't particularly common, but they aren't unknown either.
I mentioned how I would like to eliminate rent entirely, by establishing exorbitant tax penalties for people who own multiple residential properties. Land Contracts are how I would meet the needs of people who need the flexibility of a rental arrangement, rather than just buying with a private mortgage.
There is an interesting method of "rent" in use in South Korea that is far less parasitical. I don't know of it being used in the US, but we could adopt it if we wanted. "Jeonse or "Key Money" is where the tenant makes zero monthly payments. Instead, they put down a large deposit. The landlord invests their deposit (there are limitations on what they can invest in), and keeps any interest. At the end of the rental period (usually 2 years) the landlord returns the entire deposit to the tenant. The tenant is protected by taking out a lien against the property. If the landlord cannot or will not return the deposit, the tenant takes ownership of the property.
The Jeonse deposit is typically 50% to 80% of the purchase price of the house, but it can be externally financed if necessary.
That's nice that you found a place to stay after traveling the world, that you found some personal benefit from a system that leaves more than half a million people without proper housing (at least in the US). What does that have to do with anything that I wrote?
Presumably because he/she is a person who wants to live somewhere without the hassle of having to own a house and that is impossible without landlords. And they are not the only one like that.
So your idea that all of it is parasitism has met someone, arguably you mean to help, who likes landlords. Because despite what some people think, a lot don't want to sign on the immense debt for a house nor maintain it. Landlords provide a service in that case and why is it your right to deny renters and landlords that service?
That doesn't mean there aren't parasitic landlords because there very much are. But a blanket statement that it's all bad seems foolish. Perhaps nuance is very much lost on people nowadays.
Landlordism is parasitism. That doesn't mean that the only alternative is a system in which people can only acquire housing by way of long term mortgages.
I reject this premise. It certainly is possible to establish a system that allows for what you describe, without undue burden on people who choose to "settle down".
"Land Contracts" could replace "rental agreements". In the short term (<1 year) they function identically to a typical, annual rental agreement: you agree to a fixed, monthly payment. If you break the contract and leave early, you pay a penalty.
In the medium term (1-3 years), the only difference is that your payment doesn't change (or changes only per the terms established in the initial agreement). You don't face a sudden, unexpected increase in your monthly payment. You do not owe a penalty if you break the agreement before three years.
The real difference between rent and a land contract is that after three years, the land contract converts to a private mortgage, in which your first three years of payments are considered the down payment. You continue to make monthly payments, but now, you have equity in the home: you are the owner; you are free to sell the home on your terms, you merely owe the outstanding balance on the loan.
Because equity (eventually) transfers to the tenant/buyer/borrower, this agreement is fundamentally less parasitical.
How do we switch to this model? Well, first you need to understand that the tenant/buyer/borrower is the "owner" of the home; the landlord/seller/lender is not the owner; they are a "lienholder". The "owner" - not the lienholder - is responsible for the property taxes.
So, what we do is massively increase the property taxes on all residential properties, while allowing exemptions to owner-occupants. If you reside in the property, you qualify for the exemption. If you do not reside in the property, you owe the whole tax.
With that change, "rent" basically stops existing. Typical landlords will switch over to land contracts instead of rental agreements to avoid being hit with the exorbitant property tax. The only properties that will continue as actual rentals are those where the landlord lives on-site, (duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes) making them eligible for the owner-occupant credit.
This owner-occupancy exemption also affects commercial lenders: if they attempt to foreclose on a traditional borrower, they owe the higher tax from the time they evict, until they re-sell the property. This gives them an incentive to negotiate with the borrower, and greatly reduce foreclosure rates.
I don't disagree that landlords are for the most part acting parasitically. However I would argue that in order for society to function "parasitism" is a requirement. I want to be clear and state that THIS form isn't required, but some form is.
Let me explain my thinking. Nearly half of the population doesn't work. The population of non workers can almost entirely fall within these categories: children, attending school, disabled (mentally or physically), or retired.
These populations need money even though they are not producing any. I would guess that most of the extracted profit that comes out of "mom and pop" rentals goes to providing for non-worker expenses.
Now I believe these expenses should be covered by taxations and redistribution of the factor income, but since we have a pathetic system of this in the US it's hard for me to fault someone for using investment property to hedge against child care and/or retirement
I am not as well read as I would like, but I don't think Marxist theory really faults anyone for acting in their apparent self-interest. The point is to become aware that you belong to a class with common interests, likely the working class, and that you can team up with your fellow workers and tenants to build leverage and get a better deal. Eventually, you can stop surrendering the wealth you and your class create to the minority bourgeoisie class.
To your point, a landlord who also has to hold down a regular job is still part of the working class. However, they might fall into the subcategories of labor aristocracy or petit bourgeoisie. Because they have it a little better, they're less reliable or even traitorous in the class struggle compared to regular workers, even though they rarely have the juice to make it into the bourgeoisie.
What you're talking about, I wouldn't call parasitism.
The owner of a home has "freedom". When you buy a home, you are free to do with it what you want. What makes landlords parasites is that the tenant is paying for that landlord's "freedom", but they are not receiving it themselves.
But my point is that there are certain categories of people who need access to income that they themselves do not produce. An able bodied capitalist is not one of these people, but a worker who is using real estate as a retirement vehicle is.
You can only say that landlords extract value from working people if they take money without giving anything in return. But landlords provide housing, which is certainly of great value.
Emotional reasoning tells us this is parasitism in the following ways:
we believe housing is a human right therefore no one can claim they provide it as a value - it’s something we are all entitled to.
once a house exists it seems like the landlord doesn’t “do” anything in order to provide the housing, except sit there and own it. So this must be theft because they are getting something for nothing.
#1 I understand and if you feel this then work to have it enacted as law in your homeland, because until it is enshrined in the system, you can’t expect anyone to just give away housing.
#2 is somewhat naive, because owning a house has costs including (minimally) taxes, insurance, and maintenance. Owning housing always carries a large risk too - you could incur major damage from a flood, hurricane, earthquake. And those are incredibly expensive to recover from. Not for renters, though - they just move.
The most important question of all is: how does housing come into being? If we make housing something that cannot be offered as a value, who will build? The up front cost to build housing is enormous and it may take decades of “sitting there doing nothing” to collect enough rent to recoup that.
People make all the same arguments about lending money. It’s predatory and extracts value from the people. But without the ability to borrow money, no one could build or buy a home, or start a business.
Much could be done to improve how lending and landlording work, to make them more fair and less exploitative, but when people say that in their very essence they are evil I think they are just naive children seeing mustache twirling villains everywhere.
It's not emotional reasoning. The rental income that a landlord collects is not a wage based on any labor that they do. It is a dividend on a real estate investment. The crucial mechanism to a rental property investment is the license to withhold or take away housing from people. That's what makes landlordism extractive and parasitic. Landlords simply do not provide housing. They capture it and extort people for temporary permission to live in it.
If you want some emotional reasoning as to why people resent landlords, here's a short list I wrote from a similar thread:
You skipped the most important question, as all anti-landlord idealists do.
"How is house made?" You think landlords are necessary or helpful to housing production? How can that be if they are fundamentally parasitic?
Now you’re making faces and trying to discredit the most important question so you can avoid answering it. It won’t work.
The answer, which should be obvious, is that workers produce housing. How do you insert landlords into that process in a way that isn't parasitic?
Who pays the workers and buys the materials? Whose land does this happen on?
You are referring to private employers and landowners who are also parasitic and non-essential to housing production.
Clearly you don’t have a solution for bringing housing into being except an utterly dangling magical notion that “workers will create it” with no answers to where, out of what, and while eating what.
You just keep calling different economic actors “parasites” without describing exactly what it is you think they are feeding on which could stand on its own.
You can smear paid employment, land ownership, and property ownership all you want but these are pretty big features in our economy and unless you have something better to answer with, sweeping them away does nothing.
So try replying in an affirmative mode where you don’t just call something parasitic but describe how you really think it will work, and be a little more thorough than just one microscopic part of it. Because my dude, workers create housing today.
You won't understand the solution until you understand the problem. I've already explained to you how landlords are parasitic. For similar reasons so are employers and land owners. The wealth they accumulate as owners of private property is not from any labor that they do themselves, but rather the labor of workers. To be clear, I'm not using the term parasitic pejoratively. I'm just being objective. Yes, workers produce housing today because that is how housing is produced, but landlords and their ilk are just overhead to housing production. If you still don't understand, then please explain why you think that landlords are indispensable.
Throwing it back at me to disprove your claim is a declaration of bankruptcy.
I didn't throw anything back at you. I'm checking in with you to see if you're still having trouble and, if so, where.
I’m not having trouble. You have yet to make any case whatsoever.
Your “explanation” is nothing but a string of pejoratives. Here’s how you describe someone offering the use of an object they own, for a price:
In other words they offer the use of something for a price. Oh but they’re not offering it! They’re holding a license to take it away! LOL
A landlord owns a home, an object of great value, and they choose not to use it or sell it, but to sell the use of it. A tenant needs a home but has neither the resources to build or buy one. There is an exchange of value between these parties. That’s renting.
You do nothing to argue that this is parasitic except to slather it with pejoratives. Your list of anecdotal bad experiences people have had with landlords is utterly immaterial to the discussion of whether landlording is definitionally unethical.
I believe you exposed the core of your beliefs here:
First of all, how is that true? I purchased my home with money I earned from my labor. Am I not permitted to now own it? And am I not permitted to offer the use of the thing I own? Why? And while we’re at it, who says that all renters pay rent from labor wages? Some of them may pay with dividends from their investments.
To the core, though, the argument seems to be that labor is the only value that exists. Which is bad news for anyone past working age, I guess.
You need to establish some foundations like you think property ownership itself is unethical and labor is the only value before your case even begins to appear on stage.
Instead of this, you’re claiming that your string of pejoratives is an argument which I simply fail to understand. Which is, again, just a pejorative characterization. You’ve offered nothing but here.
I'm sorry if you feel offended, but I'm using this terminology objectively. I do not believe that being a landlord automatically makes someone a bad person. However, landlordism is an harmful feature of our predominant mode of production. It relies on the prevalence of homelessness as a credible threat, after all.
I don't think I listed any anecdotes. You expressed interest in emotional reasoning as to why people resent landlords so I copied some examples of it that I had already written. The ethicality of being a landlord isn't relevant to the economic role of landlords as parasites.
The fact that landlord's do not collect rent based on any labor that they do hasn't been in question since Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations at the latest. Rental income is also known as passive or unearned income. That's the appeal of it to landlords or prospective landlords. It's an established concept. Even if you think that residential rental agreements are perfectly free and voluntary, that's irrelevant to the fact that landlords do not produce or provide anything.
Anyway it’s lunchtime and I need to go be objectively extorted out of the fruits of my labor by some parasite wielding a license to withhold food from me and the credible threat of starvation.
Bon appétit!
Well one "simple" way is for all the builders to be rolled up into the civil service: the government pays them to do their job, i.e. build houses, which the government then owns and allows people to live in. This must necessarily be rent-free, otherwise the government becomes one massive landlord therefore not solving the problem, and also takes the bottom out of the mortgage market because why would anyone buy when they can just move into government-provided housing without a 25-year millstone tied round their necks. It also creates a ton of job security because it means you can just walk away from a shitty employer without fear of becoming homeless.
It also drops anyone with a mortgage into the worst possible negative equity problem, which will be a massive problem for a massive number of people, therefore has zero chance of ever being voted in. So for this to work there has to be a solution to the mortgage problem, e.g. the government buys all that housing stock for the current outstanding mortgage amount, but that's a massive investment into something that now necessarily has zero value, which would likely crash the economy. IANAE so it'd be interesting to get a real economist's view on how this might all work in practice.
Yeah as your air quotes indicate, it’s simple to say but extremely problematic to do. Still, there are incremental approaches to this. Public housing does exist, it’s just extremely small so it doesn’t have any of those systemic effects. We should dial it up. But until it’s universal, it will always face the good old American problem of “my taxes shouldn’t but you free stuff.” It’s things to like this that make UBI look simple.