this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026
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A Boring Dystopia
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Should hotels be illegal too? That’s basically renting out a room by the day. What if you cannot afford to buy a house, or only want to live somewhere temporarily? If you cannot rent any place to live, what would you do?
As with most things, it is a matter of degree.
If they're monopolizing the housing market, absolutely.
There are 16M vacant homes to distribute among around 770k homeless people. With such an enormous housing surplus, why is the clearing price for a housing unit so far above a new prospective buyer's budget?
You posit that people can't afford to buy homes without asking why homes are unaffordable.
Investors accounted for 25.7% of residential home sales in 2024.
I think there's a middle ground between 'consuming all housing stock in hopes of making airbnbs' and 'illegal'. There's a legitimate case for short term and medium term residence that doesn't make sense with ownership. However while we should accommodate those, it is a fair point the market should be regulated so that people have a reasonable path to ownership if it makes sense without being stuck with competing with rent-seeking corporations sucking up all the inventory.
In that article, the word "investors" is deliberately lumping together individuals, and institutions/corporations, in an obvious attempt to trick people into thinking that category is comprised entirely of the latter. Underhanded semantic maneuver. Within the same article:
Corporations are people, my friend.
Is ownership less virtuous in a partnership than a sole proprietorship somehow?
I merely pointed out that not all ‘rent is bad’, ‘landlords are evil’.
Among probably many reasons that housing is unaffordable for many is that some persons or corporations are awful scumbags that want to maximize their profit beyond what is reasonable or fair.
Renting isn’t bad. Capitalism isn’t bad. Abuse of these things is bad.
Abuse of these things is a core feature of capitalism. How can you contradict yourself so quickly?
The world is not black and white. I don’t accept the validity of your claim.
Shelter is a fundamental human need, locking it behind an unnecessarily high and ever increasing pay wall is the epitome of abuse. Landlords are leeches.
Yes it is. But you and I both said it. It is abuse of capitalism.
I would support some idea that corporations cannot own property like single homes solely for the purpose of profit. And any single person should be heavily taxed on rental income, at least beyond a certain point.
And let’s use eminent domain to take back those empty houses and put people in them.
But there’s still lots of people who would prefer to rent than own.
The problem is not landlords. And the problem is not capitalism. The problem is unfettered greed. Greed is not good, despite what Michael Douglas said in that movie.
You gotta look at the nuance here. Yes, high and ever increasing rent is bad and it's because of the abuse and poor regulation of the system. And traditional lords of the land is pretty bad however you slice it. But small landlords now can be providing a needed service. It's a lot of work keeping a house rentable - even if you are 'just' organizing contractors, accountants, lawyers, etc.
The world is not black and white. But still you will 100% keep your claim. Again. Contradict yourself in two sentences.
Capitalism is most definitely bad tho, like come on.
Well, it's a way to incentivize people to use their resources to provide services for others. It would be nice if people just did that on their own, but humans are generally too lazy.
Citation needed.
This is not capitalism, this is a market based system, which can happen to exist outside of capitalism.
Capitalism is is the ownership of value by capital ( property of shares, housing etc.. gives you benefits because you own them, not because you provided value).
In terms of housing, if one uses their resources to build a house for others to use, they need to retain ownership of that house in order to realize any return on their investment and maintain their ongoing providing of the housing service.
In almost all cases, the owner does not build the house. Thats done by the masons, electricians, plumbers etc ... So the owner did not create value
The owner organizes and pays the contractors do do the work. The owner buys materials. The owner makes it all happen, puts their money down. Without the owner being able to have the incentive to do all that, it doesn't happen.
Almost there. So the "value" provided by the owner is money. It is capital. Which is needed purely because of the system in place, that was the whole point all along.
I think we're a bit beyond good and evil.
Sure sure sure. Love the sin, hate the sinner.
All rent is bad and all forms of landlords are evil. They are a separate class with legal mandate to steal the labor value of the working class. They serve no function whatsoever and it is entirely conceivable that an apartment building's occupants could pool money together for repairs when that is necessary.
Shelter is a human right. Housing is a human right. Landlords are not mechanics, they are not repair men, they are not construction workers, they are not laborers. Some Landlords may do some of those things, but it doesn't change the fact that by virtue of stealing from the working class they are still evil. If they want to do repair work, I should be able to simply pay them for the repair work they do. If they want to do property maintenance work, I should be able to simply pay them for the property maintenance. They have a legal document enabling them to steal half of my income every month for no reason. They do not live in my home, I live in my home. If I stopped living there it wouldn't be my home anymore.
There are 0 downsides to entirely rejecting the housing market. Housing is a human right, it should be fairly distributed to everyone. I couldn't give a fuck about real estate markets, they could all dissappear today and no one would ever profit off of housing again and not a single tear would be shed. I'd really like it if everyone could have a fucking home. All Landlords are evil. There are NO exceptions. If they collect rent for someone else's home, they are evil.
If I own a house that is too big for me, and I can’t afford the taxes and upkeep, so I rent out some rooms to make a little money.
I am now a landlord. Are you suggesting that I am evil? That it should not be allowed?
I think you are conflating slum lords and greedy corporations with any and all people who have rental properties. Something, something… deals in absolutes.
You are not a landlord if you are sharing your home, you would be a roommate. If you are charging them rent, then yes you are a landlord :) no should ever profit off of housing! Housing is a human right! No one should ever have to sleep in your home, everyone should be able to have their own shelter that belongs to them! This is an absolutely conceivable reality homelessness is entirely a manufactured byproduct of capitalism. We have millions of empty homes and wasted infrastructure that could be used to house people.