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this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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the_dunk_tank
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It's the dunk tank.
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Read the first paragraph and thought this was going to be some predatory scam company robbing a mentally unsound old man of his home and thought "What the fuck, why would you laugh at that"
Then I read the rest and was like
Based, landlords like the Reddit thread’s OP deserve :gulag:
Nah this aint the take here, yeah landlord bad but with no social safety net what can the elderly man actually do otherwise?
Execute his will’s provisions now while he’s still alive and live off the state and any remaining Social Security checks. US policy only really gives help when you’ve finally ran out of money…
I would not want to live off of United States social security if I had severe short term memory loss
The alternative for the market is just someone else probably renting the building out anyway. Would rather have a disabled old man as a landlord than some corporate slime
Perhaps, but what happens when he passes away?
ghoul son takes over sure but I still think it's bad to con a disabled person out of their only viable income...
Why is this random stranger expected to support this old man until death instead of the old man's family or the government? Its on them to figure out a way to support the old man now that he can't extort someone for a living. Like what are they even offering this guy in exchange for taking care of their father? Nothing but litigation? Guess the old man wasn't that important.
The government should be supporting him. There should a good enough system in place that it's normal to care for our elders. That is not the reality.
Old man is a tiny part of a vast system. Yeah, fine, we can be scientific Marxists and outline the implicit relationships going on here, or we can be compassionate leftists and see that this clearly is a weird hill to die on.
In my eyes, if you're living with a serious disability in a nation where there is a terrible social safety net then hey, fuck it, landlord a small property. I don't really care. I've got bigger shit to fry. There will never be a ruling disabled class.
did he get the house for free or did he buy it?
he bought it every month he paid rent
true, just wondering if the ex landlord got another chunk of money for the deed or not, but it doesn't really matter
Here it is disabled old man as landlord, or owning the goddamn house yourself though.
through conning a disabled man
Does something immoral become moral because a disabled person is doing it? Wouldn't tricking an able bodied/minded landlord into giving up their property be good? Or do you think we have to just be better than our enemies at all moments?
Landlords delenda est
The weird thing about morality is that depending on the circumstances, the same action can become more or less justified.
An able-bodied landlord, at worst, would still be able to get a job like the rest of us. This man is entirely dependent on the income the property provides and has no way to augment his income at this point. The stock market is also unethical, would you feel the same if his 401k got signed over to someone? The answer is the dissolution of these predatory means of ownership while ensuring a good standard of living for everyone. Not taking an disabled, eldery man's main source of income for your personal gain.
The tenant is not some hero of the working class fighting against the landlords. They're most likely some shithead swindler who would have stolen someone's primary residence if they thought they could get away with it.
Why are we believing the best in the landlord's kid and the worst in the tenet? If we are believing someone is acting in bad faith, why chose the exploited and not the exploiter?
I agree with this take.
I just think this rigidity is pointless and feels like leftist internet edgelording. The disabled elderly man will be rendered helpless. He's taken a source of income that fits his means in a barbaric system. I don't see a viable alternative, really. Short term memory loss. That's severely debilitating.
Maybe he did it back when landlording wasn't his only means of income - I don't know. It doesn't matter to me because he probably wasnt educated about why landlording is exploitative. It's sadly a normal thing to do, and sort of a natural reaction to alienation from normal labour for many people who again, are totally uneducated on the topic and inundated in capitalist realism. The chances are, elderly man was and is just some guy. Not inherently evil, and in my eyes deserving of compassion. It doesn't sound like he owns a whole raft of properties.
Landlord delenda est but this particular one I have sympathy for.
No, we don't have to better than our enemies in all moments. I don't have a civility fetish. This is a fringe case.
Just pretty weird to me for a person with Mao in their name to be defending a landlord, any landlord. If the man is truly that disabled, let his kid sell the man's house and put him in a rest home of decent repute, or move him in with them.
To be honest I don't even think Mao would've been appalled by this landlord. Rogue take I know, but read up on accounts of landlords in 50's China. Enslaving, raping, pillaging, torturing. Compare what they do to what this old man is doing. I don't even think rural peasants in the throes of revolution would've considered killing this defenseless old man.
If they dispossessed him of his house - well, alright - the conditions in which landlording has become normalized have now changed. It's fair. I just think this is not one of those scenarios, and the guy who stole the house off him probably isn't some epic internet leftist. Probably just a generic swindler.
Not begrudging him taking an abusive method of getting money is one thing, but acting like he should beyond that be insulated from any consequences of that abuse, even a relatively mild consequence that doesn't involve him losing the home he lives in, is ridiculous. If he wants to play the game and make enemies, that is his fucking choice.
this is a lot of sticking up for landlords for someone with Mao in their name
Correct. If I somehow had the chance to persuade Biden to leak state secrets while he was sundowning, I would.
All Landlords are Bad. I don't make the rules, sorry
What is this take? He can do the same as anyone in his position who doesn't own an extra house does. Why should some random person be expected to support him? The tenant could do more good donating the rent money to a charitable organization helping elderly in need - but then we should ask why we're asking that of that tenant specifically. We don't know what the elderly man's financial situation looks like but it's obviously not the tenant's responsibility to support him.
This is only really available in hindsight. The old man doesn't have the time nor money to figure out a new retirement strategy, especially if a rental property was just signed over. The best situation would be to sell the house and hopefully live off the investment from that until he passes. What's not good is is removing a source of retirement income from someone when they don't have a fallback.
Removing landlords as an occupation while ensuring a minimum standard of living is good. Swindling an old man out of his retirement plan for personal gain and possible throwing him into the streets without a safety net is not.
Absolutely ridiculous. That's like saying we shouldn't free elderly people's slaves because they need them to care for them. The elderly man isn't going to be "thrown into the streets" because he already has a home. Again, you have no basis to assume that this is his only source of income or that he doesn't have sufficient savings. He at the very least has family, like the person who made this post.
And what about the tenant? For all we know they could be elderly and disabled too, only they weren't rich enough to "plan for retirement" by setting up a situation where they can steal rent from someone else. They could be saddled with medical debt, they could be a single mother trying to support a family, if you get to speculate about the landlord's situation then I get to speculate about the tenant's.
Completely bizarre pro-landlord takes on Hexbear, can't believe what I'm seeing. It's not the tenant's responsibility.
Property taxes, medical expenses, etc etc. Being retired and owning a home doesn't mean you suddenly stop having to pay for things. They presumably live in shithole america where if you don't have the money to retire when you get older you just die in the streets. It's very reasonable to assume that if a significant source of your income disappeared overnight you wouldn't be in a great place.
Even in this situation, it would just be someone poorer fucking over someone else for personal gain. Stocks are unethical too, but if your retirement account was stolen by someone to pay for their medical expenses you'd still feel it unjustified. Landlords as a class should be eliminated, but that doesn't mean literally senile landlords should be left with no safety net.
It's an unequal exchange that could end up in the elderly man losing his home due to loss of income. If the tenant had paid the cost of the house in rent, you'd be more justified in thinking this. If the tenant had only been living there for a few years, then it's a different story. You don't get to play "not my responsibility" when one party is directly responsible for the state of the other.
Which is exactly why I don't approve of the landlord stealing rent.
Oh, I didn't realize the tenant was the one collecting property taxes, causing the landlord's disabilities, or crafting policy such that they wouldn't have a safety net.
The tenant is not directly responsible for the landlord's state. He's just not relieving the landlord's state by giving him money out of his own pocket. He is no more responsible for giving him money then you are. You could track down the user and offer to venmo them every month, and the fact that you're not doing so makes you exactly as "directly responsible" for his state as the tenant's actions.
If the old man is a landlord, yeah it is. It's the least he deserves.