this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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the_dunk_tank

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It's the dunk tank.

This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.

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[–] CatoPosting@hexbear.net 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Here it is disabled old man as landlord, or owning the goddamn house yourself though.

[–] MaoTheLawn@hexbear.net 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

through conning a disabled man

[–] CatoPosting@hexbear.net 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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

[–] AlpineSteakHouse@hexbear.net 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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?

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.

[–] CatoPosting@hexbear.net 13 points 1 year ago

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?

[–] MaoTheLawn@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago

I agree with this take.

[–] MaoTheLawn@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] GarbageShoot@hexbear.net 3 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] bigboopballs@hexbear.net 3 points 1 year ago

this is a lot of sticking up for landlords for someone with Mao in their name fedposting

[–] CatoPosting@hexbear.net 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] MaoTheLawn@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[–] GarbageShoot@hexbear.net 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Correct. If I somehow had the chance to persuade Biden to leak state secrets while he was sundowning, I would.

[–] MaoTheLawn@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

An elderly man with severe short term memory loss and one extra property is not even close to the same as Joe Biden and national security secrets.

I know you're sort of doing a bit, but that's a bad comparison. Of course I would con an establishment warhawk rapist out of national security secrets. I would not steal a house outright off an elderly man with short term memory loss.

[–] GarbageShoot@hexbear.net 9 points 1 year ago

Class antagonism applies in both cases, and when we have a means to benefit as a class, we should leverage it to the hilt. This dude seems to have several extra properties, but if it was just the one, then congratulations to him, he gets to be a prole like the rest of us and receive that level of consideration. Perhaps he should have asked the renter why they were in the situation they were in first.

As long as the landlord chooses to obstruct progress, he has made his bed and he can lie in it. We should not systemically discriminate against people with dementia, but not using a concrete practical advantage that you have over someone in terms of functional competence, whether the senile, confused codger is a landlord or the President, is bullshit moralism. If someone is on a crutch and threatening someone else with a weapon, you can be damn sure that I'm kicking it out from under them unless they can be talked down. That such an action could be confused by fools for ableism is of no interest to the person being threatened.

We have no choice but to live in brutal capitalism, and we must brutally use it or else abstain all the way to the grave knowing that we failed to improve the world but at least were able to save the very people fucking us over from getting hurt by the consequences of their own fucking actions.