this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2026
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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Landlords shouldn't be able to own homes.
Imagine going to another city to attend university. Can't just rent for a few years, gotta have initial capital to BUY an apartment first.
Imagine houses that don't cost nine and a half fortunes, because they are not considered one of the most profitable ways to invest, for the richest people in the world.
Housing doesn't have to be prohibitively expensive, whether temporary or permanent residences.
It's not about temporary living in a place not existing, it's about forbidding the ways that rich people go about making housing scarce, and corner markets.
That is true, but not what was pointed out. Who rents out homes then, it not companies or landlords? I fully agree companies should not own homes. And also believe rent should be pinned to purchase price value +x% per year something. And landlords should not be able to own more than a certain number of dwelling units.
But then who rents out the temporary homes, or homes for people who just don't want to own for a reason
One heavily oversimplified answer, from the many possible ideas, is:
Nationally built cheap housing, with minimal or no rent. That means, housing as a public good, like nationally owned water and electricity companies.
I hear this argument all the time. I reject it. There are alternatives.
A "Land Contract" functions very similar to a rental, but it is a purchase agreement. You are a buyer, not a tenant. If you walk away in the first 3-5 years, it functions exactly as a rental agreement, with the only exception being that the monthly payment was fixed for the duration instead of hiked annually.
If you stay longer than this initial 3-5 year period, the agreement automatically converts to a 30 year mortgage with the same payment.
So, you take out a "land contract" on your college apartment instead of a rental agreement. You can return it to the landlord after you graduate, or stay put and gain some equity for a few years.
Why would landlords offer such an arrangement? Simple: we're providing owner-occupancy exemptions to property tax hikes. If you live in the house you are paying taxes on, you are entitled to the exemption, and pay a low rate. But If you don't live there, we're going to send your property tax rate through the fucking roof. You're going to be begging your tenants to take a land contract instead of a rental agreement.
When we do this, small-time landlords who live in one of the units of a duplex, triplex, or quadplex will be able to rent out the other units while retaining the owner-occupancy credit. They are occupying the taxed parcel; the additional units are not separately taxes. Corporate landlords won't have the same capability. Corporations may be people, but they don't have a "residence". You'll be able to rent one of these onsite-landlord units, if you really want to rent.
Publicly owned apartments you can rent. No need for a landlord who just takes money. That money could go to funding public services instead.
Or you know, actual upkeep of the property instead of doing absolutely nothing until it is literally falling apart like most landlords.
The black mould is structural
Bingo !
With the current trend of 2/3rds of housing kept empty for speculation, you'd probably buy and sell a house for uni (and probably make a profit instead of spending like 200k).
And also university already requires a shit load of capital? That's kinda the whole point, so poor people are poor for a "reason".
Also it'd be simple for university residences to explode it quality and quantity without the insane competition of the landlord market.
Where are you getting the statistic of 2/3 of housing being kept empty for speculation? A quick look outside tells me that is utter bullshit.
15 million or about 10% in 2024, I have no idea where they are getting that information from.
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-vacant-homes-are-there-in-the-us/
If I wanted to give benefit of the doubt, maybe they mean that 2/3 of vacancies are caused by being held empty for speculation. Even that doesn't make snes to me, though. It's not like you are unable to sell properties that have tenants.
Nope, university is free.
That works well as a thought terminating slogan online. Less so as a practice in the real life.
I'd hope it was a thought commencing slogan, maybe giving people curiosity as to think:
"How could another sapient person believe something so different from my own beliefs? That person is even making it a joke, therefore they must have had it bouncing around in their brain a bunch, so they must believe it and think about it a lot. Huh, maybe there is something more to know, and think about."
I even made a comment with a small answer, to the other person, who asked like a human.
Clearly didn't work on you though.
When people drop these one-liners that perfectly align with the popular view of the platform, my first assumption is that they in fact have not thought about it and instead are just saying the popular thing for applause.
Perhaps that's a cynical view but in my experience it seems true more often than not. You too walked back on your original statement after being questioned on it. I can't learn from people who don't say what they mean or mean what they say.
Hm, I see your point about clarity.
My original comment "landlords shouldn't be allowed to own houses" was a joke, in the sense that it is an impossible paradox, with the implied statement being "landlords shouldn't exist".
That is indeed the prevailing view on this platform, because it's a leftist/marxist/anarchist platform, mostly.
I might not be the right person to give you a pointer directly into the theory of those, but I have a number of YouTubers I really like, that talk about these issues, and make incredibly good explanations.
Two I'm really into, lately, are NonCompete, and Unlearning Economics, that have some great video essays, the first one about communist perspectives, the second going in depth against things that are considered "common sense" in capitalist economics, and their real results when actually looked at.
I'd say you can click on their channels and click whatever interests you most (NonCompete has a video on thought terminating clichés lol), but I can also recommend a couple specific videos:
On NonCompete, there's a video that contains a pretty good explanation of what is called the class war, that is, what tools the rich use, to keep the poor working. Housing costing so much, is one of those tools.
On Unlearning Economics, there is a personal favorite of mine, Free stuff is good actually. It's more about the adjacent philosophies, but you can easily extrapolate from it, to housing, if you like spending an hour listening to a guy talking about economics lol.
Internet comments are so bad at conveying rich ideas, and so easy to not notice the humanity behind people, that it's refreshing to have people like you answer, with the honest intent behind what they wrote. I hope what I sent interests you!
Why not?
That was a kind of aggressive way for me to express that, but, in all seriousness, the reason is that:
Being a "landlord", that is, very specifically, an "owner of houses you don't live in, but rent to people for profit", is a way to live that is inherently abusive to the people you rent to.
You have ownership of a basic good people need to survive (housing), which is effectively scarce (because it's not allowed for just anyone to build a house without incredible amounts of money, even homelessness is fairly illegal in many places), and you say to people:
"Either give me a monthly fee for me to allow you to have a roof over your head, or I'm calling the police (the only people allowed to be violent in the country) to kick you out"
It's a way of making money, where the owner doesn't do anything helpful to society, except find people who are desperate to survive, and milk them of what they make.
How is it not helpful to society to allow others to live in your house? And it's not landlords who are looking for tenants, it's the other way round.
There's a reason "rent seeking" is a derogatory term.
The problem is being a landlord as a job. The problem is rich people buying up housing (or land and building on it) they don't use, in order to rent for profit.
It's about everyone who has no house. All the people who have no alternative, apart from renting from some rich people.
If someone "allowed" others to live in his house, without demanding half their salary, you wouldn't see me complaining.
And the reason that buying or building a house is so expensive, is explicitly because rich people clamber over each other, to make the best investment of their lives: Housing.
People have a right to invest.
We're saying that maybe, just maybe, basic human necessities shouldn't be the object of speculation.
Agreed but we shouldn't prevent people from buying or selling houses.
Nobody's saying that.
We should however prevent the hoarding of residential buildings
How many houses are permitted before it's considered hoarding?
Housing can be affordable or an investment, not both.
People can invest elsewhere, in markets not necessary for survival.
That's like saying people with major medical issues "are looking for" insurance salespeople to fix their medical issues. They "need" insurance because the system is fucked, not because insurance will make them better. Likewise, no one "looks for" a landlord, they look for housing they can afford.
Yes but housing is much more expensive than healthcare. The government can't afford to provide it for free.
You mean the taxpayers can't afford it, and you're wrong. Trillionaires exist, we could afford anything we want to if we had people in charge willing to tax them fairly.
Regardless, the potential cost difference doesn't negate my previous point, no one has ever "looked for a landlord".
No, what the government actually can't afford is to have homeless people overutilizing public services (ambulances, police, hospitals, and jails) because they don't have stable housing. It's way, wayyy cheaper to provide people free housing than let them be homeless, Finland has proved this with basic arithmetic, our culture is just really into performative cruelty for some reason.