it's so wild to me that in france if i offer to rent something for a long time, the landlord will often agree to lower the price a little: they have a garantee that the property will bring them something, and they don't have to manage it for a while. meanwhile here if i try to rent something for a longer period, the landlord refuses, because calculating how much to raise my rent is hard. rents in the area could go up 30% by next year! maybe they could make a lot more renting to someone else!
@wxcafe Meanwhile, in Sweden, there's very hard limits on when and how a landlord can oust a tenant, and most rents are based on use-value and collectively bargained with the renter's union.
it doesn't help with everything, all the time, but at least it's a start.
@wxcafe It's honestly wild the stories I hear from countries where renters' unions (and other unions) lost their battles and got shanked out of existence.
@wxcafe Like, I'm not saying that Sweden or France are socialist utopias, or that their successes are entirely due to union socialism, but it's pretty clear that wherever unions actually lost badly, the resulting societies are generally even more fucked up than others.