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1. Embed this notice
   Jess👾 (jesstheunstill@infosec.exchange)'s status on Thursday, 19-Dec-2024 17:27:56 JST Jess👾

   ALAB. All Landlords Are Bastards.

   Yes, even the nice ones.

   Yes, even you.

   The whole system of owning someone else's home and extracting profit from them is both inherently exploitive and forces them into being a bastard. "You don't pay rent, you're gone. We can find any possible reason to confiscate your security deposit, we do. Anyone without a squeaky clean rental history and who can't afford 2-3 months rent up front never gets keys.

   Yes, I get that tenants can be terrible and destructive too. Yes I know that home ownership isn't for everyone. But even still, making "passive" profits doing nothing more than owning property means you're participating in a system that makes you a bastard.

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 19-Dec-2024 17:27:53 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • Janis

     @janisf @JessTheUnstill A "landlord" who's paying most of what they rake in to the bank as interest isn't so much a landlord as a gullible, misclassified employee of the bank, and they'd probably make more putting the down payment in a good investment account.

   • Embed this notice
     Jess👾 (jesstheunstill@infosec.exchange)'s status on Thursday, 19-Dec-2024 17:27:54 JST Jess👾

     in reply to

     • Janis

     @janisf Billionaires are bastards too. And yes, my retirement accounts include stocks and bonds that enrich said bastard billionaires. Regardless, being the person personally holding control over who gets to rent a home, who gets to be evicted, what maintenance requests get ignored, etc. in order to turn a profit for nothing other than having had capital is an exploitve and bastard creating system.

   • Embed this notice
     Janis (janisf@mstdn.social)'s status on Thursday, 19-Dec-2024 17:27:54 JST Janis

     in reply to

     @JessTheUnstill the landlords don't pocket most of that money--they're paying mortgages (plus interenst), property taxes, appliance loans, repair, easements the bulk of what they make is on the sale of the property that "magically" appreciates.

     Ask to see your landlord's books? Little individual middlemen aren't the ones accumulating wealth, at least not until they sell--and that's the definition of a market gamble. They're playing the game, but the game is what's evil. Peg the rule-writers.

   • Embed this notice
     Janis (janisf@mstdn.social)'s status on Thursday, 19-Dec-2024 17:27:55 JST Janis

     in reply to

     @JessTheUnstill Agreed. It's important, though, I think, in the process of getting to that conclusion, to see that individuals generally rent for retirement income rather than wealth, where the (many foreign) corporations who've bought up most of the housing and let it sit empty for appreciation over time are a bunch of people just doing their jobs, making profit for shareholders.

     The problem is that passive income makes more than wages. That's a systemic issue.

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 20-Dec-2024 11:24:19 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • Janis

     @janisf @JessTheUnstill The hand of capitalism who wants you to take on all the risk, get cornered into doing evil, and not get paid for any of that until decades later assuming you don't get screwed by a crash or other catastrophic event.

   • Embed this notice
     Janis (janisf@mstdn.social)'s status on Friday, 20-Dec-2024 11:24:20 JST Janis

     in reply to

     • Rich Felker

     @dalias @JessTheUnstill Index returns have been about 10%. Last year the price of a house (avg US) went up 18%, while if individuals don't buy them, global investment corporations do, paying that 10% index to its investors, pocketing the other 8%, and actually hiring a remote employee to manage multiple properties in exchange for a single unit. (Obvs, it's not allegorically simple like that, but you get the gist.)

     Against whom are you trying to win?