Landlords & Abolishing Private Property

[LfcCharlie4]

Again, looking for a tier 2 answer / response to this issue, I feel on social media the best you seem to get is excess green answers, as most of the people who support the Green ideologies tend to have done little inner work & therefore, project this through the ideology they follow as the savior, of course this isn't always the case! 

Anyways, I've seen a lot of tweets regarding Landlords, and as I said Twitter is basically VERY left, I mean very communist (excess Green communist, not Red / Blue communist) & there argument is that all landlords are essentially leeches to society & they basically call them 'ethical thieves' and 'parasites' (mature arguing I know) and anytime a landlord responds, they just call him unethical, same with all business in their eyes. (I can only imagine the limiting beliefs around money & business this creates) 

So, I was wondering what is your view on Landlords & Real Estate in general, I know as an industry it has created more millionaires than any other, and I personally wanted to build my own property portfolio eventually, so was wondering what a tier 2 take on this would be from you guys? 

In my opinion, I see nothing wrong with Landlords who treat the property & tenant with great respect, and make money in the process, after all it's a business. My main issue is with excess FDI from places like China, Middle East etc in huge cities like London that then creates 1000s of empty houses while we have millions left to be homeless, especially as this is mostly done for tax reasons & loopholes. 

So, I am sure regulations and what not need to be put into the Real Estate market, but if I'm honest I have mixed thoughts regarding this issue, on one hand it seems a very extreme position, but on the other I can understand their frustration, especially when landlord are straight up Dicks about things & don't fix the issues etc, but the answer to me, doesn't seem to be- Ban Landlords, more so (like most things) as landlords become more conscious, they will do their job better and see tenants as humans!

I know a Landlord who is very spiritual, and him and his husband use the Hindu philosophy of treating every guest in your house as you would a family member, and he sees all of his tenants as a family member, and his tenants love him, they go for quarterly dinners together, make sure the houses are well kept, and actually do great interior design jobs, to me that is the perfect example of a 'Conscious Landlord' and an example. But, even when presented with these examples, the response is 'He's still a landlord, and thus is a parasite' which to me, is too extreme of a view. 

[LfcCharlie4]

I’ve basically been discussing this with communists all night, here’s their main point: 

1) Landlords are parasites and “stealing” money from people through rent 

2) Profit made by the owner of a business is morally wrong 

To me, both of these are clearly wrong and I tried to make my points clearly but the ideology is far too strong.

 

How would you guys go about rebutting these points? 
 

@Leo Gura

 

Also, I spoke with the most conscious land lord I know, and he made some great points, he is into non-duality and said him & his husband treat every tenant like God, and provide the best service they can, and their tenants love them, how is this then unethical? 
 

Im certainly not against regulations and what not in this market’ 

[Roy]

28 minutes ago, LfcCharlie4 said:

1) Landlords are parasites and “stealing” money from people through rent 

lul. You don't need to respond to statements as stupid as these. People who say this are just projecting their own resentments outwards because they aren't smart enough nor financially competent enough to save, purchase, and manage their own real estate themselves.

When it comes down to it if they had the capital they would do the exact same thing and then backwards rationalize why it's ok. Their own selfishness would override any principles or attitudes they had before hand. Of course they'll never admit this.

Not everyone can own a home anyways. It's simply not possible simply given supply and demand. Population had doubled from nearly 4 to 8 billion people the past 50 years and there are only so many houses that can exist in the world, it's extremely resource intensive to make any living space let alone a first world one with the quality people expect. Therefore there are only going to be so many places for people to live so the Tenant/Landlord dynamic will always be a reality.

Not to mention owning a home is quite an investment and keeps you tied down to an area. Most people don't have jobs where they can get up and just leave a place, and people like to travel and live too.

Of course there are scummy landlords that exist and try to extract as much rent as possible, don't maintain the building properly, ie. But that is just a case of bad apples, not a bad tree. The remedy is better rights for tenants and better regulation, not destroying the system. Whatever system that would replace the current one would be made from scratch and not near the same quality.

28 minutes ago, LfcCharlie4 said:

2) Profit made by the owner of a business is morally wrong 

Depends how they made it. They are probably just choosing to look at all the ugly cases and equating it to all business which is not true.

Edited July 23, 2020 by Roy

[Gidiot]

This is a topic I’ve thought about. I’m not a communist but I don’t like the idea of private property that can be passed down through generations. I just think it creates an unfair system. I like public housing a lot and I was trying to imagine a system where over time your tenants that make a certain amount of payments also get equity or something of that sort but obviously that has its own problems. Basically I don’t like the idea of just owning a bunch of property and collecting rent and contributing nothing to society. 
 

leo said as much in his conscious politics video, there needs to be unique and new regulations that try to keep that in check and maybe incentivize tenants with consistent payments or a lot of total payments with tax incentives or equity or something besides an endless wheel of monthly payments. 
 

I know very little about real estate. Anyone could get into it and I know it’s pretty much the best form of passive income but I just think in its current orange blue iteration system needs updating. 
 

definitely wouldn’t tear it down but it definitely needs to be improved upon. I think landlords needs to be contributing more to society than simply owning a property and letting people live in it.

[LfcCharlie4]

9 hours ago, Roy said:

lul. You don't need to respond to statements as stupid as these. People who say this are just projecting their own resentments outwards because they aren't smart enough nor financially competent enough to save, purchase, and manage their own real estate themselves.

When it comes down to it if they had the capital they would do the exact same thing and then backwards rationalize why it's ok. Their own selfishness would override any principles or attitudes they had before hand. Of course they'll never admit this.

Not everyone can own a home anyways. It's simply not possible simply given supply and demand. Population had doubled from nearly 4 to 8 billion people the past 50 years and there are only so many houses that can exist in the world, it's extremely resource intensive to make any living space let alone a first world one with the quality people expect. Therefore there are only going to be so many places for people to live so the Tenant/Landlord dynamic will always be a reality.

Not to mention owning a home is quite an investment and keeps you tied down to an area. Most people don't have jobs where they can get up and just leave a place, and people like to travel and live too.

Of course there are scummy landlords that exist and try to extract as much rent as possible, don't maintain the building properly, ie. But that is just a case of bad apples, not a bad tree. The remedy is better rights for tenants and better regulation, not destroying the system. Whatever system that would replace the current one would be made from scratch and not near the same quality.

Depends how they made it. They are probably just choosing to look at all the ugly cases and equating it to all business which is not true.

 

Well what happens on twitter is they read some Marx / Lenin, then they create an ideology and in their bio have 'Marxist', then all their followers and who they follow are marxists so it just is a constant reinforcement of their ideas, and a constant shit show of 'Capitalism' it's the same for any ideology of course, but Twitter is prevalent with 16-25 year old extreme left wingers, I'm not sure why. 

You make great points, I myself want to own my own properties one day, and like you say this dynamic isn't being a 'leech to society' of course there could be improvements and what not, like more affordable and communal housing for the poorest, but this dynamic serves millions (renters) well.

The issue with Communists I find is they want a 'Revolution' but then wouldn't know what to do after that from what I have seen, and they don't realise how fast it would go south at humanity's current stage. 

And, I agree, I run a business, and I know I provide products that people love and get value from like Beginners Guided Meditation Audiobooks for example. I hope we see many more conscious businesses in the future where the focus is on serving the customer, and to be honest, I think we certainly will. Again, of course there's many bad apples, but that doesn't mean all profit is unethical!

It seems they just repreat Marxism without any critical thinking on their part. 

[Apparition of Jack]

@LfcCharlie4 Just out of curiosity, how much of Marx's ideas are you familiar with? Do you know his ideas of alienation of labor, the circulation of capital, commodity fetishism, and so on? I agree with most of what you're saying, but I don't want you to dismiss Marx's ideas outright because some people take his ideas too far and turn it into an ideology ("Marxism")

[Haumea2018]

LOL. Charlie, just explain to them that housing shortages were one of the biggest problems in the former Soviet Union where you had communal living with multiple families forced to live in one apartment.  Communism is a system that sounds good in theory (if you have no clue about anything relating to human beings and economic incentives) but it's one of extreme haves and have-nots in practice, where members of the ruling party are economically privileged over non-members.  In essence it's one where decisions on who gets housing are made politically. It's not a system that's going to magically provide affordable housing to everyone who desires it because that has never happened in the last 100 years.  The reason why we don't have affordable housing in certain cities in the US, e.g. is because rent control actually kills incentives to build more housing (and then you get into the "green" laws and regulations that make it near impossible anyway.)  It also drives up prices in the long term as apartments get converted to condos and get sold off, limiting supply. So you have people who don't want to deal with reality and making hard trade-offs (i.e. "the poor" vs. "the spotted owl") thinking that an even more extreme solution is the answer.  This time it will work because these are the smartest people the planet has ever seen.

Edited July 24, 2020 by Haumea2018

[mandyjw]

My take is that any business that is providing an essential service, food, medical care, housing, have the potential to be very conscious or very unconscious. Just consider the variety of food businesses there are from organic family farms to coca cola. 

 

[Leo Gura]

Maybe in 300 years we could abolish landlording. But in our lifetimes it will not happen.

Landlords being parasites is a partial truth. In many ways they are, but in some ways they incur risk of investment and add value.

The practical solution is to create regulations which reduce the most parasitic forms of landlording. In general we need to tax passive income a lot higher than non-passive income. And we could tax people who own excessive amounts of property so that there's plenty for everyone and no monopolies.

Taxes, taxes, taxes, -- is the simple solution.

Making profit is important and essential to any business, so on that point Marxists are being dumb. Biz needs surplus to survive and expand. Profit is only a problem when it gets exessive and at the expense of others. Not all profit is at the expense of others.

[Haumea2018]

If real property monopolies are an actual problem, then our existing antitrust laws are simply not being enforced.  We have those out the wazoo on the federal and state level.

[LfcCharlie4]

3 hours ago, Apparition of Jack said:

@LfcCharlie4 Just out of curiosity, how much of Marx's ideas are you familiar with? Do you know his ideas of alienation of labor, the circulation of capital, commodity fetishism, and so on? I agree with most of what you're saying, but I don't want you to dismiss Marx's ideas outright because some people take his ideas too far and turn it into an ideology ("Marxism")

Oh yeah, mate I was the BIGGEST leftist last year, he has some very very important points, but I just don’t see him 100% correct, and see the flaws that are creating excess green imo. 
 

3 hours ago, Haumea2018 said:

LOL. Charlie, just explain to them that housing shortages were one of the biggest problems in the former Soviet Union where you had communal living with multiple families forced to live in one apartment.  Communism is a system that sounds good in theory (if you have no clue about anything relating to human beings and economic incentives) but it's one of extreme haves and have-nots in practice, where members of the ruling party are economically privileged over non-members.  In essence it's one where decisions on who gets housing are made politically. It's not a system that's going to magically provide affordable housing to everyone who desires it because that has never happened in the last 100 years.  The reason why we don't have affordable housing in certain cities in the US, e.g. is because rent control actually kills incentives to build more housing (and then you get into the "green" laws and regulations that make it near impossible anyway.)  It also drives up prices in the long term as apartments get converted to condos and get sold off, limiting supply. So you have people who don't want to deal with reality and making hard trade-offs (i.e. "the poor" vs. "the spotted owl") thinking that an even more extreme solution is the answer.  This time it will work because these are the smartest people the planet has ever seen.

Problem is that wasn’t “Proper communism” it’s the biggest ideology I’ve seen yet. 
 

For whatever reason people love extremes, on both sides, not just the left, I look forward to when more and more people take a yellow perspective on the worlds issues, instead of a tier 1 one, that’ll be a great day! 
 

I personally know several “conscious” landlords who charge as little as they can and treat their residents as “god” (their words) and their residents love them! That’s the model to follow in our lifetime imo. 
 

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Maybe in 300 years we could abolish landlording. But in our lifetimes it will not happen.

Landlords being parasites is a partial truth. In many ways they are, but in some ways they incur risk of investment and add value.

The practical solution is to create regulations which reduce the most parasitic forms of landlording. In general we need to tax passive income a lot higher than non-passive income. And we could tax people who own excessive amounts of property so that there's plenty for everyone and no monopolies.

Taxes, taxes, taxes, -- is the simple solution.

Making profit is important and essential to any business, so on that point Marxists are being dumb. Biz needs surplus to survive and expand. Profit is only a problem when it gets exessive and at the expense of others. Not all profit is at the expense of others.

 

Leo you have just expressed my view perfectly, communist views are partially true but taken to the extreme it seems. 
 

Landlords could provide more value, and restrictions and regulations will help that, but we t seems excess green doesn’t like the word “balance” for whatever reason! 
 

Profit is key to the survival of any business As you say, conscious business is the way forward! 
 

 

[Gidiot]

Well if landlords add value we have to incentivize that. Or even make standards or best practices or education courses on what loving landlords and tenants can do. Honestly there’s no reason they couldn’t teach this at a college or university and people could not take classes in real estate and being a good tenant/landlord. I think it’s too easy to be a devil landlord and it seems as though the average anecdote is bad tenants/bad landlords.

i think Airbnb is is helping with people becoming more conscious of this dynamic even though it’s not really the same. I think it’s probably the best it’s ever been but yea taxes is a good idea and passive income is great but only when it’s kept in check cause usually people who have vast passive incomes don’t like to pay taxes.