Even the best monarchs do not justify monarchy; it is a position inherently created for abuse. You may have a good king, or two, or ten - even kings who WILL put your wellbeing before their own interests - but invariably they will always be outnumbered by those who seek the position for the sake of abuse, or who succumb to the structure of the position which encourages abuse. Likewise with landlording. The problem isn’t with individuals, the problem is with the system.
The “benevolent king” is a persistent myth isn’t it? They feature in so, so many works of fiction
It’s a persistent myth because the institution is set up to perpetuate it. Everything bad is the nobles, the lords, the boyars, the merchants. But if the king, all-powerful and distant, only KNEW about these abuses…
If I can make decisions unilaterally, I’ll be more efficient not having to seek as much agreement from stakeholders, as long as we assume I’ll make good decisions.
I think benevolent dictatorship can exist but only for a couple generations at best, and that is also probably exceedingly rare.
Greed being a virtue these days and corruption running rampant probably lowers these odds.
And all rulers grades are still subject to whatever constraints and opportunities their situation places them in. Without Philip investing in army and drill, Alexander could never have done what he did. Also I’m sure having an external enemy to loot and enrich your people’s is a big lever too.
I think the more interesting modern question is about democracy versus single party rule like CCP. If the big benefit of democracy is we get more and better ideas and efficiency through private industry, how does the Internet making all information globally free and the global economy change that? I fear democracy loses a lot of inherent advantage in the same way Chinese companies steal IP or copy other products.
They also have the efficiency similar to the dictators. They can much better execute 40 year plans without having to switch parties and priorities every decade. How does democracy beat that in the information age?
Yeah. Benevolent dictatorship is the most efficient government type. The only problem is the odds of getting benevolence plus the impossibility of keeping it.
lmao what
are you trying to meme on its efficiency or the long odds of keeping that efficiency? It’s obviously more efficient for me to just decide things than go ask you your opinion and ‘sell’ you on it. The time I would spend getting your buy in, I can spend making more decisions. For the long odds, just look up ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’
It’s way worse than that. Any dictator (monarchs included) has to balance interests to keep their head. They literally can’t distribute wealth more freely without their top general taking over.
No king rules alone. So yes, a dictator has to keep his key positions happy. Money spent on useless citizens is money not spent for your ruling infrastructur. And uneducated hungry citizens make bad revolutuonarys.
I like this answer - succinct and to the point, but the last sentence is vague because “bad revolutionary” could mean “incompetent revolutionary” or “evil revolutionary” (am I missing a third meaning?). I’m assuming you didn’t mean evil, but even so, an “incompetent” revolutionary could have issues with the execution of the revolution (eg. lack of courage) or with the desired outcome (eg. rallying behind a populist cause blindly). Would you care to clarify?
I believe they were paraphrasing part of a CGP Grey video, and if so, then “bad revolutionary” would mean a revolutionary not fit to revolt. Either by hunger, general weakness, or incompetence.
Reminds me of the rules for rulers video by cgp grey
Yup. That video explains the problem very well.
Every landlord I’ve had has been “nice” and “friendly.” Unless you need something or they’re not happy with something you did.
Because they don’t see you as a person … they see you as either a benefit or detriment to their wealth. You are an extension of their wealth and their only interest is in watching to see if that wealth increases or decreases.
I think my landlord sees us as people, he’s just fundamentally incapable of understanding what it means to live in a lower income bracket. He’s selling the house we live in and seemed genuinely confused why we, as a single earner household paying significantly below market rent, would be worried because “there’s only a few situations where they can kick you out”. Yes and if they invoke one, which they will because we’re a bad investment, we’re SCREWED.
Meanwhile he thinks he’s being generous by listing for below appraisal when it’s still at least double what he paid a couple years ago. Just living on a totally different planet.
All of this is starting to remind of Charles Dickens from 150 years ago.
He probably thought we’d be way past his generation by now … we are in many ways but in some ways we are no different than our ancestors 10,000 years ago … this may be the 21st century but human greed and the ignorance of man never changes
If that’s what you think, your life must suck ass. Landlord wants to pay their expense and that’s it. If a tenants destroys the place or ask stupid shit all the time, that sucks. That’s just being normal human being. Stop dehumanizing people.
You needing something is fair as it “should” be part of the agreement you have with the landlord. Even if unspecified, the landlord agreed to provide a place that is fully functioning and comfortable livable. So they can’t removed if you need something.
On the other hand, you are renting their property and you agreed, even if unspecified, to care for their property during your stay and return it in the same state as you received it. You fucking up their shit in any way gives them the right to removed. Both scenarios are a breach of agreement, written or not.
PS: Landlords require tenants to get credit checks etc. in order to ensure that the tenant can pay. Tenants should have the right to require landlords to hold adequate insurance that would protect and accommodate the tenant.
That sounds good in theory, but in practice, I’ve had to ask multiple times and then just begrudgingly get the plumber called in or whatever. Landlords hold all the power.
Took the best part of a year to convince our landlord to replace the ancient, breaking fridge. Still also in a pitched battle with him to get the boiler fixed properly or replaced rather the sending his mate around. Landlords are bastards.
Landlords should be required to hold certain types of insurance before they can rent. This includes home warranties. If your fridge and boiler were dying, the landlord might be less of a shit if all it took was a call to a toll-free number.
I agree and fear that I didn’t make my point well. The reasons tenants get screwed all the time is because all of the requirements and restrictions are on the tenant side. If people were required to hold insurance that protects the tenant, and certain regulations existed and were enforced, before said people could be allowed to rent a property, then maybe the power dynamic could be brought closer to equilibrium.
I get it now. And yes, I agree.
My landlord lives in the same house as me. Things get fixed very quickly, especially when it comes to anything leaky. Might also be especially connected to their mother living one flat below mine.
landlord is just living within the system he was put in.
if you wanna hate someone stop hating the individual and hate the system that forces this behavior.
except THIS IS AMERICA we cant have beneficial economic decisions
I realize that I may be in the minority here, but I used to be a landlord. I never charged full market rate, and I always took care of my tenants. I never kept any security deposit money. One tenant had a breakup, and I showed up that evening with a locksmith to change her locks so he wouldn’t be a problem. That cost me some money but it didn’t cost her anything. I mean, they’re paying for service you need to provide service.
And because of that, you made less money. A bastard landlord would make more money and be able to invest that money into buying more properties. Those properties would bring even more money, allowing them to buy even more property and so forth. This dynamic is why the vast majority of landlords (and capitalists in general) are bastards.
Capitalism is a system where the selfish and greedy will always triumph over the selfless and charitable. It is designed from the ground up to incentivize selfish behavior.
I was OK making less money. The place was paid for, no mortgage. The only reason I sold was because of our horrible medical system.
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You’re assuming the market has other options for those tenants and that moving for a tenant is a viable option. Many many people live paycheck to paycheck for rent let alone saving up for down payments and moving costs
You did it right, but the only thing keeping most people honest is regulation. Until pro-tenant behavior is properly incentivized for landlords, most will remain shitty and selfish.
Most ? Where is your statistics? What kind of bullshit statement is this.
-gestures broadly at the history of the entire human species-
I’m not a misanthrope, but humans haven’t exactly earned a gold star for behavior.
My statistic would be the totality of humanity acting like shit whenever they’re not forced otherwise
There are laws around renting. It’s not a free for all, at least, not where I come from. There are cases where humanity acts with generosity. This argument works both side and it’s unproductive.
You’re right, the housing market is currently full of generosity. Thanks for the input here
Exactly ;)
When the system incentivizes greed, then there will always be a sway toward the profit motive.
I remember people like you. It’s always appreciated but eventually a corporation gets every building.
Sincerely thank you for being a good person in a harmfully flawed system. You probably won’t get rewarded for it. Most likely you’ll be punished for it. But someone out there probably thinks you’re pretty cool for doing it.
Who wouldn’t put their income before your wellbeing when push came to shove?
Socialists
Funny thing is when socialists make some money they stop being socialists.
It’s almost like their class interests changed and class interests influence behavior.
Almost like it’s proving their point. Capitalist critique is not about individual “bad” people but about a system with perverse and harmful incentives.
(granting your claim for sake of argument - feel free to support it with data)
Imaginary altruistic socialists after murdering everyone that doesn’t support socialism?
The hell are you talking about?
In any of the systems we’ve tried since the species got agrarian—especially Capitalism whenever it’s Fascism Hammer Time—not the average person that’s for a certainty.
They’re too busy surviving.
In a proper society where we (the collective We, but really ~2k dragons) used the same tools we used to separate us to instead expand the sense of the tribal umbrella so that the species innate selfish altruism could shine?
A whole lot more folks whose part would be exactly like in the fabric of society, comfortable and without a thought of want for they know We got their backs too.
Context matters. Would you choose to go make a little bit of money or help someone who was about to be killed?
You just invented a scenario where the landlord stands to lose very little and the tenant stands to lose their life.
In every scenario the stakes vary between involved individuals.
That’s the point I was making.
But also many of them will make someone homeless just because they couldn’t provide an extra ten percent of profit this year.
So yeah.
Almost all people will put their own well-being above yours. This isn’t a trait exclusive to the upper-class.
Yeah if we’re both in the same situation maybe but my income Vs your well-being is a different thing isn’t it?
I can accept to be a bit less comfortable to help you live in less horrible conditions.
In an ideal world we’d all treat each other how we wish to be treated. I try to do that in every interaction, not always successfully. But we saw during covid that there are hundreds of millions of selfish-ass people. People that wouldn’t even temporarily give up haircuts or Starbucks to potentially save someone’s life. Hell man, they wouldn’t even wear a thin piece of cloth across their mouth and nose to potentially save people’s lives.
I guess I’m saying that I agree with you, but many people don’t… at least not in practice.
That’s true. However.
The owning class has interests directly opposed to the working class, which makes that “natural” trait toxic to the working class. In addition, the owning class has a lot more power.
Your landlord wants to make as much money as possible for as long as possible. (fair enough right?) The problem is that for that to happen
- demand needs to stay high or go higher which means that
- supply needs to stay low which means that (at the level of class interests, not personal belief)
Your landlord doesn’t want new affordable housing to be built in your area. They want you to never own a house, never have any cheaper rent options. They don’t want to have to keep renting to you at the price you are paying now.
They don’t want to have to invest money in making your apartment/house safe or comfortable.
The problem is not that people will put their own wellbeing above yours, it’s that their wellbeing is in conflict with yours. A conflict of interests between classes… class conflict… class warfare. And they have all the guns.
It doesn’t have to be this way.deleted by creator
You’re missing the point.
The “villain” in this situation is a system that allows a minority of people to attain huge amounts of wealth and power and incentivizes them to keep increasing both as much as possible without regards for others. It’s not the people that follow the incentives.
Unfortunately one of the incentives when you’re part of the owning class is wanting to perpetuate the system: it’s working pretty well for you.Individual members of the owning class can be great people. But as the original comment stated: most people will usually put their own interests above yours. The problem isn’t that they do so, the problem is that their interests are in opposition to yours.
The analysis isn’t (as you seem to think) at the level of “you’re part of the owning class, therefore you’re evil and we hate you”, but “there should be no owning class, its existence leads to needless conflict and suffering”.
Let’s not get it twisted though: while the real villain is capitalism, it’s always one class that does all the stealing, and the lying, and the gaslighting, and the manipulating, and the cheating.
Power corrupts.deleted by creator
I want to first point out that the government being corruptible is not a problem that capitalism just solves. Almost all countries today are capitalist, and that doesn’t prevent their governments from being totalitarian or corrupt or mismanaging their resources (Russia as an example).
The government still has all the power. But now there’s a small group of people who can influence that power (let’s not kid ourselves - mainly through corruption) to the detriment of everyone else.A centrally managed economy is not the only alternative.
Workers of an organization can be the owners of that organization, rather than a few wealthy elites or the government. That way, they see the fruits of their labor rather than it being syphoned off. They have a say in how the organization is run, they can vote on who manages it and replace them when the way it’s managed is bad for the workers.
Let’s say ownership of a company automatically goes from its founders to all workers (this might well include the founders) when it reaches a certain size.
What would incentivize anyone to try to start a company in such an environment? Why not guarantee the founders a certain percentage of the profits even if they decide to stop working when the company changes ownership? Where does the capital come from to build a company in the first place? Government - hear me out. Taxes still exist, and continue to pay for things like infrastructure and healthcare and education and housing (these things are probably better managed by government than markets). And part of the tax revenue goes into an investment fund that is managed locally (think city, and/or county level). Citizens have direct voting power over what projects get financed with their taxes.More pragmatically, a first (I would say reasonable) step would be to limit the amount of power an individual can get. Nobody needs a billion dollars to live, much less hundreds. Change the incentives: implement aggressive progressive taxes.
Heavily tax vacant houses and invest in affordable housing. Stop subsidizing the aviation industry and the fossil fuel industry and the meat industry and instead invest in healthcare and education and public transport and farmers.Capitalism is a nightmare without regulation. Simply start by adding more (good) regulation and enforcing it consistently.
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I was curious too so I did a quick search. Here’s what I found:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Aaron-Buchko/publication/229592641_The_effects_of_employee_ownership_on_employee_attitudes_An_integrated_causal_model_and_path_analysis/links/5fc6ea9245851568d132333d/The-effects-of-employee-ownership-on-employee-attitudes-An-integrated-causal-model-and-path-analysis.pdf.https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w5277/w5277.pdf
A cursory read suggests that ownership increases job satisfaction and commitment, though the correlation with job satisfaction is less strong. Overall a positive, perhaps mild effect on employee happiness and potentially positive effect on firm performance.
So your suspicion that ownership doesn’t have a strong effect on employee happiness seems to bear out.
My main argument wasn’t about individual employee satisfaction though. The point was that worker ownership of organizations gets rid of the owning class (effectively: if everyone is an owner, the class conflict dissolves) while keeping markets and competition, making central planning less relevant.
I was trying to suggest approaches that are neither radical nor utopian, and like you pointed out yourself, that we already employ effectively. The main proposed difference is scale: past a certain size, all companies would be worker owned.
I don’t think markets are bad. Uncontrolled concentration of wealth is.I’m skeptical of the claim that well-regulated capitalism is the best option, but depending on just how well-regulated it is, I agree that it can be a good option.
Though one might argue at that point whether you’re really still talking about capitalism. For instance, the main characteristic I have an issue with is capital accumulation. If we regulate that one out I think we’re going to get much better outcomes. Would the result still be considered capitalism?The problem with just regulating capitalism while keeping the core mechanisms is that if wealth accumulation is still allowed to happen, resources will tend to concentrate in the hands of a few. This is not only inequitable and wasteful but more importantly it gives them power, which they will inevitably try to use to chip away at the regulations.
I mostly agree with your points on housing. On health I’ll say that many of the issues you mention are either the result of or at least exacerbated by the influence of capital on government.
You make some good points, but I’m confused by your statement that they have all the guns. Do you mean they control the police? I’m not sure where you live, but in the USA there are literally hundreds of millions of guns owned by the lower and middle class. In 2017, there was estimated to be near 400 million guns in the United States between police, the military, and American civilians. Over 393 Million (Over 98%) of those guns are in civilian hands, the equivalent of 120 firearms per 100 citizens.
“They have all the guns” is a metaphor in the context of class warfare.
I mean that they have the means to employ force (usually through police, but not exclusively) in their interest as well as having the entire power of the state behind them (disproportionate wealth means they have disproportionate political influence which means they can lobby for laws to be adjusted in their favor. Even when the law seems just, it is rarely applied in the same way to wealthy people in practice).
Not to mention that they can and do buy influence over the media apparatus, controlling narratives and tricking the working class into acting against their own interests.
Within the framework of class conflict, those are the “guns”.
Lol appreciate the sentiment but that was a huge woosh
My landlords wife yelled at the plumber for sealing our bathroom wall back up when the shower spigot was still leaking, and then her husband comes in and says “honey stop we don’t need to pay to fix the valve if we don’t have to”. So my shower still leaks and they really fixed nothing because they didn’t want to spend $1000 (less than half our rent) to redo the shower.
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More descriptive title next time please :)
I love lemmy, but these titles make it feel like everything is posted by bots
Didn’t see anything in the about section requiring a descriptive title, mighy want to put something there if a descriptive title is required for posting on this instance…
Firstly, even without rules ‘yup’ is a terrible post title.
Also if you look at every other post in this community, just try and do something similar. Even a single relevant word is fine.
It helps to know youre human and worth my time reading… but ehhh… whatever
That’s true of literally any transactional relationship. Everyone is trying to get as much as they can for as little as possible. Including employees trying to get as much pay for as little work. It’s normal.
Yeah. It also pretends like a landlords income isn’t related to their wellbeing. In some cases it might not be, but for most mom and pop landlords it directly is.
Also: I’m a renter with zero interest in owning real estate. I know many people with rental properties (who are therefore landlords) that I am significantly wealthier than. A lot of people are struggling to pay rent and I get that, but believe it or not so are a lot of these land owners. So there’s just a lot of unbridled rage towards against anyone they have to pay rent to, especially around here.
I think its clear that what we are seeing is the result of decades of exponential growth. No shit houses have quadrupled in price in the last generation or so, what do you think is going to happen with 10% ROI per year? That’s just how it works. Not the landlords fault at all. Idk who to blame or how to fix it but, well, uh, there it is.
There are a lot of leftists here. The focus is usually on exploitation, not on wealth (though, these are often correlated). A shitty small farmer may not be very wealthy, but him making a meager living off the labor of underpaid migrant workers and having them live in unsafe shacks is still exploitation.
Why should real estate have any ROI? Why should people be able to own and make money off property that they don’t use, but other people literally need to survive?
I, personally, don’t hate single-property landlords or whatever, I just hate the system. I do kinda hate larger companies because they are just machines to generate more wealth for the already wealthy, with no regard for anything or anybody else.
Why should real estate have any ROI?
Because it’s an asset like any other and prices reflect the same fundamentals that drive everything else in the world. And when I mention 10%/yr ROI I’m citing the average annual return on equity, not even RE specifically. But since RE has a strong positive correlation with stocks and commodities there’s no wonder prices have increased exponentially along with everything else.
That’s a useless observation. Think further.
Real nice constructive comment in good faith to encourage discourse. Keep it classy Lemmy, never change 🙄
What discourse? The user is promoting some thought-terminating capitalist ideology cliche of “rational individual man” and “every man for himself”.
All it does is decreases solidarity while the use there thinks of himself as some smarmy economist intellectual who knows all about human nature.
Yeah fuck rational logic, really overrated.
Just because someone declares it rational, it doesn’t mean that it is rational.
Everyone is trying to get as much as they can for as little as possible
That’s literally as rational as it gets.
Thanks for being yet another total fucking asshole on Lemmy. This place is by far the most toxic shithole I’ve ever been on the internet. You’re like the tenth person I’m blocking now. Incredible.
It’s not rational, bud, it’s short-term interest. In the long-term we’re fucked because of it.
Toxic shithole? You’re the one promoting sociopathy.
That’s just a good thing to remember in general: no matter how good of a relationship you have with someone, whether it be a coworker or a friend, at the end of the day, most of them will put their own interest over yours.
Some of them won’t, but they are rare.
If you want people to put you first, you just need to make it so that having you in their life makes their life better.
Be a better friend, coworker, team member, etc.
And stand up for yourself, so that people don’t try to take advantage of you.
Know your worth and demand it from people.
There sure are a lot of landlords on Lemmy.
They are also a bad person
Image Transcription:
X/Twitter post by user 🎇 K8 is a Danger to The Republic 🎇 @K84UnitedLeft reading:
"The point of class analysis isn’t to say that your landlord is a bad person, it’s to say that your landlord has class interests that directly oppose your own.
“They might not treat you like shit, but when push comes to shove they will put their income before your wellbeing.”
[I am a human, if I’ve made a mistake please let me know. Please consider providing alt-text for ease of use. Thank you. 💜 We have a community! If you wish for us to transcribe something, want to help improve ease of use here on Lemmy, or just want to hang out with us, join us at !lemmy_scribes@lemmy.world!]
Where are all these single owner landlords? Everything here is owned by management companies and the ‘landlord’, more propertt manager, is an employee who gets a free rental unit to live in while they have the job.
A reasonable opinion on twitter? Is this from 10 years ago?
