I feel like this is one of the finer points to convince people of, and doesn't have as many resources to explain it to someone who's been indoctrinated in Capitalism their whole life.

  • BillyMays [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    They don’t work. You work to pay them and then they steal money from you to provide a living necessity.

    • HalfeMoon [they/them,she/her]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      <still playing the character with responses I've gotten>

      Aha! But don't they maintain the house/apartment? Isn't it them who acquired it through their own hard work?

      • BillyMays [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        That’s not work. That’s maintaining their asset and often times they don’t take care of the property or they get the renter to fix everything and not pay them for the work they did to fix up their place.

        But regardless of how much of a slumlord they are. We shouldn’t be putting people in situations where they are forced into explorative relationships because they need a place to live.

        Tell them to go on Craigslist and find all the johns demanding prostitution for a place to live. The fact our society allows landlords, enables the conditions for them to exploit people because it’s an exploitative relationship.

      • buh [she/her]
        ·
        edit-2
        4 years ago

        the value they add by performing maintenance (assuming they actually do that, maintaining the place is only a legal obligation that is often overlooked) is not nearly proportional to what they charge, which is pretty much always based on market prices and not the actual value they provide

      • NephewAlphaBravo [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        4 years ago

        So what if they bought it themselves? Now there's a spreadsheet somewhere that says "X owns Y," real fucking cool, that's not work and definitely not worthy of payment every month. Maintenance work, sure, but that's only a fraction of the rent.

        What's the rest of that rent for? If you don't pay it, that's not some extra work going unpaid somewhere. All that happens is the landlord is allowed to call the government to make you homeless.