Landlords provide a service. One of a home to rent. It’s no different to renting a car in that sense. They certainly don’t do nothing. They’re responsible for the maintenance of the property (well they are in the UK, I am assuming you’re from the US by your use of the words ass and paycheck). Were cars as scarce as homes and people still needed them as much as they do now you’d see the same thing in the car rental market with extortionate fees for a “service” that people demand. But that’s a condition of the market, blame your government for not providing proper social housing to drive down the cost of private accommodation.
But landlords are leeches because I don’t like them is such a simplistic answer to a nuanced question.
tal@lemmy.today 7 months ago
I mean, the shop owner isn’t necessarily the shop manager, though they can be the same. And landlords can manage buildings.
But more-broadly, if you own a building, then you’re foregoing whatever benefit you would have derived from your capital that is put into the building if you hadn’t done so. That’s what you’re being paid for – you reduce your standard of living from where it would have otherwise been so that there’s capital to pay for the building. Someone has to build that building, and they won’t do it for free. For a shop, someone’s got to pay for inventory, etc.
WaxedWookie@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Then they own things, not do things - not a job.
And landlords can manage buildings.
Owning things isn’t a job. Managing things is. Are you getting it yet?
But more-broadly, if you own a building, then you’re foregoing whatever benefit you would have derived from your capital that is put into the building if you hadn’t done so.
Are you going to front the argument that the majority of building owners brought those buildings for a reason other than renting them out? What country do you live in, because this isn’t the norm.
Being a landlord is profitable because your tenants pay more than you do. You’re not reducing your standard of living, you’re increasing it. That’s why people do it.
What’s the relevance of this to the argument that landlords are lazy leeches?
tal@lemmy.today 7 months ago
No. I’m saying that the capital that is in the building would be used for something other than the building.
The manager has done a similar trade, just with their time that they’d otherwise be doing something else with.
In the long term, that’s what the landlord hopes for, that reducing their standard of living in the now will make them better off in the long run. Same as the person expending their time managing the hing.
You asserted that landlords don’t do anything. I’m pointing out what they do – they’re the reason that the building is there. If nobody’s going to pay the construction company to build the building, there isn’t going to be a building.
WaxedWookie@lemmy.world 7 months ago
None of this us a rebuttal to the argument that owning things isn’t a job.
If the landlords don’t exist, they don’t have capital to invest, yes. That’s not to say building won’t happen without them taking their cut. Either the would be occupants could build, or (better yet) we decommodify these essentials and have them publicly held. We know how well comodifying the essentials goes and how that’s working out for peoples’ ability to keep a roof over their heads.
Management is work, so I’ll not muddy the waters - the business owner isn’t working, and is taking the value of the workers’ labour. The fact that they have amassed the capital to be able to do this whole the workers can’t isn’t an argument for simply owning things to be profitable - it’s an argument for workers to get a fairer slice of their contributions. They should own the business, but the capital hurdles prevent that.
You’ll have to forgive me for not losing any sleep over the fact that non-productive owners assume a trivial level of risk to extract near guaranteed profit for no work.
Workers built the building, workers will occupy it and give it reason to exist - the owner just owns it - this isn’t a necessary part of the equation for any reason other than the fact that you can amass unlimited wealth by simply owning things, inflating prices, and draining resources from the productive members of the economy, pushing them out of being able to buy the property they’ll use so that they can buy the property, extract more wealth and perpetuate the predatory cycle.