Comment on No one really understands our struggle
SCB@lemmy.world 1 year agoExcept I’ve acknowledged both the false interpretation (“landlords bad”) being your own belief I don’t care about and am not arguing with, and the real interpretation (“economic rent” is not your rent) for clarification to all the wrong people.
archomrade@midwest.social 1 year ago
You’ve not argued the case for your interpretation of Smith, you’ve just stated I was wrong without justification. I think maybe you are confused by smith’s use of “rent” in this passage. He is not referring to the total charged to a tenant, he’s referring to economic rent.
Economic rent is contained within what a landlord charges for total rent. That’s why smith says it "affords a high rent, or a low rent, or no rent at all", it’s because “rent” in this passage is exactly how much more than what is sufficient to pay those wages and profit for its production and maintenance. Sometimes a landlord with charge exactly what it costs to maintain and produce the property, and in that case he is charging NO rent.
Smith’s critique is of the surplus charged by a lord, by nature of their ownership over the property, where otherwise that cost of economic rent would not be necessary.
Rent is economic rent, or maybe more precisely, what the landlord extracts for themselves from the renting of their property is economic rent.