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.
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’
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?
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
I mean yeah if they’re assholes sure. And many (most?) are no doubt. Yet I have friends who are landlords and they’re not fucking monsters or I wouldn’t be friends with them.
I think this reductive take of yours feels good to type but if we want to address the problems of housing, I think a more nuanced understanding is needed.
If you’re like a friend of mine, it’s just a family that owns a couple extra houses (withholding judgment on that) and let’s say the husband is out of work the wife makes like $50k/yr, and you’re on the hook for two mortgages (say $5000) and now the sewer pipe to the sewer main needs replacing at a cost of $15,000, your car breaks and needs $1000 of repairs.
If it comes to it and you don’t have the cash or credit to deal with it, nobody is going to prioritize the tenant’s sewer over their kids having a house to live in and food to eat. When times are so desperate you have to choose, you’re choosing your own family. (The assholes always choose themselves under all circumstances of course)
Idk wtf the answer is but housing is a human right and the idea that anyone should be unsheltered is fucked.
Both friends bought another house and rented their original. Some inherit a house. Because putting your money in savings like we used to in the 70s and 80s when you got rock solid perfectly safe 2-5% return hasn’t been a thing for 20+ years.
Then you have corporations with the capital to be able to snap up houses after the 2008 predatory lending fiasco (thanks to unregulated capitalism). With low interest rates that ended up being the best play and then that ended up pricing out regular people.
Yeah we need more supply but the equation there doesn’t really favor building affordable housing because reasons I don’t understand well enough to try to talk to. Some claim too much regulation but that claim is usually the kind of bullshit that corpos/rich and their shills spout to be able to deregulate and better screw us peons. So I’m skeptical.
Idk what the solution is because I don’t understand the very complex problem well enough. But I know that “landlords eat babies” isn’t that helpful because the whole housing thing (rental, ownership) is a train wreck systemically.
If you can’t afford to maintain a house you are renting out then you shouldn’t be a landlord. Your friends could just as easily sell the house to a family and invest in a way that doesn’t require them to maintain an asset they cannot afford, but instead they choose to keep it and profit as much as they can. Landlords are assholes.
This view kinda confuses me, I’m not a landlord don’t worry! If people can’t afford a house then what are they expected to do? It’s all well and good saying if you can’t afford the repairs then you shouldn’t be a landlord but if you can’t afford a house, what then, does the same sentiment apply?
It seems to me it’s very much a problem with the ‘system’ . Aiming your hate at landlords in general makes no sense when they aren’t the reason you don’t own a house in the first place. Obviously some people do take advantage of others, that’s not what I mean.
What is the solution here?
If I could wave a magic wand, I’d limit the number of houses people could own and how much wealth any 1 person could have…
But the problem still stands, people need enough money to get a house in the first place… So how does that work?
Aiming your hate at landlords in general makes no sense when they aren’t the reason you don’t own a house in the first place.
They are, in some cases, the reason people don’t own houses. Not in every case of course, but certainly in some. I think there have even been “rent-to-own” scams by some landlords.
I honestly don’t know what the landscape would look like without landlords, but that’s not a prerequisite to hating on and moaning about greedy landlords and their greedy ways.
Landlords were not a problem 30 years ago and suddenly, they are. The problem is not landlord. Removing landlords won’t magically fix everything for you. This view is radical and unproductive. This will lead the community no where near a real solution to this crisis.
Removing landlords won’t magically fix everything for you.
Funny that, because I bought a condo and removed landlords from my life and it did actually fix everything for me.
The problem isn’t just the landlords, it’s a regulatory and policy environment that has shifted since Reagan toward the well off at the expense of everyone else in just about every facet of life including housing. People are pissed at this point because it’s completely unaffordable to live while some of you (I’m going to assume you’re a landlord because of your tone) are hording tons of houses to profit off of.
Landlords have always been horrible, you’ve just been able to insulate yourself from the experience.
No, they were problems 30 years ago, too; it was just masked by other factors. Don’t confuse your lack of awareness of a position with that position’s nonexistence.
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.
A bastard landlord only makes more money in the short term. People who are shitty to tenants end up with worse and worse tenants, in rental units that are lower and lower quality.
A good landlord will have people who stick around to provide consistent income, which avoids months of vacant properties. They will also refer friends, who will be good tenants to other properties the landlord might have. Since the properties are well maintained, they will also be able to charge a high price for rent, that is worth it to the tenant, vs the slum the bastard landlord is trying to rent.
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.
That’s not landlord/tenant that’s just people/people.
People/people made worse by the system. The system that created the landlord/tenant roles.
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Different is not necessarily oppositional.
My doctor does not benefit from me being sick. My tutor does not benefit from me flanking.
My landlord does benefit from me living paycheck to paycheck because they have extracted the maximum possible cash from me.
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Look at Kaiser; they run a vertically integrated shop. They’re fanatical about
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not paying for any elective treatments even if it would improve quality of
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preventive care to cover all the diseases they’re legally required to cover
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minimizing org-to-org friction
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using the cheapest means of communication whenever possible (text > video >> in-person)
I never had my blood pressure and lab work more scrutinized, never had more help offered to lose weight, etc, than when I was a KP patient.
Turns out I have special medical needs and there is a specialist clinic near me, so I switched insurance. But I always felt that my doctor wanted to keep my ass out of the hospital because that is where his bonus came from.
Now SURGEONS, that’s a different story.
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Wait, what? How does it benefit your landlord if you live paycheck to paycheck?
They want the most they can get, of course. I just don’t quite understand what you mean?
You living paycheck to paycheck doesn’t affect your landlord unless you miss a payment. And in those instances landlords don’t have any kind of human empathy for the situation their tenant is in.
It does affect your landlord. Lower income means higher risk of non-payment.
That’s why some places require credit checks. The ideal tenant is rich and willing to pay whatever.
The ideal tenant is rich and willing to pay whatever.
The ideal tenant is rich enough to pay increasing rent in perpetuity, undemanding enough to not demand costly repairs, and too poor to buy their own housing unit.
Okay I’m not sure if you just have zero reading comprehension, or if you’re just being intentionally obtuse, so let me restate.
Again, you living paycheck to paycheck DOES NOT affect your landlord, UNLESS you miss a payment. I’m not sure how you could possibly say otherwise when you presented zero actual argument for why this statement is untrue.
MANY MANY people are excellent renters, never miss a payment, and live paycheck to paycheck.
If you live paycheck to paycheck and pay rent every month, it makes no difference to your landlord. $2k/mo in their pocket is $2k/mo in their pocket, no matter how much u have in the bank after paying it.
The ideal tenant is rich and willing to pay whatever.
Yes, that is true. That is an ideal tenant. That has nothing to do with whether someone living paycheck to paycheck affects their landlord.
That’s why some places require credit checks.
Yeah no shit landlords use credit checks to see if ur a high risk of non-payment. That’s called credit history. Has nothing to do with whether ur living paycheck to paycheck. I know ppl who live paycheck to paycheck with ~800 credit scores.
What ur describing is credit scores, not whether or not someone lives paycheck to paycheck. Try again.
“Not saying your tutor is a bad person, but they have interests that oppose your own”
Not really.
“Not saying your doctor is a bad person, but they have interests that oppose your own”
Not really.
You could say that if they were ruthlessly in pursuit of money above all other interests, maybe, and then only if they were short-sighted enough to think that keeping you stupid or sick was the best way to make the most money.
Doctors have other goals and are paid salary. Tutors are often working temporarily and part time. I don’t think either of these groups actually oppose your interests.
A landlord, on the other hand, directly opposes tenant interests in multiple ways. Every dollar they spend on repairs is a dollar less profit. Every dollar of rent increase they can get you to pay is a dollar more in their pocket. Every competing housing development being built threatens the value of their asset as well as the future profitability of their current housing stock due to the competition.
Of course there are “good” landlords that don’t maximize their own interests just like there are shitty doctors (mostly holistic, to be fair) out there that want to milk you dry and never cure anything. But that doesn’t change the calculus much. They’re just the exceptions that prove the rule.
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You can do the same justifications for landlords that you did for tutors and doctors though.
Kind of, maybe, if a high percentage of landlords was in it to “provide housing”…which I didn’t see any evidence of in my decade and a half of renting.
I’m also a bit of a weirdo too. So, I had a lot more opportunity to see any of that. I probably moved over 10 times in my ~15 years renting because I couldn’t stand the yearly rent increases they were trying to force on me and was stupid/stubborn enough (and well off enough) to vote with my feet.
I have moved a similar number of times for similar reasons. That didn’t make me hate all landlords. Just like having a bad experience with a couple doctors hasn’t made me hate all doctors.
I think the issue here is seeing millions of people as a single group or class, instead of what they are… individuals. Each of those individuals has their own motivations, actions, and reasons behind what they do. Some of those people are dick heads, and some of them are great. Most are somewhere in the middle.
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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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Wouldn’t the leak cause more damage to their property over time?
Yes, but here you are expecting a landlord to actually think about the future.
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Right. The entire reason they purchased an investment property is because they’re thinking about the future. But there are slum lords that’ll invest the least possible money and milk it for everything they can, then just condemn the place and move on.
Hey, that is my landlord. He spun a story to my wife when we rented about having caught illegal subletting in the house we rent and that is why he padlocked the finished basement and attic, but the longer we have been here the more we are pretty sure there is a serious mold infestation in both that should make the house unlivable and he just wants to charge us a grand a month until we die.
The house needs serious work, the floors are deforming, there is cracks along door frames and buckles in the plaster from where the structure is slowly collapsing. Unfortunately, the rent is so high that we cannot afford to escape. I am wholeheartedly planning on leaving him with code enforcement coming in and dropping a bunch of fines on him when we go to leave.
FYI, pad locks are seriously easy to defeat without breaking the lock. A few minutes of YouTube videos, an aluminum can, and scissors are all you need to get in. If you’re worried about mold, I’d strongly advise that, or an official inspection.
Thanks for the advice. I am working on it from the other, stronger, angle. Getting a better job so I can afford to get out of here and into something better while I find a house for myself. I am well aware of the ease a padlock can be defeated. I will likely pick them when I find new employment as right now I don’t want to risk retribution. It’s illegal, but I cannot afford to fight him. He also put some shady (illegal) clauses in the lease trying to circumvent the eviction laws, which again, I cannot fight if he decided to exercise them. We moved here in an emergency, we don’t want to move out in one as well.
Yeah shims are great for cheap locks. I learned how to pick a 5 pin lock in a few hours, so you can always do that too if the shim won’t fit.
My old landlord ignored a water mark hole in the ceiling below the bathroom until the leak got to the point they had to tear out all the drywall in the bathroom, and probably should have replaced all the framing too.
(It was there when we moved in, and we mentioned when we noticed it getting bigger)
So no. Unless they are a “professional” landlord they tend to not act on issues until it costs them more than early action would have. All while making life a pain in the ass for the tenant.
It’s hard to know what terms OP used correctly, but sounds like maybe the bath spigot is leaking a bit while the shower is on. If that’s the case, it wouldn’t cause damage to not fix, the shower water pressure would just suffer. And AFAIK, you wouldn’t typically need access to inside the wall, unless they did something stupid and tiled in a way that you can’t access the diverter stem nut to replace it.
IANAP, just DIY and have had to replace shower stems due to failing gaskets
I was renting a duplex and the basement would flood any pretty often when I used the washing machine or spent too long doing the dishes. I figured this was important to fix, so called the property manager right away. They didn’t see too worried. They eventually fixed it, it kept happening, and they would eventually fix it, but my urgency to call matched their urgency to fix it, which was pretty low. I didn’t have anything of value in the basement, so I didn’t care too much. Eventually it got to the point where they needed to fix the actual problem so this would stop. They spent around $10k to replace the pipe from the house to the road… but that didn’t fix the problem. What they really needed to do was fix the pipe that went under the road. Because the spent so long dragging their feet, the city had recently replaced the road and wouldn’t let anyone dig it up for 5 years. So the landlords were stuck having rotorooter proactively come up to clear out the pipes every few weeks for the next 5 years, and then who knows how much it cost them for the actual fix. I think they lost money on me living there.
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.The toxic thing I see here is dividing everyone up into classes and painting everyone in the designated class with a broad brush to turn them into a hero or a villain.
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.“there should be no owning class, its existence leads to needless conflict and suffering”
How does this work in something that it’s a magical utopia? Most of what I see people say just trades a “owning class” for government. Government is well known for being corrupt as well. Same shit, but even more difficult for people to rise up out of. At least in capitalism people can have an idea, do some work, and have some upward mobility. Even if they are simply workers, they can control their spending, save, invest, and end up in a pretty decent spot… especially over a couple generations. If the government has all the money and all the power, you’re left with rations and it sucks. Look at Cuba, there’s a black market that runs on capitalism, which is the only way some people can get by… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-mUZRP-fpo
I don’t know why anyone would want to willingly give control to a government, which will become corrupt (or more corrupt), and be under the thumb of that government with no way out other than war. With capitalism, I can learn a skill to get paid more, I can start my own business and work for myself, I can choose to live below my means to save and invest… there’s options. Government control of everything removes a lot of options.
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.
There is nothing in the US stopping companies from being employee owned.
Here is a list of 100 companies with at least 50% employee ownership (most are 100% employee owned).
https://www.nceo.org/articles/employee-ownership-100
Wikipedia has a list as well.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_employee-owned_companies
I’d be curious to know what the total compensation, and overall happiness, of employees and some of these companies are vs traditional public/private companies in the same industry. At the end of the day, is there a real meaningful difference, or is this more of an ideal that doesn’t result in any real shift in quality of life?
I agree that capitalism needs regulation to work. I think every system does. Any economic system in its pure form is a nightmare. That said, capitalism with proper regulation seems to work better than pretty much all the other alternatives on the table, which have ended very poorly in the past, which is probably why capitalism is so widely used as an economic base.
While I still think rental options need to exist for people, the number of homes which have been bought up be investors, especially on the low end of the market, has become a problem. I had a house I was trying to buy bought out from under me by an investor, and had to raise the price of home I was looking at to have it stop happening, which really hurts people trying to get their first starter home, as the market has artificially shrunk. I think if two offers are on the table, someone looking to live in the home should always win, if the offer is at least at asking price. Homes that aren’t owner occupied, are taxed at a higher rate (at least where I am), but that doesn’t deter many people. The main subsidy I want to see die is the one for growing corn and soybeans, redirect that to farmers growing real food the right way. Maybe then the affordable food options will be real fresh food, instead of incentivizing processed garbage.
My main hope around universal healthcare would be that it would finally incentivize the government to incentivize the health of the people, as it would save the government money to have a healthy population. A lot of the issues the US has with health are a result of bad government advice (the food pyramid), poorly structured farming incentives, and car-centric infrastructure, compounded over decades. Universal healthcare could incentivize the government to work on fixing all of that, if they’re smart. Of course, we’d need a functional government that is working to serve the people, instead of one that just fights and serves their party’s talking points.
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
More descriptive title next time please :)
I love lemmy, but these titles make it feel like everything is posted by bots
Yup
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.
They are also a bad person
True story.
For those interested I recommend Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson. An amazing breakdown of the history and why. Eye opener at the very least.
Edit: Curious: Why the down votes?
And so will you.
Ah yes those pesky poors, looking out for themselves.
There sure are a lot of landlords on Lemmy.
