this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026
1355 points (94.8% liked)
A Boring Dystopia
15441 readers
1303 users here now
Pictures, Videos, Articles showing just how boring it is to live in a dystopic society, or with signs of a dystopic society.
Rules (Subject to Change)
--Be a Decent Human Being
--Posting news articles: include the source name and exact title from article in your post title
--If a picture is just a screenshot of an article, link the article
--If a video's content isn't clear from title, write a short summary so people know what it's about.
--Posts must have something to do with the topic
--Zero tolerance for Racism/Sexism/Ableism/etc.
--No NSFW content
--Abide by the rules of lemmy.world
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
What service does the land speculator provide to the tenant? The landlord doesn't develop the property, that's the builder. The landlord doesn't maintain the property, that's done by contractors. The landlord doesn't secure the property, that's done by the state. The landlord often doesn't even finance the property, as the property is inevitably mortgaged and underwritten by banks one step removed from the title holder.
Quite literally, the only thing landlords do is collect the check and transfer portions of it onward. They are, at best, payment processors. And even this job is routinely outsourced to a third party.
There are lower institutional barriers to renting than to owning, largely resulting from the artificial shortage of public land and public housing. Rents are the consequence of real estate monopolization and public malinvestment. Once the landlords themselves vanish, the "benefits" of renting vanish with them.
There's an old joke Donald Trump likes to tell, back in the 90s when he was underwater on his personal holdings. He's driving through Lower Manhattan in a limo with his daughter and he points out the window to a homeless man. Then he quips, "I'm $800M poorer than that man". To which his daughter replies, "If that's true why are we in a limo while he's out on the street?"
The key thing that the landlord handles is risk. If the roof is very expensive to fix, that is not the contractor's problem. If the property does not generate revenue, that is not the bank's problem. If the property is not worth the cost to build, that is not the builder's problem. If the property is unsafe to live in, that is not the renter's problem.
The landlord's financial risk in the property (should) provide an incentive to maintain and make use of that property.
I'm not saying there aren't other system of distribution people to homes, and I'm not saying that the capitalist system in the US is the best system to do it. I'm just pointing out that a core principle of capitalism is risk, and that is what the landlord provides, a single point buffer of risk for the other parties involved.
This is completely ignorant of the fact that landlords can get insurance for those things and often dont have to pay anything at all. And when they do have to pay themselves, they will pay the minimum amount possible to maximize their profits often resulting in degrading housing that people living in suffer the consequences for.
Housing is a human right. Capitalism commits violence against the people by denying them shelter. It's a crime against humanity. Landlords exist only to profit off of this system. By your own exact definition all homeowners are the same point of risk mitigation, and therefore all renters would also be the same point of risk mitigation. Landlords have inserted themselves as a middle man to steal the labor of the working class. They profit off of the venture. Thats the whole point of them doing it.
They still have to pay insurance to get insurance. And I'm not sure you can get insurance against the roof getting old (not in my area anyway). When the roof is too old and needs replacing, you do it out of pocket/bank loan. Complete roof replacement are not so often (depending on material), so you can (and should) as a home owner save up to this.
You've got this upside-down. The existence of the insurance industry in a capitalist system is proof that risk is a thing that can be bought, sold, traded, banked and spent. If there was no financial cost to risk, then there would be no market for insurance to mitigate that risk.
The landlord gives up some income in order to mitigate risk, and most of the time, only some of that risk. I have yet to see or hear of an insurance policy that would basically cut a check for 100% of an insured item's value unconditionally. If it did exist, it would probably be more expensive than the object itself.
As opposed to the tenants just getting rid of the landlord, buying their own insurance, and covering costs collectively. Thereby entirely eliminating the landlord and they can keep their wages to themselves.
Good luck finding 30 people who are willing to pool together 6 million to buy/build an apartment complex and live together.
I mean co-ops can happen, but the majority of time when something like that happens, it's actually a cult.
Go and have a look at property prices over the last 50 years and see how risky it is.
Should hotels be illegal too? That’s basically renting out a room by the day. What if you cannot afford to buy a house, or only want to live somewhere temporarily? If you cannot rent any place to live, what would you do?
As with most things, it is a matter of degree.
If they're monopolizing the housing market, absolutely.
There are 16M vacant homes to distribute among around 770k homeless people. With such an enormous housing surplus, why is the clearing price for a housing unit so far above a new prospective buyer's budget?
You posit that people can't afford to buy homes without asking why homes are unaffordable.
Investors accounted for 25.7% of residential home sales in 2024.
In that article, the word "investors" is deliberately lumping together individuals, and institutions/corporations, in an obvious attempt to trick people into thinking that category is comprised entirely of the latter. Underhanded semantic maneuver. Within the same article:
I think there's a middle ground between 'consuming all housing stock in hopes of making airbnbs' and 'illegal'. There's a legitimate case for short term and medium term residence that doesn't make sense with ownership. However while we should accommodate those, it is a fair point the market should be regulated so that people have a reasonable path to ownership if it makes sense without being stuck with competing with rent-seeking corporations sucking up all the inventory.
Sure. Neither case requires speculative investors to enter the market and maximize profits.
You're confusing physical infrastructure with rent seeking bureaucracy.
I merely pointed out that not all ‘rent is bad’, ‘landlords are evil’.
Among probably many reasons that housing is unaffordable for many is that some persons or corporations are awful scumbags that want to maximize their profit beyond what is reasonable or fair.
Renting isn’t bad. Capitalism isn’t bad. Abuse of these things is bad.
Abuse of these things is a core feature of capitalism. How can you contradict yourself so quickly?
The world is not black and white. I don’t accept the validity of your claim.
Shelter is a fundamental human need, locking it behind an unnecessarily high and ever increasing pay wall is the epitome of abuse. Landlords are leeches.
Yes it is. But you and I both said it. It is abuse of capitalism.
I would support some idea that corporations cannot own property like single homes solely for the purpose of profit. And any single person should be heavily taxed on rental income, at least beyond a certain point.
And let’s use eminent domain to take back those empty houses and put people in them.
But there’s still lots of people who would prefer to rent than own.
The problem is not landlords. And the problem is not capitalism. The problem is unfettered greed. Greed is not good, despite what Michael Douglas said in that movie.
You gotta look at the nuance here. Yes, high and ever increasing rent is bad and it's because of the abuse and poor regulation of the system. And traditional lords of the land is pretty bad however you slice it. But small landlords now can be providing a needed service. It's a lot of work keeping a house rentable - even if you are 'just' organizing contractors, accountants, lawyers, etc.
The world is not black and white. But still you will 100% keep your claim. Again. Contradict yourself in two sentences.
There are a few fundamental things a landlord provides:
This comes together for renting making a whole lot of sense for people on a remote work assignment, college students, and seasonal occupants who need a residence for a few months or a couple of years. Also for people who have just moved out on their own and need a residence while they get some credit history under their belt, hopefully being in a situation like university where the need is short term as well.
a place to live
You're intentionally leaving out that the landlord maintains the property and appliances. That's no small thing.
There are absolutely bad landlords who will do as little as their tenants will allow them to, for sure. Landlords aren't like cops though, the continuing existence of bad landlords is not enabled by good ones like how "good cops" do.
The landlord uses my rent money to pay others to maintain the property. It's an entirely middle man position of zero value to society
Good landlords will only be as good as they need to be, to continue renting. In a housing shortage, that means they will keep getting worse over time, doing little and hearing little from their tenants who have only ever dealt with predatory landlords.
They will almost always charge as much as they can, not doing anything to help the renters.
The exceptions to this will be invisible on the market, because renters will do everything in their power to never move out or change their situation.
Long time renters are trapped, because they are paying nearly as much as a mortgage, and getting no equity from it, unable to save a down payment to get out of it.
Renting to seasonal, temp workers or students is about the only exception where renting is a necessary service, but currently its way over priced, so its not a great value. So still predatory.
I mean, this is an overly dismissive statement, those aren't 'good landlords', but it's also fair to note that the likelihood of getting a 'good' landlord is like a lottery.
In college I experienced both a person renting out a property they owned and a more 'corporate' arrangement. The corporate arrangement was 'meh', didn't do much one way or the other. The personal rental was nicer and cheaper, and they were out the same day when we reported the one thing that ever needed fixing. When they heard I got laid off, they waived rent until I got a new job.
Keep dodging.
This "landlords are purely evil and rent is stealing" discourse doesn't do any of us any good. It's dishonest and makes people with sense not want to join your cause. If we actually want to make housing better and more available, we can't be wasting our time throwing with this.
You can own a property and pay landscapers and handyman for less than the cost of renting. Hell, I've had landlords pay property managers to handle even that.
Tendentious language.
You think providing exclusive access to a house for the renter to live in is not something that has value?
Soon I will probably become a landlord, not because I want to but because it makes financial sense. My partner and I are pooling money to buy a place together so we can live together, she will sell her apartment and I will rent out my old apartment, which I bought with my own money and worked 20 years for to pay off. Are you suggesting I should just have to give the fruit of my 20 years of labor away to someone for free?
You're fucking insane.