“Asia is operated by a different network”

source: it was revealed to me in a dream

I can’t answer that question unless you answer mine. The answer is contingent on the rate at which you rent it out.

I suspect a lot of the people making basic errors in this thread get their knowledge of politics from memes. A lot of people saying stuff like “big corporations are the problem, not mom & pop landlords” which, if they read something like this single page from Wage Labour and Capital they’d understand is false. Capital is capital, and its relation to labor is the same regardless of its size!

cause on one hand, buying property to rent out is one of the ways out of wage slavery

This is not complete thinking. It’s not a way out of wage slavery when you’re just pushing the can down the road and making the condition of someone else’s wage slavery worse. You have to realize that your condition as a worker and a potential tenant’s condition is one and the same, and the way to abolish that condition is to unite as a class to seize and exert political power.

I also don’t really think the answer is all property being state-owned, but what do I know

It really doesn’t have to be. There’s already countries where they have a 95% homeownership rate and that’s been achieved by heavy regulation of housing and real estate speculation, and expropriation programs (also a lot of liquidation of the landlord class).

You’re right. It’s also true that if I don’t wish to expend my labor power in exchange for compensation, I can also buy a factory where I buy materials and labor and sell them for more than they cost.

Can you think of any reason why, when done at scale, these sorts of activities create a class system where not everyone can simply buy a plot of land and build a house, or be an industrial entrepreneur? That there will actually have to be many times as many people who have to sell their labor and pay rent?

Can you think of a way in which the possibility to create profit out of land adds value to that land that is unrealizable to someone who buys it and just lives in it, and is realizable for someone who plans to rent it at market price?

The $8000-9000 municiple taxes, utilities, upkeep, are all supposed to be paid by the landlord at a net loss.

Can you link to the comment where anyone said this? On my own, all I’ve said is that if you do rent out a property and generate a profit, that profit is appropriated surplus value.

The part where you call any and all profit theft

Who is generating the surplus value, then?

Also the part where you are attacking individuals for trying to improve their lives while the entire mess is caused by corporations and billionaires.

I’m not attacking anyone, I’m explaining how the system works. I explained in another comment that I believe the solution to this problem is the abolition of private property, not stringing up anyone who has ever made any profit in a transaction.

Say you pass down all the recurring costs (I said damage in my comment above but sure, include utilities and upkeep too) to the tenant.

As for property taxes, consider that the purpose of property taxes is to slow down the rate at which the owners of land accrue wealth. Without them, there is no friction on land speculation, and landownership becomes too attractive as a source of income, which impedes the flow of capital to industry. This means that (in theory) property taxes correspond to appreciation of land. This means that paying property taxes on property ought to fall on the owner because they’re the ones that benefit from the appreciation anyway.

If you disagree with that, then say you pass down the property taxes to the tenant as well.

In total, you’d be making 0 profit, with some debate on the subject of the appreciation of the home. This situation is more or less fair. Any profit that you would be making is what comes out of appropriating surplus value, that was my point.

You simply don’t think economic relationships should exist at all

We’re criticizing the economic relationships engendered by private property and industrial capitalism. Those relations will be superseded, and already have in parts of the world. There is nothing eternal about the present state of things.

No, they’ll be overthrown in a social revolution that abolishes the present social relations and conditions of production. The state established after that point will seek out a program of expropriation of all private land.

What’s different about grandma and grandpa owning a condo and generating profit off of doing 0 work and a larger corporation doing it? It’s the same economic mechanism, and if you had replaced the single corporation that owned 5000 condos with 5000 grandpas who own one property each they’ll still be leeching off the tenants the same amount in total. The relation between capital and labor isn’t any different just because capital would in one case be owned by more or fewer people.

If the payment received exceeds the costs a profit is generated. That profit represents appropriation of surplus value. Surplus value corresponds to the uncompensated (or in this case, compensated but later misappropriated) expense of labor power.

What specific part of this argument do you think is objectionable?

Why don’t you rent it at exactly the cost of maintenance?

In every capitalist country in the world the ruling class is organized to ensure its continued ability to appropriate surplus value and leech off labor. I assure you any transient condition that is presently causing the profits of real estate speculators to falter is going to pale in comparison to the massive amount of profit they are set to make over the next decades. It’s no different than the temporary valley in 2008 which was only an opportunity for capitalists to move money into the real estate market.

Does “dishonestly” include a situation where the state’s monopoly on violence is utilized to leverage someone into a bad deal?

Money isn’t itself evil. Appropriating surplus value is what’s being criticized.

What’s your definition of theft?

It does.

I’m currently a home owner and not a landlord, but if I would become a landlord, it wouldn’t be in my power to implement any of your solutions, leaving in the middle whether they have merit or not.

It would be in your power to set the rent. If you set the rent at the cost of maintenance + any other recurring costs, then yes, it’s totally fair. If you set the rent such that you make a profit, you’d be earning money for doing nothing.

Like, I’m just a wage slave myself and there’s literally over 250k of my own money in my house … why should I have to give that away for free?

The property that you worked 20 years to pay off and 10 to pay the down payment for is yours, you get to keep it. You don’t have to give it away for free, you’ll either sell it for a fair price and keep that money, or your heirs will have it. All that the opponents of rentseeking and landlordism are asking for is that you not use the property to make profit between now and when you sell it or pass it on to your heirs.

When you rent it out, will the rent be less than or equal to the sum of the depreciation of the property and the maintenance? And about the taxes: you pay taxes for the property that are intended to make up for the value the property is gaining to limit the rate at which landlords’ wealth grows. If it doesn’t gain value then you can run the numbers again allowing yourself to pass down the taxes to the tenants.

If not, you will be making a profit. That surplus amount corresponds to no actual value. The tenants would be paying for nothing, and you’d be getting money for doing nothing.

Whether that’s theft or not depends on your definition of theft. I personally subscribe to the idea that if someone get an euro that they didn’t work for, that’s an euro someone else worked for and didn’t get to keep. I don’t believe this situation to be different from if you were to buy a stake in your local grocery chain which is making money out of putting commodities on the market which have in them the objectified human labor of everyone in the supply chain, and paying those people less for their labor power than what it’s worth. The common term for that is “exploitation.”

I also don’t mean to make this a moral judgment. I don’t know if you’re gonna go to heaven or not, that’s really not the crux of the issue here. I’m trying to give you an analysis of the economic forces at play, and if you ask me, the solution to the problem isn’t for individuals to change how they behave on an individual level, it’s for the working class to seize political power and abolish private property. But being a landlord aligns your class interest with the class that would prefer to keep the status quo.