this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026
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A Boring Dystopia
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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.
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:
Corporations are people, my friend.
Is ownership less virtuous in a partnership than a sole proprietorship somehow?
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.
The world is not black and white. But still you will 100% keep your claim. Again. Contradict yourself in two sentences.
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.
Capitalism is most definitely bad tho, like come on.
Well, it's a way to incentivize people to use their resources to provide services for others. It would be nice if people just did that on their own, but humans are generally too lazy.
This is not capitalism, this is a market based system, which can happen to exist outside of capitalism.
Capitalism is is the ownership of value by capital ( property of shares, housing etc.. gives you benefits because you own them, not because you provided value).
Citation needed.
I think we're a bit beyond good and evil.
Sure sure sure. Love the sin, hate the sinner.
All rent is bad and all forms of landlords are evil. They are a separate class with legal mandate to steal the labor value of the working class. They serve no function whatsoever and it is entirely conceivable that an apartment building's occupants could pool money together for repairs when that is necessary.
Shelter is a human right. Housing is a human right. Landlords are not mechanics, they are not repair men, they are not construction workers, they are not laborers. Some Landlords may do some of those things, but it doesn't change the fact that by virtue of stealing from the working class they are still evil. If they want to do repair work, I should be able to simply pay them for the repair work they do. If they want to do property maintenance work, I should be able to simply pay them for the property maintenance. They have a legal document enabling them to steal half of my income every month for no reason. They do not live in my home, I live in my home. If I stopped living there it wouldn't be my home anymore.
There are 0 downsides to entirely rejecting the housing market. Housing is a human right, it should be fairly distributed to everyone. I couldn't give a fuck about real estate markets, they could all dissappear today and no one would ever profit off of housing again and not a single tear would be shed. I'd really like it if everyone could have a fucking home. All Landlords are evil. There are NO exceptions. If they collect rent for someone else's home, they are evil.
If I own a house that is too big for me, and I can’t afford the taxes and upkeep, so I rent out some rooms to make a little money.
I am now a landlord. Are you suggesting that I am evil? That it should not be allowed?
I think you are conflating slum lords and greedy corporations with any and all people who have rental properties. Something, something… deals in absolutes.
You are not a landlord if you are sharing your home, you would be a roommate. If you are charging them rent, then yes you are a landlord :) no should ever profit off of housing! Housing is a human right! No one should ever have to sleep in your home, everyone should be able to have their own shelter that belongs to them! This is an absolutely conceivable reality homelessness is entirely a manufactured byproduct of capitalism. We have millions of empty homes and wasted infrastructure that could be used to house people.
False equivalency fallacy
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
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.
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.
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.
Landlords are purely evil, they are nothing but a drain on society, and if you disagree you're my enemy and we have no common cause.
Which of my statements are false?
The ability to live somewhere that otherwise would have been reversed?
I am lucky enough to be able to own a home. I can live here, and nobody else. But if I decided to rent my home out and they paid me rent, they could live here instead!
They could also live there if you sold it to them.
Only if they can afford its price.
Who gets to originate the claim on property? Who gets to set the price and collect on the sale?
As mentioned elsewhere, owning isn't necessarily for everyone.
Freedom isn't necessarily for everyone has also been mentioned throughout time. Slavery has existed all through history.
That doesn't make it ok but anyone who is an enslavery or aspiring enslaver is going to argue some people want to be slaves.
Removing and restricting the agency of others is never ok. When it's for economic gain, it's always exploitation.
The big difference being that one thing being owned is completely inanimate, and the other is a literal human being against their will 🤷♂️
The land speculators do not provide access to the tenant, they prohibit access. That's what inclosure is. You're blocking people from the land on pain of injury and death.
Until the state decrees otherwise, sure.
There are three people and three houses. How do you decide which of the three people owns all three houses and which of the other two pay that first person rent?
Clearly you are much smarter than myself. Can you tell me why renting land/a home is different than any other object that can be owned? Obviously shelter is a greater need than a chainsaw I could rent at Home Depot, but I thought the basic concepts should still apply?
And again, maybe I'm not smart enough to understand what you're saying, but it seems like land owners (or "speculators", if that's the correct term now 🤷♂️) prohibit access to everyone except for tenants, and tenants instead have rights to use that property?
People need homes.
You buy a pressure washer, and rent it out, thats a good business. Theres no shortage of pressure washers. I can live without one. I can biy my own relatively easy. Choosing to rent or own is a question of how often I expect to want to pressure wash something.
You can only rent a home that you buy. Which means you had to take it off the market. You can also only rent a home (or room) that you aren’t living in. Which means you need somewhere else to live. You’re taking more than you need, to charge someone else who also needs it, to cover your cost of owning it, maintaining it, and presumably profiting from the difference.
When this is done at scale, you have owners skewing the market to make it harder and harder to buy.
They make more money, buy more properties and make it worse. While renters, and young adults get trapped i to renting because they have no options.
That is what makes it so much different.
For starters, you can't own much if you don't own land. So it becomes a prerequisite for accruing any other objects.
If you're locked out of owning land, you're locked out of owning anything.
Speculators (or, "land owners", as you're calling them) aren't required to host tenants. They can leave their property vacant without regard to social need.
And landlords can evict tenants for any reason or no reason at all - or raise rents so high that an eviction is inevitable.
A question you need to ask is why the landlord possessed the land to begin with. What allows a landlord original access to property?