Capitalism and parasitic middlemen - name a more iconic duo.
this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2026
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I can't think of any better way to express the sheer absurdity of capitalism in a single meme than this.
This is more of a critique of private landlords than of capitalism. So itβs more of a Georgist than socialist argument.
break it down for me
Henry George saw that land is fixed in supply and because of this any profits in companies and wages from workers get swallowed up by rents. If people start making more money, rents will rise. If businesses start making more profit, rents for them will rise. The beneficiaries of all progress and investment, including public infrastructure, are landlords.
This is not the case for capitalists if there is competition (unless they are also landlords, which many are).
The matter is that all landlords extract rent, but only capitalists with market power or land extract rent.
This doesnβt mean we donβt need antitrust and public ownership of natural monopolies, but it illustrates our severe undermining of land. Land makes up almost 50% of all wealth. Itβs much more efficient to tax than capital and much harder to evade. It will likely increase housing affordability, reduce urban sprawl, limit impact of housing bubbles, increase investment in innovation (instead of land), and reduce inequality. It also has support from scholars in both ends of the political spectrum.
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Maybe the landlord should try living within their means. They should be buying fewer rotisserie chickens and instead get a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, a corn tortilla and one other thing.
They shouldn't be buying food st all, the should be investing in the stock market. The Dows not going to go up by itself.
At least they finally moved on from the crippling avocado toast. What an indulgence, is no one doing the math to find out - how much did rents go up en masse, by all these indulgent landlords splurging on produce on bread?
Even warming it, some say toasting, for sheer enjoyment?
Landlords need to get real and live within their means. Surely there's a purpose-built WSJ article to reference here, gimme a minute...
A gun with a single bullet?
NGL, that's the situation for a ton of landlords that have a handful of rental properties.
When I got out of school and into my first apartment, the woman that owned the apartment building I lived in lost her other rental building because she'd been on razor thin margins with it.
Also, the guys that lived there had apparently damaged the hell out of it and she couldn't manage the repairs, so she had the bank take it back.
The family that owns the property that my husband and I have been living in actually own the buildings outright.. and we've been absolutely lucky in being able to stay in the same space for decades, which we love.
If you find landlords that are good people that don't jack the rent sky-high, take care of the space and be good to it.
Meanwhile the apt I've lived in for 5 years has changed ownership 3 times, each time rents raise.
Flippers are the bane of human existence.
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They could, you know, actually do work for once?
Like improve society, instead of being a parasite?
I mean, I rent the upstairs of my house, and I work and my fiance works. I raise the rent when I have to and don't when I don't. I've found that regardless of how good I try to be to my tenant, there will always be people that call me a leech.
I wanted a house. I bought a house. A big one, for a really good price. I've put work into it, building it's value. As stated, I work to pay bills, as well. But, the extra money from my extra resources (livable, maintained space with working amenities), is earned and I do work for it.
That said, it would, also, be silly to think that I would let a stranger live in the house that I am working to pay for, for free.
the value is notΒ earn because the rent you can extract (the value) correspond to no labour of your own, it is instead decided by the location and the quality of the place (the city/neighborhood, not the house) you live in, in terms of jobs, public amenities, β¦ This value is created and increased thanks to everyone else workΒ (creating new jobs, paying taxes from labor, providing labors β¦) but not by your βjobβ has a landlord.
Hence the rent you get is not earned, it is extracted from land prices. If you want to learn more, read βthe wealth of nationsβ by Adam Smith :).
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I don't think they could.
They do.. they run a small grocery store that actually has whole foods with fresh fruits and vegetables and modestly priced meats that isn't horribly expensive and maintain the most affordable apartments in the entire city.
Right downtown.
In what is now an overpriced retirement ghetto filled with million dollar starter homes owned by insufferably stuffed old shirts and 3.5k per month apartments rented to Boston commuters.
They work their asses off to build an actual community of native residents.
Pretty much everyone they rent to has local resident ties here to what used to be a working class, working port city.
Your cynicism is noted, but you make some incorrect assumptions. It's not ALL as bad as you think out there. Find those gems, they do exist.
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My landlord was like this until she saw housing prices increasing. Decided to divorce her husband and take over the property we were living in. Because of the state we live in and that she had not signed a paper lease with us that year (and we did not bring it up for fear of rent increases), she kicked us out with 30 days notice, after never missing a payment for nearly 10 years. She did move in but now the place is rented out again.
We anded up buying a house by crushing all our savings and overbidding with inspection waived in a market full of house flippers and corporations at the highest prices of all time. We make high salaries and our housing costs tripled, just in time for Trump 2.0 so now all of our other costs are doubled. We are house poor and living like we used to when we had a shitty apartment right after my wife graduated college, when we made less than a third what we do now.
All the progress just to be backstabbed by a landlord. No, I donβt trust them, I donβt trust any of them. Mao was right.
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Donβt pay rent and let him sue. It takes at least 6 months to the court, but he will be bankrupt way before then :3
If he wants housing to be an investment, he has to take the risk too.
Edit: then offer to buy the house at auction price with the down payment you saved from the rent!
Keep in mind having the eviction on your record will make it significantly harder to rent another place in the future
Only do this after buying your own home then
Or idk, probably just don't do it at all I guess. The landlord here is an asshole, but he's a symptom of a systemic issue, not the cause of it. He goes bankrupt and the house gets bought by the next opportunistic asshole who probably will charge the next tenant even more rent, especially if he doesn't get as good a deal on the mortgage (interests are up compared to 7-8 years ago after all). And you'll have a permanent mark on your record.
Now of course if this was done by millions of tenants at once... That would really be something. Probably crash the housing market altogether, make houses affordable again
"lol" said the scorpion
"lmao"
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A landlord who can't pay their own mortage shouldn't be able to own.
A landlord ~~who can't pay their own mortage~~ shouldn't be able to own.
FTFY
it's easy to talk shit like that but you don't know how hard it is to live without contributing anything to the world.
Had me in the first half...
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The banks make money whilst its slaves point fingers amongst themselves.
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The population of ethical landlords needs to be massively expanded.
And by ethical, I mean former.
I've only had one decent landlord, ever. He was so decent in fact, that he stopped being a landlord, because he inherited it, but came to realize it was unethical.
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Doesn't mean he's living paycheck to paycheck. People often don't leave a lot of money in checking accounts from which they pay mortgages because checking accounts often offer 0% interest. So if the landlord usually has close to 0 money in his checking account expecting rent to come ahead of the mortgage paynent despite having millions in a brokerage account he'll still go into overdraft.
Not keeping a buffer that covers any upcoming bills in an account from which bills are automatically paid is deranged behaviour. I don't care how much interest you may or may not get on that money.
I agree, trying to optimize gains on every dollar sounds great until one overdraft fee knocks out years of work.
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Don't you have a different word for landlord?
That word sounds crazy.
In Germany, we call that person "Vermieter", which is closer to "the person who offers you to rent".
I love the word "landlord", it shows, without shame, exactly what that scum is, lords of the land.
But you're right, I prefer landleech.
In German, the word prostitute is worded slightly differently from other languages I know, as "someone who is being prostituted". A passive word, similar to "enslaved person" instead of "slave". They are victims of circumstance and exploitation.
We should use a similar words for victims of rent
I don't know that word in dept, but there are alternatives that became more popular in recent years, like "sex worker" (Sexarbeiterinnen).
"Landlord" sounds much more accurate to me. German identifications may not apply very well, over here lol.
I can't find any specific "friction" with the word "landlord", and how that role is performed here. What bothers you about it?
"Landlord" is too respectful of a title. Read the OOP again. Landlords are unemployed moochers living off their tenants' hard work & paychecks. The tenants have real jobs. The tenants are the ones who are out in the world using the culmination of all their education to contribute to society by working honest productive 9-5 jobs.
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To me, it sounds like an alternative word for slave owner. Probably because of the "lord" part in the word.... Gives me feudal vibes, too.
That's because of the way that word is, ya see.
It's not the same. As slavery or feudalism. Or indentured servitude. Or sharecropping. Or company towns and scrip. Or union-busting, "off-shoring", easy payday loans, easy credit, permanent basement minimum wages.
But here, and now? And surely, more clearly all the time, not just here, not just "for now" -
It's a new shape of boot, one of a few really, that look like the old boots, but a little different. And now with sparkling added (modern) effervescence (TM).
I keep this in mind after selling my home and going back to renting, it was obvious which landlords needed the money. I have no issue telling somebody I'll move in a month if rent would be changing or any other fuckery.
I may be renting currently, but I am financially stable and have always made above median family income for my areas. I have owned homes, I know what it entails and the finances look like, and I have enough for a down payment on a home as needed, I am evaluating life on more temporary terms currently.
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