When Your Landlord Is a Billion-Dollar Corporation
When Your Landlord Is a Billion-Dollar Corporation
thewalrus.ca
When Your Landlord Is a Billion-Dollar Corporation | The Walrus
19 comments
19 comments
When Your Landlord Is a Billion-Dollar Corporation
When Your Landlord Is a Billion-Dollar Corporation | The Walrus
Just a reminder, they're just better at being landlords. All landlords, every single one, is responsible for this, they were just too inefficient to raise rents this high this fast before becoming conglomerates.
I think this is such a dangerous misunderstanding, that abets financialization establishing itself in more Canadian industries, increasing the cost of living and wealth inequality. Your argument - explained analogically in a simpler context - is basically that the best boss and the most exploitative boss are essentially the same, from a worker's perspective, except the most exploitative boss should be regarded as better at their job. Unless you're in the oligarch class, why would you think this way?
The way I understood his point was more like saying that serial killers are the best and most efficient murderers, and all other murderers just went good at their "job". It doesn't mean they're good for society, infact the better they are the worse it is for everyone else. But being a societal leech is inherently part of being a landlord and some are better at leeching than others.
You have to remember, when capitalists discuss "efficiency", what they actually mean is the efficiency with which they capture other peoples' money. The most efficient system is one that provides guaranteed revenue and incurs no costs.
This is the opposite of what OP meant. The most exploitative boss is regarded as the best boss by their boss, whose opinion is the only one that matters under capitalism. Exploitation of workers is a necessary part of wealth creation, and landlords have innovated and streamlined the process in order to squeeze their more ethical competition out of business.
Right. Some bosses are good and decent people. Some people don't want to run their own business. Some bosses are evil incarnate.
Let's say someone has to work somewhere for a few months or so, or go to school somewhere, or whatever other reason people may have to be somewhere temporarily.
I'm obviously not going to purchase a home.
Landlords and rentals do have a needed space in society.
It's those who exploit and who concentrate and consolidate their powers and properties at the expense of everything other than profit that are the problem.
That could be a single person with 1 or 30 properties or a corporate parasite with thousands of units.
Having more capital to invest in numerous properties that can be listed at whatever price they want, with the ability to leave them empty if no one is willing to rent them, is not "better at being a landlord".
It quite literally is. That's the purpose of being a landlord, exclusively, is to lord over land and expand your domain with the profits.
All landlords are leeches, all landlords would rather leave homes empty than rent them as long as the line goes up, all landlords exist still lely to make money from having money.