Modern landlords to not "provide housing". They extract rent from the use of a house that would otherwise be available to purchase by the renter if not for the landlord holding it for rent extraction. Worse still, since rent seekers compete with homeowners for housing they end up driving up the price, which prices out homeowners and creates the demand for renting to begin with.

Any other "service" a landlord provides would otherwise be levied as those services are provided (like a handyman or contractor being paid for work done to your house). In the case of the landlord, the rent extracted is maximally realized by providing the least amount of service (even none) for the most amount of rent. Rent is completely detached from any actual labor or addition of value.

[–] solstice@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Misplaced vitriol. What if you don't want to own? I don't. I don't wanna deal with any of that shit like broken ac, leaky roof, mowing the lawn etc. How do I rent if nobody can or will rent to me?

Rent and prices are directly correlated to the same things. Local economy, future outlook, interest rates, the usual stuff.

If you're pissed off about housing costs that's another story. If you're pissed off because a landlord didn't fix your ac or hot water then that's another story too. But you just sound like an uneducated crazy person when you go around ranting like a lunatic about rent extraction.

[–] archomrade@midwest.social 1 points 1 year ago

What if you don’t want to own? I don’t.

There are other, communally-owned options that would fit that exact function. Housing co-ops are a perfect example and avoid the tempting coercive relationships with private landlords. You can live an apartment that isn't owned by a landlord. Your inability to see beyond your own direct experience isn't my responsibility, except as to slap you in the face with it when you decide you don't want to think about it.

Rent and prices are directly correlated to the same things.

If you’re pissed off about housing costs that’s another story.

Huh, weird, that sounds like two, contradicting statements to me. Yup, rent and market price are absolutely tied together. You buy a house to rent out? That's one less available to purchase to live in from the housing stock. You buy a bunch of land and build apartments on it? Sure, you just created a bunch of homes to live in! Congratulations. Too bad they aren't for sale, and now that person owns all the stock in that location, allowing them to lord over those in need of a home.

you just sound like an uneducated crazy person when you go around ranting like a lunatic about rent extraction

Funny, because from my perspective you're the one in need of an education, otherwise I wouldn't be ranting about something you don't understand. If you're gonna simp for capitalism, at least fuckin' read something written by the guy who first described it.

[–] SCB@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Ah yes the famous houses of apartment blocks that the mean old renters built and then... owned.

Also labor has nothing to do with value whatsoever.

[–] archomrade@midwest.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Rent, it is to be observed, therefore, enters into the composition of the price of commodities in a different way from wages and profit. High or low wages and profit, are the causes of high or low price; high or low rent is the effect of it. It is because high or low wages and profit must be paid, in order to bring a particular commodity to market, that its price is high or low. But it is because its price is high or low; a great deal more, or very little more, or no more, than what is sufficient to pay those wages and profit, that it affords a high rent, or a low rent, or no rent at all.

I'm not sure what you're going on about, but my point is exactly Adam Smith's. In other commodities (according to smith), high or low wages+profit cause a high or low commodity price, because they are what is required to bring a commodity to market, but with rent it is exactly the opposite. The rent that is extracted is measured by how much higher it is than what it actually takes to produce and maintain it. In Adam Smith's view (and in mine), the rent extracted from a dwelling bears no relationship with the cost of producing and maintaining it. It is exactly defined by how much more they extract than what it takes to maintain it.

Landlords are leaches even to the godfather of western capitalism.

[–] SCB@lemmy.world -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Again you do not understand the term as it is meant here.

[–] archomrade@midwest.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Seems more like you don't understand the core issue being discussed here.

[–] SCB@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Except I've acknowledged both the false interpretation ("landlords bad") being your own belief I don't care about and am not arguing with, and the real interpretation ("economic rent" is not your rent) for clarification to all the wrong people.

[–] archomrade@midwest.social 1 points 1 year ago

You've not argued the case for your interpretation of Smith, you've just stated I was wrong without justification. I think maybe you are confused by smith's use of "rent" in this passage. He is not referring to the total charged to a tenant, he's referring to economic rent.

Economic rent is contained within what a landlord charges for total rent. That's why smith says it "affords a high rent, or a low rent, or no rent at all", it's because "rent" in this passage is exactly how much more than what is sufficient to pay those wages and profit for its production and maintenance. Sometimes a landlord with charge exactly what it costs to maintain and produce the property, and in that case he is charging NO rent.

Smith's critique is of the surplus charged by a lord, by nature of their ownership over the property, where otherwise that cost of economic rent would not be necessary.

Rent is economic rent, or maybe more precisely, what the landlord extracts for themselves from the renting of their property is economic rent.