It's actually pretty simple to break it down if you try to think about it. Rent seeking is evil when the renters absolutely need the service and cannot afford ownership. Otherwise, it's a service that some find useful. Home rentals would be awesome if it was only for vacations or because someone didn't feel like dealing with maintenance. In reality, everyone needs a place to sleep at night and many cannot afford it. The people who make it unaffordable to own a home by buying up all inventory and then renting it back are absolutely leaches. Comparing camera equipment rentals to home ownership likewise lacks morality.
In the San Francisco for example, the minimum wage is $16.32/hr or ~$33K/year. The median price per square foot is $1000/sqft. A person earning minimum wage will never be able to buy property in San Francisco. Instead they're forced to spend most of their income on rent creating a cycle of poverty by preventing property ownership & wealth accumulation. The property owning class of the Bay Area desperately depends the poverty class yet burns the ladder up. We complain about the homelessness and crime yet trap people into poverty by blowing up every bill that would create affordable housing.
I will absolutely cheer for the failure of any company looking to profit from exacerbating the problem. I hope you can now understand the difference between renting a camera and being permanently unable to afford a place to sleep.
> It's actually pretty simple to break it down if you try to think about it. Rent seeking is evil when the renters absolutely need the service and cannot afford ownership.
Do they absolutely need the service? I assume you're going to give an example where someone buys out the market so they can control the price like a monopoly. If so, I'd like to point out controlling the market like a monopoly isn't the same description as "rent seeking is evil if you're selling a service people need". People need many things that can only be provided by an expert. Are they evil if they don't provide their service at cost too? If not what's the difference? Or was my assumption of your example wrong from the start?
> Otherwise, it's a service that some find useful. Home rentals would be awesome if it was only for vacations or because someone didn't feel like dealing with maintenance. In reality, everyone needs a place to sleep at night and many cannot afford it. The people who make it unaffordable to own a home by buying up all inventory and then renting it back are absolutely leaches. Comparing camera equipment rentals to home ownership likewise lacks morality.
I'm in agreement with you, but this nuance is *very* important, and you're the first to actually explain in detail exactly what's wrong.
> In the San Francisco for example, the minimum wage is $16.32/hr or ~$33K/year. The median price per square foot is $1000/sqft. A person earning minimum wage will never be able to buy property in San Francisco. Instead they're forced to spend most of their income on rent creating a cycle of poverty by preventing property ownership & wealth accumulation.
True, but a gross oversimplification of all the factors that go into something like this. The hyperbole becomes disingenuous with the reasonable expectation that not all parties are aware of the full content. Saying rent seeking makes you a leach, doesn't look like hyperbole. It looks like an assertion that owning property is immoral. This argument is going to drive people away from the realization that people are abusing the rules of the game at the expense of people who now can't even begin to play.
> The property owning class of the Bay Area desperately depends the poverty class yet burns the ladder up. We complain about the homelessness and crime yet trap people into poverty by blowing up every bill that would create affordable housing.
I suspect the intersection of the people opposing anything affordable aren't the same who actually complain about the problem. Here I'm trying to not equate the people complaining about the problem, or the injustice, from the people complaining because they're angry and need to complain. Or those complaining about the inconvenience of having to see someone poorer than they are.
> I will absolutely cheer for the failure of any company looking to profit from exacerbating the problem. I hope you can now understand the difference between renting a camera and being permanently unable to afford a place to sleep.
Me too, but it seems a bit unfair to state it like this. You're the first person to actually explain these real problems in enough detail to convey the idea and how unfair it really is. I say this because you didn't offer to explain deeper, or invite additional participation. The only thing I was able to parse out of this was a final mic drop because we both know you're right about it.
You're being disingenuous. All of those things you listed fulfill a temporary or geographically localized need, and are very short term. On the other hand, people often spend an entire generation in one apartment. Those categories are wholly unalike each other, and it's clear because the category of actually short term housing also exists, hotels.
Likewise, long term car rentals exist, they're called leases.
The point I was trying to make, so I assume the person you replied to see it the same. Is that no one else really attempts to explain the context around the assertion. Everyone previous is happy to blame people who are winning the game, labeling anyone who's not losing as a cheater. No one else is willing to explain why or how they're cheating. Which, if you don't know all the rules, and exploits looks like complaining not about the exploitation, but about even playing. So a fair interpretation is that every game must be cheating. It's not disingenuous to not already know the ways people try to control others to make some money. It's disingenuous to pretend like you've already made a point you haven't.
The assertion is that rent seekers are "leeches", providing no value, while extracting value for themselves. It's very hard to prove the existence of a negative. That's the context. Note that no one said "cheating", that's context you read in yourself.
It's interesting that you haven't made a single attempt to provide an actual counterpoint of your own, of what value rent seekers actually provide, especially since you're complaining that no one else is explaining their position. "No one" attempts to explain, including yourself?
People are not required to live in the biggest & most expensive cities in the world. Doing so is a premium good. Removing the pricing signal just turns everything into a lottery and/or lowest common denominator practices demonstrating the tragedy of the commons. Sorry your neighbor has mental health issues, uses meth and screams as they throw stuff against the wall at night. Hope you got a good night sleep!
When I got started on the web I moved a couple states over to live with a friend who was going to college. We lived in a mobile home & our rentier extractor landlord captured like $110 a month. I was able to spend little time doing work I didn't want to do in order to pay rent & could spend a lot of time learning.
High rents can offer some level of exclusivity and give people an opportunity to express their values, what they value, and how much they value it. There's a reason that most people who are in subsidized public housing end up wanting to move away if they can afford to.
> The assertion is that rent seekers are "leeches", providing no value, while extracting value for themselves. It's very hard to prove the existence of a negative. That's the context. Note that no one said "cheating", that's context you read in yourself.
You wouldn't be proving a negative. The assertion is that doing so (extracting value without providing any) is bad requires that bad thing to be stated. It's bad because opportunity cost, it's bad because people have to exchange currency for goods or services, it's bad because houses being in possession of money is itself immoral. These aren't negatives that need to be proved. As for cheating, what should I call acting so that others don't get a chance to participate?
> It's interesting that you haven't made a single attempt to provide an actual counterpoint of your own, of what value rent seekers actually provide, especially since you're complaining that no one else is explaining their position. "No one" attempts to explain, including yourself?
I don't have an assertion I want to make. Nothing other than to point out the problematic rhetoric. As an example, pointing out that 2+2=6 is invalid, or unconvincing because if you only have 1,2 and another for 3,4 can't reach 6. Does contribute, because the assertion that 2+2=6 is bad to leave unchallenged. Just like me making an assertion that 2+2=5 which would also be wrong. I don't know enough about the housing market in CA to make an any argument I'd want to stand behind. But I'm willing to say, just owning and renting property isn't enough to call them malicious, leaches, nor shitty.
That's the core of the issue, tools have elastic supply and demand. A tool rental business meaningfully assists in matching the two - it's very likely a tool I rent would not exist otherwise, or if it did, it's because I financed it, a much greater expense for me for little gain. I wish there was more tool and car rental.
Housing, for the most part, does not do this. New housing is rare, and I can't walk away from that market, or even reduce my usage without severe loss of quality of life.
So yes, the only thing a landlord did for me is have more money than me when I was born, which if you look closely, isn't actually a service at all.
