ID: A Sophie Labelle 4 panel comic featuring Stephie in different poses, saying:
Landlords do not provide housing.
They buy and Hold more space than they need for themselves.
Then, they create a false scarcity and profit off of it.
What they’re doing is literally the opposite of providing housing.
EVERY capitalist thing exploits your need for something you don’t have.
Don’t have a big enough car to move all of your stuff? You rent one.
Don’t have your own lawnmower? You hire someone to provide the service.
Don’t have a tool to repair your car? You rent it.
Literally, that’s the whole point. They’re leveraging something they have (that might have some difficulty to obtain) - to make money from it. We do it with everything.
That’s literally what services are too - you renting someone’s knowledge to do something you don’t have the expertise or tools to do. It’s literally the founding center of trade.
When I say need, I’m talking about hard needs. Food, shelter, medical care, etc.
I don’t consider any of the things that you list as a need (yes, a person may need those things in the moment, but they are not human needs. Those are where the moral argument, for me, comes into play)
But you are right, capitalism is essentially the interaction between a buyers demand for something and an owners supply.
Those are human needs, sure - but those things still take resources to make. Take away all of civilization, and everyone since the dawn of time has had to put in effort to be able to attain those things. I agree with, and understand the need to ensure that housing is affordable – but I don’t think scapegoating landlords is the way to go about doing it. It’s the same thing the right does with blaming immigrants for takin’ der jerrbs.
I’d much rather blame the government for not putting guardrails on the practice, or not spending our tax dollars in making affordable housing. If we can have HOAs, surely we can get the government to build housing, and sell it to single-families with stipulations that ownership can only ever be put in a single-family’s name, etc. That would drive down demand, also driving down prices.
That’s the whole deal with abortions now too - LINE MUST GO UP!! – they don’t care about children, they care about making line go up. If line keeps going up though, things are unaffordable.
Hell, remember $15/hr min wage? If we carried that with inflation, everyone would be making $25/hr MINIMUM today. If everyone was making $25/hr minimum, houses would look a lot more affordable to us. There’s a whole plethora of abuses we need to be tackling.
Its true that shelter, food, and health require some level of labor, but I don’t think that justifies small numbers of individuals controlling the means of producing those things or the ownership of the things, themselves, and then withholding them from others unless they are compensated. I don’t think its true that everyone has to put in effort to attain these things – I mean look at the very young and the very old! They shouldnt have to be put to work in order to be housed, clothed, fed, cured. I’d argue, in fact, the exact opposite of what you said – that humans have collectively worked together since the dawn of time to ensure children and elderly are taken care of, and people are fed, clothed, sheltered, etc. and in many cases, those societies had no concept of ownership or money, at all.
I do take a bit of umbrage with your wording about scapegoating landlords and comparing them to immigrants. I’d be really hesitant to compare those who have a high amount of power with those who have almost no power, at all. Scapegoating would imply that landlords do no damage to renters, when they in fact extract wealth from them for the enrichment of the landlord, while also wielding power over them in the form of eviction.
We are talking on two different planes, though, so I do understand where you’re coming from. I think you’re looking at things from a very practical and real-world standpoint, whereas I’m thinking more in theoretical, or maybe philosophical sense. I don’t think we agree ultimately but I appreciate you taking the time to write that
