Rent is really the worst out of all of them. Everything else, you’re dealing with questions of production, supply, optimal price points, fungible commodities, substitute goods, etc. Housing? It’s land. Non-fungible. It’s agonizingly slow to create, the people who get the money from landlording are generally not the ones involved in funding increased production, there’s no ‘substitute good’ available for having a roof over your head, and the only form of ‘competition’ is to do literally what everyone else is doing.
It’s just a racket, with no real economic justification for how fucked it all is - just a political/social one that boils down to ‘It makes some people rich, and those some people have outsized influence on policy’.
My favourite is when an old building raises prices to closer match new buildings. The property tax didn’t go up that much but now the same complex is renting units for twice as much as only a few years ago? The price they paid for the building didn’t go up so how are they justifying hundreds more per month as if anything has changed?
It’s not even starting to be hidden, it’s just straight theivery.
Daily reminder that even Adam Smith, father of capitalism, fucking hated landlords
"The rent of the land, therefore, considered as the price paid for the use of the land, is naturally a monopoly price. It is not at all proportioned to what the landlord may have laid out upon the improvement of the land, or to what he can afford to take; but to what the farmer can afford to give. "
“As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.”
“[the landlord leaves the worker] with the smallest share with which the tenant can content himself without being a loser, and the landlord seldom means to leave him any more.”
"The landlord demands a rent even for unimproved land, and the supposed interest or profit upon the expense of improvement is generally an addition to this original rent. Those improvements, besides, are not always made by the stock of the landlord, but sometimes by that of the tenant. When the lease comes to be renewed, however, the landlord commonly demands the same augmentation of rent as if they had been all made by his own. "
“RENT, considered as the price paid for the use of land, is naturally the highest which the tenant can afford to pay in the actual circumstances. In adjusting the lease, the landlord endeavours to leave him no greater share of the produce than what is sufficient to keep up the stock”
“[Landlords] are the only one of the three orders whose revenue costs them neither labour nor care, but comes to them, as it were, of its own accord, and independent of any plan or project of their own. That indolence, which is the natural effect of the ease and security of their situation, renders them too often, not only ignorant, but incapable of that application of mind”
The only people who like landlords are landlords and bootlicks.
I think Smith would hate a lot of what’s going on in modern capitalism, TBH.
It’s no wonder conservatives and zealous religious folk are the same people: Both require not reading any of the source of material and just opting to just go on vibes(and the vibes are ass).
Renting is valuable when one needs short-term access to something. Students travelling from afar, someone working abroad temporarily, or even someone just needing a car or a tool all make sense. But exactly as you quoted once everything is rented it all falls apart. There’s no competition anymore, no incentive to improve the building, no nothing. It’s not an easier avenue towards a solution to a problem but a necessity.
Fuck capitalism. This whole thing’s a sham and anyone who can’t see it is willfully blind. It does’t even hide it and never has.
how else should they make the maximum amount of money if not by monopolizing “essential” goods like housing
raise the PRICE
cost is what the store pays for product
price is what the store charges customers for product
