Reason I’m asking is because I have an aunt that owns like maybe 3 - 5 (not sure the exact amount) small townhouses around the city (well, when I say “city” think of like the areas around a city where theres no tall buildings, but only small 2-3 stories single family homes in the neighborhood) and have these houses up for rent, and honestly, my aunt and her husband doesn’t seem like a terrible people. They still work a normal job, and have to pay taxes like everyone else have to. They still have their own debts to pay. I’m not sure exactly how, but my parents say they did a combination of saving up money and taking loans from banks to be able to buy these properties, fix them, then put them up for rent. They don’t overcharge, and usually charge slightly below the market to retain tenants, and fix things (or hire people to fix things) when their tenants request them.
I mean, they are just trying to survive in this capitalistic world. They wanna save up for retirement, and fund their kids to college, and leave something for their kids, so they have less of stress in life. I don’t see them as bad people. I mean, its not like they own multiple apartment buildings, or doing excessive wealth hoarding.
Do leftists mean people like my aunt too? Or are they an exception to the “landlords are bad” sentinment?
Yes, and I would agree that even most landlords are unsavory at best. What I’m taking issue with are absolutist views that say 'no, without exception, x is true '. It’s just thought-terminating mental laziness and it’s not helpful.
The problem is systemic though. That’s why it’s a general statement. Just like super philanthropic billionaires exist, but we still say there should be no billionaires. You don’t make a movement by adding asterisks.
Take a step back and realize that you just read that story and then compared my parents to billionaires. I could read that very charitably and say you only meant that generalizations are “helpful” for inspiring change, but even that doesn’t sit right…
I’m trying to tell you that I don’t think literally saying “ALL landlords are scum” is helpful. Take or leave but I don’t think there’s an honest way to deny that.
They didn’t compare your parents to billionaires though? Are you unfamiliar with how analogies work…?
Their point was that my parents belong to a class of evil people, which I thoroughly demonstrated was false. And even if you ignore that, you can’t pretend that chosen example was meaningless
I could compare them to cops if that would make you feel better. Or the outdated western US water rights system. Landlords shouldn’t exist in the form they do now. That somewhere, someone is doing it in the hardest way possible doesn’t somehow make the system better.
Whatever you say. In every way that matters I myself am closer to a billionaire than my parents. And I’m not close. But don’t let that stop your mentally lazy infighting with your own class, assuming you aren’t a billionaire yourself
What you’re not getting is that I don’t care about your parents. They are neither good or evil to me. I care about the 99 percent of landlords exploiting people. The existence of one good person in a bad system does not make the system any less parasitical.
Lol the ONLY thing I get is that you don’t care about my parents. Well, that and that maligning people you ought to want to rise up with is of no importance. Only declaring enemies whether accurate or not
At no point did I disagree that the system is bad and in fact I said it was. My entire underlying message is that hating individuals blindly helps the fucking system
If people don’t even care if they are declaring war on their own fucking class, no wonder we still live under this bullshit. The Internet was a bad idea. I’d much rather think people like you wouldn’t act like this because if we talked about what we do agree about the world probably wouldn’t be such a depressing shit hole. but no, here we are exchanging blows for no reason
As a neutral outside reader, this person does not sound like they are hating on your parents specifically, and you come across as extremely defensive (understandably). Their point seems to be that the existence of a good cop doesn’t make the police state tolerable, nor does the existence of a good landlord make the system of people owning other’s homes tolerable.
Regardless of how good any landlord is, it would be better for homes to be affordable and owned by those that live in them. In the current system, some areas are unaffordable without renting, but that doesn’t make the landlords morally good categorically, it means they’re part of the problem that drives prices too high in an area. Owning property to rent artificially drives the price of real estate up. Ideally, renting should be far, far more limited or entirely phased out depending on the specific situation. No one is saying that your parents specifically are evil, but they are part of a larger system that is.
See the disconnect here is that somehow some seem to have the idea that I’m defending landlords in general, when all I’m really doing is trying to let OP know that I identify with their situation and find it shitty that so many people came into the thread so say essentially “nope no exceptions, your aunt sucks”. We could all agree the system sucks and I think I did a decent job of saying I agree with that. I don’t know that renting shouldn’t exist but I definitely think its current state is unacceptable and we’d probably have a lot to agree on about the reasons.
I never expected that dude to “care about” my parents. I expected them to at least accept that their absolutes don’t hold. Saying “I don’t care about your parents” is not necessary and was just meant to be rude. 🤷♂️