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Oh, the hard, hard life of the rent-seeker who is stupidly greedy and unwilling to lose a little bit of profit to pay somebody else - like an agency - to take care of all the work and manage their assets, so instead of making money purely from having money without lifting a finger, they have to suffer the indignity of actually working a few hours a week like poor people.
The pain and suffering must be unbearable...
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If there's something that landlords and tenants can agree on, I think it's that real estate agencies are the absolute fucking worst.
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Indeed!
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"Rent-seeking" as an economic concept is not when you collect rent, as a landlord does.
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In Economics "rent-seeking" is seeking to receive a "rent", but the concept of "rent" here is broader than merelly the kind of rent paid for a property (for example, when banks place themselves in the position to get a commission out of every small financial transaction out there, through "Touch To Pay" schemes, they are "rent-seeking").
So whilst not all rent-seekers are landlords (probably not even most rent-seekers), all landlords are rent-seekers, which is exactly how I handled those definitions in my post.
Your post is like saying "'Apple' is not the same as 'fruit'" when somebody else whilst talking about apples called them "fruit".
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Landlords aren't necessarily rent-seekers (though some individuals conceivable could be) as economists use the term, and your lack of understanding of economic rent-seeking is something you can fix.
Rent-seeking is a concept in economics that states that an individual or an entity seeks to increase their own wealth without creating any benefits or wealth to the society. Rent-seeking activities aim to obtain financial gains and benefits through the manipulation of the distribution of economic resource
Providing a home is a benefit to the society.
Credit processors (what you're calling "banks") provide a service to merchants. They are also not rent-seeking.
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A builder provides the "home", not the landlord.
The landlord just takes advantage of a superior financial position to sit between the builder and the person who actually needs a home, and get a periodic payment for that.
As you seem to be having trouble with that, I've done the google search for you, so here's Wikipedia's definition of Rent-Seeking.
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An example of rent-seeking in a modern economy is spending money on lobbying for government subsidies in order to be given wealth that has already been created, or to impose regulations on competitors, in order to increase one's own market share.[15] Another example of rent-seeking is the limiting of access to lucrative occupations, as by medieval guilds or modern state certifications and licensures. According to some libertarian perspectives, taxi licensing is a textbook example of rent-seeking.[16] To the extent that the issuing of licenses constrains overall supply of taxi services (rather than ensuring competence or quality), forbidding competition from other vehicles for hire renders the (otherwise consensual) transaction of taxi service a forced transfer of part of the fee, from customers to taxi business proprietors.
The concept of rent-seeking would also apply to corruption of bureaucrats who solicit and extract "bribe" or "rent" for applying their legal but discretionary authority for awarding legitimate or illegitimate benefits to clients.[17] For example, taxpayers may bribe officials to lessen their tax burden.
One would assume they would list... You know... rent, if it applied
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You seem to have missed the whole part of that article (most of it) about how the expression had its origin in describing the activities of those using land ownership to extract rents.
You know, getting a "rent" for "land", also known as being a "landlord".
All that your quote does is confirm the point I made two comments above that "rent-seeker" is group that includes all of "landlord" like "fruit" is group that includes all "apples" - I suppose when you're willfully blind it's normal to run around in circles.
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What you're missing is they were literally lords, who literally owned land, and extracted rents from shit like charging to harvest kelp on their shoreline, or charging a toll to navigate down a stream, etc.
Ie. not contributing any benefit (preventing access to a natural resource/mode of travel otherwise possible)
It has nothing to do with providing homes, which is a distinct economic benefit.
This all comes from this very long bit of Adam Smith's work, which I will link in its entirety and encourage you to read, with the above definition of a literal landlord in mind.
https://www.adamsmithworks.org/documents/chapter-xi-of-the-rent-of-land
As a similar confusing distinction, though a modern toll road may seem similar to extracting rent to navigate a stream, a modern toll road explicitly addresses the externalities of using the road (ie. Damage to the road), and is a non-negative use of rent seeking.
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Now you're just making shit up and whatabouting in every direction you can think of to see if it sticks...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Ie. not contributing any benefit (preventing access to a natural resource
So a company builds a house. Instead of selling to the person who will live in that house, a Landlord purchases it at a higher rate (preventing acess to land + shelter) and then rents it to the person who will live there.
The Landlord in this scenario has provided nothing of economic value, and is restricting access to shelter necessary for survival.
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Please suggest a solution.
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Landlords fulfill their contract and do the work? I thought that was clear
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That isn't clear at all because it seems like all the vitriol in this thread is about the very concept of owning real property and renting it to someone who wants to rent. This thread is not at all about landlords not fulfilling their contractual obligations. All I'm seeing here is "fuck landlords and big bad mean rich people" and it's really childish and immature. Nobody has suggested a viable alternative yet to that, including you.
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I want responding to the entire thread, only to you
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So out of context and irrelevant to the discussion at hand, got it.
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Don't be so hard on yourself. Your post had value.
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I don't know if this is the right place for it, but an idea I've had:
Charge a high tax penalty on home ownership if the home is fully functional and livable, but spends over a certain percentage of the year unoccupied by any person as their primary residence (and a steadily accumulating tax for any home that spends too many years in an unlivable state)
This might put pressure back on landlords to put their homes on market for reasonable prices, instead of inflating their rents based on MBA recommendations long past what people can pay simply to "keep the property value high". It would severely devalue the idea of owning homes the same way you would own piles of gold, as long-term investments people are hesitant to actually use.
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Would the tax be federal, state, or local level?
How does one prove occupancy to show they aren't subject to this tax?
How would the tax authority determine the same in order to prove noncompliance?
Does this effectively prohibit second and third homes? Am I allowed to put real property in a holding company?
I'm not trying to start a ruckus here, just asking questions. It's a big problem but I'm not sure if tax is the solution. Usually when people suggest solving problems with taxes it isn't fully thought through and doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
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I can't claim to know the benefits of state, local, or fed taxes. Like a lot of things, I imagine it's better trialed on a local then state level, and might never reach federal.
Like a lot of tax claims, it may just be reliant on claims, and would not always require proof. You file for taxes, you report 3 homes, you state which one you occupied; or you state that you had a tenant in that home. If you're audited on your taxes, they may find you falsely reported a tenant, which would be tax fraud. The IRS could find reason to audit someone if, for instance, they're freely posting on Facebook "Yeah, just say you have tenants who do not wish to be named, they can't do anything about it". Many tax rules already work by self-reporting, and/or finding conflicts in prior documentation.
It would not prohibit third homes, but you'd have to pay a hefty property tax to hold onto an extra home and require it to stay empty while people are out there homeless. So, you'd have to be rich and not care that simply owning these properties bleeds you money (which is the opposite of how being rich usually works - your properties generate so much value by "existing" that you can simply persist a high quality of life just off residual income)
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Pretty sure a tax like that at the federal level would be unconstitutional. The 16th amendment authorizes an income tax, not a real estate tax on empty houses. State and local level attempts to do that would be a prieoners dilemma situation. Good for everyone overall if everybody cooperated, but too much incentive to be the one county or state that doesn't tax the shit out of rich people for their third home, thus attracting the wealthy there.
Again I agree in principle but idk if tax is a feasible solution. (I'm a cpa btw for whatever that's worth.)
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