2/3? No way I would let you rent from me if rent was 2/3 your income. The rule is usually no more than 1/3.
Wow. Just outing yourself as a leech for the whole community to see. Bold move
Landlord = banned.
So you’re visa/MC now?
Don’t like it? BANNED!
What did he say? Not a landlord myself, but I’m always curious to hear both sides. I think there can be good landlords, had one myself… Didn’t raise rent on us, took care of the place when things went wrong, even offered to sell the place to us but we weren’t ready financially at the time…
Some people choose to rent instead of buying for the sake of not having to keep up with house maintenance, and in that case, the landlord I speak of, I’d argue was a good landlord. Win win for both parties. Not common, I know, but speaking in absolutes is rarely productive.
The landlord was still exploiting you and taking a ton of the wages you keep, which are already being stolen from through capitalist exploitation. If you prefer renting, then it would be a much better system to have publicly owned housing that isn’t run to make a profit, or even with the expectation that cheap or free housing is a social cost.
The reality is we live in a capitalist society whether we like it or not (at least in the US - emigrating isn’t easy). Free housing would be the local shelter for the homeless… It’s there, but it’s a bare minimum most of us don’t want.
Your idealized expectation sounds nice, but a lot of houses and their lots wouldn’t look like what they do outside of a capitalist society… I wouldn’t have two spare bedrooms in my home for an office and guest room when I want to have family visit. I wouldn’t have a backyard for my dog to run around in… It’d be more like what you see in North Korea. No excess to spare (to some degree is a good thing, but I also believe one should be able to earn themselves nicer things should they decide to take on the extra work to do so).
Rather than have some assigned lesser unit to live in that’s paid for with my taxes, probably sharing walls with my neighbors, I think I’d rather put in the decade of renting I did while saving for the house I get to live in now.
Again, I’m not saying we have a perfect system, or even a great one… It’s fucked up in many ways, you’d have to have your head pretty far up your own ass to miss the amount of corruption that capitalism invites into our society (mostly stemming from money in politics), but there are also some good parts to it.
Maybe I’m the outlier here with this take?
You’re confused on 2 primary accounts:
-
That I am saying we can accomplish better, more equitable housing within capitalism. I’m a communist, I want socialism, and that’s the first step towards communism. I am not pointing out exploitation and a solution to it as some actionable goal within capitalism, but to point to the fact that a better world is possible, and we get there through revolution.
-
There has never been a society where people could not work to get better housing. Not in the USSR, with the famous soviet housing, not anywhere. Public housing does not mean all housing is the same, just that fewer people go without. Further, your wages are being taken from you, in socialism that isn’t a problem, so you won’t have to put in a decade of renting to get something nicer.
Guess it’s more a matter of ignorance on my part (also seems I’m out of my element here), I don’t know much about how current communist societies are living - do you have examples of what you’re talking about? You’ve piqued my interest, I’d like to see an example of housing in one of these situations and how they vary, what kind of amenities people are living with there, what it takes to achieve something similar to what I have here (3 bed 1ba SFH on a 5th acre)?
Different socialist systems have had different levels of development, policies, and social wealth, so there’s no one comparison to a presumably western country. For starters, western countries have inflated social wealthy due to imperialism, which is not a benefit for socialist countries. Countries like the USSR had different systems from modern Cuba, the PRC, etc, but all have different houses, and different wages depending on jobs worked.
I don’t have anything in-depth on hand, but surely you can see that eliminating usury from housing makes housing more affordable without needing to compromise on quality.
-
Hell yeah
We don’t have an instance stance on landlord apologia, but maybe we should make one, based on the number of people from other instances defending these mooching rent-seeking parasites.
/me sorts by controversial
i hope you do; seeing it is a depressing reminder of how much americans think that exploitation like this is okay and even more depressing to see people exploited like this want to perpetuate it.
Landlord said to me “property tax has gone up. This is my only form of income. Will need to increase rent”
Told him “yeah, everything has gone up and my paycheck is still the same”.
Like, these types of relationships are so parasitic. This is the “nice” mom and pop style landlord too that every liberal seems to want to give a pass too.
Sure, are they less bad than the big corporate faceless landlords? Yes. But the entire relationship is the problem.
They get to justify forcing me out of my home because the value of the house that they own WENT UP.
That’s why their property tax is more. They literally own something that is more valuable and making it further impossible for me to ever buy a place of my own.
If that’s their whole retirement investment (as they said it’s their only income, no idea about us retirement details) if they don’t increase your rent, their net income will GO DOWN. Prices of everything also went up for them, if you think it’s hard with constant income, imagine with declining income.
The value of their house going up is useless to pay for bread.
You should get a bigger paycheck, average wage growth is around 5% in the US, higher than inflation even.
Sounds like they should get an actual job, rather than expecting someone else to pay for their retirement; someone who probably won’t get to retire themselves
If it’s their only income source I assume they are retired. If they aren’t, you are absolutely right.
Why do we have to sacrifice our future ability to retire and own a house because they bought all the houses and retired first?
How are the two related? It’s not a zero sum game, there’s new houses being built all the time.
There are studies recently released that show that the people who are buying houses 20 years ago are the same people buying houses today. It is a zero-sum game because nobody else is able to buy a house, especially not if they’re younger.
If that’s their whole retirement investment maybe they should get a job
They probably had a job for many decades, it’s how they bought and paid the house.
Sorry why should you pay NOW for a guy that workED many decades? Can you pay me for the work I did yesterday?
And now they are taking away the next generations ability to buy and pay for a house by making them fund their retirement.
People Mike that are not tge reason housepricees increase so mich that is 99% big speculators owning thousands oft units and hiking prices and rents.
How are they taking it away? There have always been people who rent and people who buy. Someone renting doesn’t prevent you from buying.
If they offered to let you buy it for the fair market value of the home, would you? That’s the only viable way for them to extract that house value without evicting you. A fair answer could be absolutely, and perhaps that should be something renters are given some rights to do, but just pointing out that a tax assessment doesn’t mean they have usable money unless they can do something to cash in.
I literally asked. He said he’s not selling.
That is unfortunate.
Old guy or younger guy? If this is their retirement income, they would probably be better off selling it and putting the proceeds into a nice account.
Of course those accounts also profit off of the inconvenience of others, but with social security all messed up, some form of screwing with the active working generation is needed to model retirement of the older generation, and a financial account is less egregious than sitting on potentially available housing stock.
I think I can answer most of your questions by saying he comes over to discuss the lease in a Mercedes Maybach. An SUV that starts at $178,000.
I don’t think age or other things really matter at that point.
He owns multiple properties and houses.
But, still, my entire point is that this relationship in itself is what needs to die. It’s not this individual dudes fault. It’s a system that allows people like this to exist that produce nothing.
Once again, may I introduce you to GEORGISM.
Please, I know lemmy is a bit left leaning, and georgism are mostly libertarians/liberal, but the ideology is so centrist and common sense I’m sure even far left communist advocates can get behind it.
The reason Georgism fell out of favor on the left is because Marxism already develops beyond where Georgism falls flat. It’s certainly broadly appealing, in that liberals can get behind it rather quickly, but it falls short of Marxist economics in completeness, to the point that it doesn’t really bother resolving the fundamental problems with capitalist exploitation, centralization, crisis, or production and overproduction, it just focuses on rent.
It’s also very difficult to get through, it’s a reformist approach that depends on asking those that have full control of the economy to make it less exploitative. That doesn’t happen without revolution, at which point you can go far beyond and address core, systemic issues.
Georgism is great but we also have problem with corporations so georgism isn’t enough. We need socialism or at least distributism
Can you give a TLDR for this if possible
It boils down to property tax as a means of preventing land accumulation and tax revenue generation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
I don’t see how that would have worked even when it was invented.
Right now you can see how the rich own all the land and have no need to use or sell it. This way they create a shortage and can charge a higher price for the land they use or sell. IMO the only way to break this up to stop charging property tax at all - because all land ownership goes back to the state. If someone wants to use land they rent it from the state. If they do not use or misuse rented land the land goes to a different renter (or to the state).
Doesn’t Singapore or some other country have a system like this, where you don’t own the land, just get long term leases
Georgism is an ideology broadly based on taxing the full value of land, in order to prevent rentseeking.
So rather than taxing people for the property they built/bought, you tax the land which no one made.
The value of the land is based on the progress society made in that area, so when you tax the full unimproved value of the land, you prevent landlords from essentially leeching on the results of society progress that they did not directly contirubute to.
You can still buy land, but when you do you must pay full rent to the government, so technically, if the government did own all the land and lease it out for rent, it would be goergist in practice(but not in spirit, since goergism wants to protect property rights)
Hey there. Never heard of it, actually. Thanks, I’ll find a time to read about it.
What I find interesting in this particular libertarian initiative so far, is that it is addressing an existing systematic issue. Almost all other libertarians I come around seem to be speaking about their and everyone else’s morality and righteousness, naively thinking that once we all become moral and righteous, society would become as well.
To be fair, you haven’t heard of it because it isn’t particularly relevant. Marxism already develops beyond where Georgism stops, so anyone who is disgruntled with capitalism already has a much more influential, developed, and accurate framework to go with.
That’s like saying that some culture doesn’t require my attention because the European one is superior
No, it isn’t. What are you talking about?
You’ve dismissed the other person’s political views on the premise of Marxism including the Georgism. There are reasons why this person is not aligned with other Marxists’ takes and I would like to know them. You just view yourself superior to them
Georgism is both reformist, so it requires asking the ruling class to willingly kneecap their profits, and only covers rent, really, meaning it ignores exploitation, production, imperialism, overproduction, and crisis. Marxism answers those, and is revolutionary, it’s more relevant because it works and is more complete.
I’m missing your point. Why then would a person have Georistic rather than Marxist political views?
That’s like saying “I’m racist”
To be fair, you haven’t heard of it because it isn’t particularly relevant.
I think that is because georgism is a centrist ideology. Centrist ideology isn’t attractive, and therefore georgism isn’t popular.
But your opinion isn’t wrong either. Georgism will only fix landlord problem but it will not fix corporation problem
Exactly. Georgism could be studied as an interesting historical curiosity, but it never took off, and was a historical failure, whereas Marxism especially in the USSR and China abolished land-owning rent-seeking, and the massive economic drain that caused.
I know I’m going to get downvoted for this, but since the USSR was a historical failure and Marxists claim China isn’t actually Communist but Capitalist, can’t we say the same for Marxism? An interesting historical curiosity, but it was never actually implemented and thus can’t be said to have ever taken off.
Both Georgists and Marxists get to complain about how things would be so much better if someone would actually just do it the right way for once. I say this as a left leaning Georgist Libertarian, to my heart in the right place Marxist cousins.
The USSR was a historic success. The dissolution of the USSR is one large failure, but doesn’t negate the century of success after success in proving socialism works, siding with national liberation movements, and advancing the needs of the working class. The USSR worked, economically, its dissolution was more of a political failure than one pointing to Marxism not being able to work.
The PRC is socialist, those who say it’s capitalist typically conflate markets for capitalism, when the process of sublimating private property is a gradual one once the large firms and key industries are siezed. Both the USSR and PRC are examples of socialism working.
Marxism was implemented, and still is. Rather, Marxism-Leninism is a tool for analysis and revolution, to bring about socialism, and is has many historical successes, and continues to succeed today. Marxism-Leninism is the guiding ideology of the largest economy in the world by purchasing power parity.
So no, you can’t really say the same of Marxism as you can of Georgism. Marxism works, still works, and will continue to work. Georgism was a curiosity for a while and fades while Marxism-Leninism became the defining ideology of the 20th century, and will continue to prove even more relevant thanks to the rise of the PRC over the US.
The vast and rapid modernization and industrialization of Russia at the start was a success, but my opinion is that Marxist-Leninism stopped in the USSR when Stalin seized the country and turned it into a crony dictatorship. I don’t believe that lasted long enough to be truly called a success, as it immediately fell to the authoritarianism it overthrew from the monarchy.
If you don’t think that Stalinism was the death of Marxist-Leninism in the USSR then the bread lines, famines, forced labor and relocation, imperial expansionism, etc. as broadly reported by those that lived there and lived through it are a product of socialism. I also believe that would count as failures of socialism and not proof of success.
I agree with you that the PRC is still nominally socialist, but believe they also went Stalinist instead of Marxist-Leninist. I would call them Stalinist Communist rather than socialist. I also do not think the juice was worth the squeeze with the number of dead in the revolution and aftermath, but there is no telling what an alternative would have looked like so that is just, like, my opinion man. I personally don’t consider China as a socialist success story, but instead another warning example for how easily Communism can be corrupted/captured from within.
I totally give you that Marxist-Leninism was the defining ideology of the 20th century, but I’d call it the fuse that lead to “Communism” the failed authoritarian ideology. Like the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand is to WWI. That is a hell of a lot more than Georgism ever got, to be sure, but would still say there has never been a successful Marxist country because they never remain Marxist for long.
Stalin did not “sieze the country and turn it into a crony dictatorship.” You can read works like *Soviet Democracy, This Soviet World, and Is The Red Flag Flying? The Political Economy of the Soviet Union. The Soviets had a robust system of democracy. It didn’t “fall into authoritarianism,” it entered into a state of siege in all sides from capitalist invaders and as such had to defend itself. You should really read about the soviet government structure and democracy.
As for your lightning round:
-
Bread Lines - it’s a good thing to feed people in times of crisis. The US did it too, and that was a good thing.
-
Famine - famine was common in Russia before collectivization, which ended famine in the USSR.
-
Forced labor and relocation - this part is an issue, but it isn’t intrinsic to Marxism or socialism, and was phased out over time.
-
Imperial expansionism - the USSR was not imperialist. It did expand, but expanding itself is not a bad thing, especially when the majority of people who lived in the Soviet Union said they were better off then.
“Stalinism” isn’t an ideology. Stalin had his own policies during his time as the leader of the Soviet Union, especially Socialism in One Country as opposed to Trotsky’s Permanent Revolution, but Stalin was a Marxist-Leninist. Marxism-Leninism was synthesized by him. There was no betrayal of Marxism-Leninism until the Khruschev era, where reforms began to work against the centralized socialist system, leading to the utter disasters of the later Gorbachev and Yeltsin eras and the dissolution.
The PRC is Marxist-Leninist. There’s no such thing as “Stalinism,” to begin with, but you can’t use Stalinist to describe the PRC anyways because there’s no Stalin, so you can’t even use it to describe Stalin’s specific economic policies. Either way, over 90% of Chinese citizens approve of their government. The revolution saved countless lives and doubled life expectancies, same as in Russia.
I really don’t know what you think Marxism-Leninism is. If you want, I have an introductory reading list you can check out. It also isn’t just the guiding ideology of the USSR and PRC, but other countries like Vietnam, Cuba, and more, with similar success stories.
-
since the USSR was a historical failure and Marxists claim China isn’t actually Communist but Capitalist
Both of those claims are false.
This short video on obstacles to the China path in Latin America gets into exactly what we’re talking about, the abolition of the rent-seeking parasitic sector of the economy that the Chinese revolution abolished.
IDK why are you being downvoted here. Here’s not a tankie perspective.
USSR was a historical failure
Was Rome a historical failure? The USSR was a controversial state. Stalin did seize the power, but probably not for his own benefit. I wonder how tankies can defend him as he killed almost as many communists as Suhatro. What I find the main reason for being a communist after the collapse of the Soviet Union, is that they built a state where the main goal in life wasn’t the pursuit of wealth. People felt much more secure than in the modern states, though without the latest advancements in technologies.
China isn’t actually Communist but Capitalist
Well, politically they are in the middle: they do exercise something that is similar to New Economic Policy - a short-term return to capitalism. For USSR it was for 7 years, for China it’s over 50 years.
I know that a lot of tankies will defend China, but I’m not among them as I’ve been there recently. People literally sleep at their work desks as the commute is 50km, you can’t put your child in a kindergarten without a bribe and the famous help from the government is 100kg of watermelons per family in Inner Mongolia. It’s not a shit hole either though: if I had to choose between South Korea and China to live, I’d choose China.
was never actually implemented
Marxism is vaguely defined to be claimed as if it was or was not implemented. I prefer to think about Marxism as a lens I see the world through.
I knew I would be catching plenty of downvotes, but I am glad to get a non-tankie perspective. I even agree with some of it.
Rome lasted between 400 and 1500 years depending on the measurements, so it is hard to make the parallel with the USSR. There are many similarities, the Caesars and Stalin, impact on political philosophy, etc, but the scales are still orders of magnitude apart. Stalin may have had the best of intentions, but as you said, his means could never be justified by any ends.
As a concept, Communism is indeed a state where the main goal isn’t about the pursuit of wealth and is very admirable. Once we have obtained a Star Trek level of post-scarcity advancement, I expect the end result will look very much like Communism. I also see the politburo and Party living in wealth while many commoners starved or rationed in basically every Communist country ever.
The Tankies blame this on the Capitalists besieging them, and that plays a role, but the hardship is never shared equally at the top. Post-revolution Castro never went hungry, Stalin never stood in a bread line, Mao never wanted for anything. That to me is a betrayal of the ideology.
For every Lenin there is a Stalin, for every French Revolution a Napoleon. There seems to be an inherent vulnerability to revolutionary political actions to co-option by charismatic strongmen. That is not to say other democratic states are safer, the corruption is just usually different. The US legalized it and called it lobbying, and I won’t even start on regulatory capture by capital. It still has never fallen to a dictator (quite yet).
I prefer to think about Marxism as a lens I see the world through.
I like this. I leaned Marxist in my younger days, but as I don’t think an actual Marxist Utopia is possible at our civilization level, I would at least prefer if the government only exists to provide for defense, the common good, and ensure a level playing field for the market while staying out of everyone’s personal life. Thus libertarian wanting universal healthcare, UBI, and strong monopoly busting and protections of the commons.
Rome lasted between 400 and 1500
I don’t think the timeframe is any good at identifying the failure. I’m not sure that Rome has seen as many historical events as the USSR: two world wars, television, nukes, space, computers to name a few. The correct answer here is that we can learn from experiments such as Rome, Paris Commune, and the USSR. We can’t learn from Putin though, assuming we both don’t want to build a relatively stable authoritarian proto fascist regime.
Stalin never stood in a bread line
Realistically, how do you imagine that? Because I can’t: you’ve built an authoritarian state with one party on the top, the country is not in the best condition. right now. There is no place for martyrdom here, you are obliged to rule the state while the things are as they are. I do not agree to shit on Stalin/Castro/Mao for exercising more lavish lifestyle than the common people. I can agree to shit on them for creating the system where they are the center of the country though.
On a side note, do you know the story of Vasily Stalin? He was Stalin’s son and he did not have such privileges.
There seems to be an inherent vulnerability to revolutionary political actions to co-option by charismatic strongmen.
Historical irony here is that Lenin himself discusses this in “What is to be done?”, giving the example of Napoleon if I’m not mistaken. He’s all for democracy though.
staying out of everyone’s personal life
The first thing Bolsheviks did, was cancelling the persecution by political reasons (being gay included) and legitimizing abortions.
Overall I see that although you identify as a right winger, we don’t have that different world view and how the world should be. I very much appreciate you being honest. Such threads make me love humanity more
Absolutely, Marxism has teeth to it because it works in real life.
Leftists are aware of Goergism. They don’t generally take it seriously because it’s just ‘one weird trick’ reformism that’s trying to save capitalism from itself. It doesn’t change what capitalism is or the historical process it drives, it’ll get clawed back immediately just like every other social democratic reform, and it would cause a full on capital revolt if you somehow magic lamp’ed it into practice such that you might as well just do the real revolution and actually overthrow capitalism for the same amount of effort.
but the ideology is so centrist and common sense
I really just commented as an excuse to lol at this line.
Dostoyevsky crime and punishment! Kills the landlord. Blind boy podcast on private equity becoming a massive corporate landlord? End it.
Mao? Let’s actually be serious
You know what’s the fastest way to make landlords disappear? Ask about some broken shit around the house that they are required by law to fix. Radio silence for months guaranteed. Until the next rent increase of course.
For a lot of them, they don’t even care if there’s tenant turnover, especially if its a high-demand area. There’s no incentive to fix a broken AC; the tenants already signed the year lease. They can get to it next year when its time to clean up the place for the re-listing.
If it’s a longer term tenant, the landlord is actually disincentivized from fixing the AC, because they can fix the AC and jack the rent way up as soon as the old, abuse tenant inevitably leaves.
One of my friends suffered through this during the recent heat wave. They’ve been told there’s no budget for AC despite a recent $50 rent hike.
Their landlord is an independently wealthy multimillionaire — they don’t even need the money!
I am a landlord to my kids. They get discounted rent, I get my 2nd mortgage paid and a little bit extra to cover maintenance. It is a win win for everyone involved. Plus if / when me & the mrs die it is theirs to do with as want if we don’t sell it to pay for our retirement expense. Point is not all landlords are bad.
Landlord = banned. Your kids will get back at you some day, no doubt about that.
Would like to see where being a landlord is listed as against the rules. And the kids are happy to split the cheap mortgage to live in their childhood home. Way cheaper than apartment rent.
The ban was uncalled for. The post violated no rules other than upsetting you that I collect rent.
Rent is due in 5 days.
Owning 1 extra property and renting: Okay
Owning apartment complex and renting: Okay
Owing millions of single family homes and duplexes and rent hiking/price hiking the entire market: not okay
I wish people here understand this. It costs money to buy property, and so effort needed to be applied into buying one was done beforehand by being good with money. Rich people don’t need to go through this, and should rightfully be criticized.
Being exploited in the past does not justify exploitation on your part in the future.
Exploited? You mean working to earn money, like everyone else?
Not like everyone else. Capitalists do not work for their money, they exploit workers through paying them less than the value they create.
Owning 1 slave: Okay
Owning a dozen slaves: Okay
Owning hundreds of slaves: not okay.
/s obviously
/uj
Of course slavery and landlordism aren’t identical in every respect, but they both are based on a parasite class doing no work, and extracting labor value from people who do. Large-scale vs small-scale doesn’t make landlording any more ethical.
Do you have a problem with public housing or are landlords okay when it’s the state?
You support this alternative with completely a completely different dynamic and incentives??
Another win for pithy internet hypocracy gotcha debatelord!
It was a reasonable follow up question, governments are corporations after all and they stated they oppose all landlord/renter situations
governments are corporations
no
When you’re ready to be a communist we will be waiting
Since when is communism against administration and social planning? Since when have Marxists said governments are corporations? This is deeply silly.
Publicly-owned and controlled housing is the solution to this problem, yes. Then rents, upkeep, and all housing questions are determined at the level of public/political decision-making and not by petty tyrant landlords acting only in the interests of profit.
Hey, those buildings and apartments aren’t gonna rent themselves! /s
And then they raise rent. For what? They haven’t upgraded anything. They haven’t added any of that value to the property. Every year the house gets older. Cars lose value every year even if you maintain it perfectly.
Good tenants make the neighborhood more desirable. So the rent being raised is a way to punish good Tennant, and steal their hard earn benefit from their existential labour.
And then they try to fuck you over when you leave the place by pinning all the costs of normal dilapidation on you. Fortunately where I live the law forbids it but it doesn’t stop them from trying every time.
If there were only a set number of cars available and creating more was prohibitively expensive, cars would appreciate in value as well.
And to be clear, I’m not talking about the house; building more of those is expensive, but doable. It’s building more land that’s the tricky part
When I did a vacation in Sri Lanka our guide told us some cars appreciated i price because the government increased (I believe it was that) import taxes.
Same happened everywhere during covid.
It’s mind-bending that a car now cost what a new house cost, when I was a kid.
(This was way after covid).
If I remember it correctly, the government is heavily restricting import of foreign brands.
Our guide drove an imported japanese EV.
The land is what’s gaining value, not the structure on it
That is just patently untrue.
friend bought a house and was super excited about it. it cost her a pretty penny.
It had black mold and almost killed her children. The landlord claimed they had no idea (they did)
they left (sold the house) for more than what she paid for. This was in California
Bought a house, but there was a landlord?
yeah typically when you buy a house you get it from a landlord…
do you think houses are sold on amazon?
Based on my experience, a house on the market is usally being sold by someone who lived in it. The seller being a landlord is plausible, but I’d usually just generically refer to that party as ‘the seller’.
Landlords tend to hold on to their revenue streams harder than a person holds on to their own residence.
where does the person move to then after selling the house they live in? could it be…they have another house thus being a landlord?
you are right on the second part, though.
Usually they have moved into their new home and have their uninhabited house on the market trying to get rid of it.
Maybe I’m missing implication in another culture, but around me landlord specifically refers to someone owning a home that is being actively rented/leased by another. If you haven’t had tenants, you aren’t considered a landlord
I’m not a landlord but the taxes go up every single year. Home insurance goes up every single year. Both often by a lot. Compared to 2019 my taxes are up 45% and my home insurance is up 500%.
The land value is up purely because they ain’t making any more of it.
The cost to repair everything goes up every year. A part of my washing machine broke again. Part was $20 in 2017. Part was $60 4 months ago. Post Tarifs it will probably be closer to $100. Nevermind the labor if I can’t DIY.
Plenty of reasons for costs to go up each year.
Real question is :
Why the fuck aren’t the wages going up?
If that too kept up with inflation since the 1970s then we’d all be happier then pigs in shit.
This is such a shit show of a post.
*2/3 of the tiny portion of the value someone creates that their boss actually lets them keep
Its not the first time I’ve heard this, but I’m not sure I agree with this sentiment. The product I produce only has the value it has, because a lot of people work to make it so. And a huge part of that is managing costumers, understanding them prioritizing they requests and managing a team. If my workgets sold for 100 I would only be able to sell it at 50 because I do not have the costumer relationship
The labour theory of value is completely compatible with everything you just said.
10 workers do 1 value worth of work on product, whether that be manufacturing, shipping, logistics, marketing, so on
boss pays them 0.5 value each
boss sells for 10
boss lives off the stolen 5 value
I am posing this in the most abstract simple way possible. Obviously in an actual supply chain, many bosses would be stealing different amounts of value all throughout the process, as each worker added value to the final product over time.
You are assuming that bosses do nothing. They add value. Not all of them, but in general they do. At my work place we pretty much begged my boss to please hire someone between him and us to manage tasks. Because my boss adds value Ina bunch of ways but he was so busy he could spare the time for the things we needed him so year long projects failed.
Management is labor, sure. It all adds to the collective labor expended necessary for producing a widget, say, 1 hour of cumulative labor expended through dead labor (the percentage of tools used up) and living labor. Let’s put constant capital at .5 hours, and variable at .5 hours. The value of the widget is 1 hour of socially necessary labor time, and it is sold for this price on the commodity market when supply meets demand.
Where do profits come from, then? From living labor. The price of the commodity labor-power is regulated around the average cost of subsistence. A worker may only need to truly work for 3 hours in a day to produce their social consumption, but they are paid for those 3 hours as spread out over 8, 9, 10, etc. hours. The difference between paid hours and the unpaid hours forms the surplus value extracted, which is the chief component in profit (though not the same).
That’s an oversimplification, but the point is that ownership adds no value. Management and administration can, but not ownership alone.
I didn’t read it all. But I think we agree. The problem is owners. Not bosses. People who get to do nothing and still get paid
Then I think you should reread @glimmer_twin@hexbear.net’s comments with that understanding. We all agree that management is a necessary part of the social production process, but that it is ownership that entitles people to stealing from the working class.
I now understand what they mean, but I stand by my coment because it does seem to blame bosses. It’s just a matter of wording
managing costumers, understanding them prioritizing they requests and managing a team.
All of which is also being done by employees who are being paid less than they produce.
What do you think a boss does? They are also employees.
Not at the top.
Please use gender neutral inclusive language, instead of landlord, use the gender neutral term, landleech.
Seconding this motion
I was ready to hate on this post… but you right.
If i had Jeff Bozos money, I’d buy a bunch of houses and offer them to the homeless to get the back into society. Fucking bozo Bozos is. And that’s why I’ll never have Jeff Bozos money.
“understood, create a factory town and offer housing in exchange for employment.” ~ Bezos
is that not the only way to do it?
deleted by creator
Oh, I know. I was just explaining why I’ll never be a billionaire. I care about people. Sad that that’s a fact of life
