Comment by kennywinker
10 months ago
The phrase rent-seeking is such a funny one to me. Like, if rent-seeking is bad that should apply across the board. I.e. being a landlord, literally seeking rent from tenants.
Yet I fear the issue most people on here have with “rent seeking” is the harm it does to a theoretical idea of free market capitalism - rather than the tangible harm of extracting wealth from someone’s need for a place to live.
Rent-seeking is a pretty well-known term that has not much to do with rents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
“Rent-seeking is the act of growing one's existing wealth by manipulating the social or political environment without creating new wealth”
So, renting out a home. Just the manipulation of social and political environment has already been done. Rent sought, not rent seeking.
Rent as in rent paid to live in a home fits the definition of “economic rent” perfectly. Because housing rent is an example of economic rent. The cognitive dissonance i am pointing out is that seeking economic rent is bad, but using already created structures to obtain economic rent is… not bad somehow?
>So, renting out a home. Just the manipulation of social and political environment has already been done. Rent sought, not rent seeking.
That makes sense for the land, but not so much for the actual structure that sits on top. The land is going to exist no matter what. the same can't be said of the apartment building .
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And not all renting out is rent seeking! On occasion in cities with decreasing home prices, the landlord is subsidising the tenant. That is rare though!
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I don't agree with your characterization here, so no cognitive dissonance needed.
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Renting a place to live allows one to hold a job and create value.
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There’s a reason people in parts of the US are gravely concerned about the rapid acquisition of housing by PE groups and other large investors. Which, not coincidentally has led to the enshittification of the mobile home park market. Something I wouldn’t have believed possible a decade ago, but her we are.
You’re so close! This is like watching right wing people smugly saying “the phrase women’s rights is such a funny one to me - if we assume women are humans and deserve rights then what next, black rights?” As if they’ve hit a winning argument that of course black people aren’t human and don’t deserve rights so of course women's rights are a nonsense as well.
You've started with the assumption that landlording is a good Capitalist respectable thing and nobody could question it, so mocking the thing a landlord does can't possibly have any legs to stand on. But yes! A landlord seeking rent for doing nothing is a parasite! Yes! It’s rent seeking! The people who really try to defend it as difficult and performing a useful service are bad people who benefit from the status quo and lack the imagination and wider experience to see that things like council housing exists and works and benefits people other than the wealthy landowners. If there are two houses and two families could own them and live in them, turning it into one family owning both plots/houses and the the other family paying rent forever is worse. Turning it into one landlord owning both plots/houses and charging both families to live there forever so they don't have to work for a living is worse again. Turning it into a landlord class who both try to squeeze as much rent as possible while lobbying the authorities to block new-house building and reduce tenant's rights is worse again.
> You've started with the assumption that landlording is a good Capitalist respectable thing and nobody could question it
No, gently calling that into question was entirely my point. I was starting with the assumption that the reader believed that, but I don’t.