[willcipriano]

The restaurant isn't disassembled when you leave, when you eat a meal at a establishment you pay for the upkeep of a building that will grow in value over time and yet receive no upside. If you take an Uber, you pay the auto loan of the person driving you. I guess a pure service like housecleaning doesn't leave behind a productive asset, although the business itself is one.

[sudosysgen]

Obviously you get a hard product when you get a meal. You get someone's labour when you ride and Uber and consume gas and car.

When you rent, you basically are buying someone else a house. You don't get any service in many cases, as the landlord can contract our 100% of maintenance and repair and still make massive amounts of money.

[willcipriano]

When you eat at a restaurant you are in the very same way also buying them a restaurant. That food will only satiate you for a few hours and eventually you will have to eat again, having nothing to show for the service. In the same way you can rent a house from someone, have shelter from the elements for a time and once that business has concluded have nothing to show for it.

I don't' advise eating out too much or renting long term if you can avoid it. I also don't advise living in a major city. You can more easily take the first two pieces of advice if you take the third first.

[sudosysgen]

No, you're absolutely not buying them a restaurant. They are fundamentally making money because they provide labour in exchange for it.

A landlord is not providing labour. They are acting as a middle-man between you and the bank. They provide no service to society. A restaurant is, as they provide cooked food. One is a zero-sum game, the other is actually producing something.

Your advice is frankly shit on the societal level. There is no way for everyone to avoid long-term rentals unless we do things you are opposed to. Equally it's impossible for everyone to avoid living in big cities, the entire economy would collapse. It's senseless to punish people for doing things that are necessary for our common prosperity and interests, such as living in major cities.

[MichaelZuo]

‘ A landlord is not providing labour.’ All built structures undergo entropic decay so maintenance would count as labour being done in both cases, the apartment and the restaurant using the textbook definition. These costs would be packaged into the rent and the price of meals.

[sudosysgen]

Plenty of landlords subcontract maintenance, actually. There is landlording, and there is maintenance, some landlords do both, many do no maintenance themselves.

So through market calculation we can deduce that maintenance is only a small part of rent, the majority of rent is derived from being a middleman with the bank.

This is not the case for a restaurant, you'll find that all of the value in takeout comes from the labour and the capital necessary to make that labour efficient.

Would any landlord sign an agreement stating that you would do all the maintenance and then allow you to live there for free? Of course not.

[willcipriano]

> Would any landlord sign an agreement stating that you would do all the maintenance and then allow you to live there for free?

This happens frequently enough that you can find a number of articles on how to approach that very arrangement from a tax perspective[0].

[0]https://homeguides.sfgate.com/record-work-done-rental-proper...

[MichaelZuo]

‘ you'll find that all of the value in takeout comes from the labour and the capital necessary to make that labour efficient.’

Last time I checked kitchens and kitchen equipment are not immune from entropy…

[humaniania]

Don't many restaurants rent? They're stuck in the same predatory situation.