[tshaddox]

> Landlord, or property management, is a job, same as any other job you might have.

Let's ignore property management for now and focus on landlords (i.e. people who own homes and collect rent from the people who live in the homes). That is very much not the same as any other job. Most jobs do not consistent entirely of literally rent-seeking.

[potato3732842]

>Most jobs do not consistent entirely of literally rent-seeking.

First off you're using "rent seeking" wrong, it's a specific economic term that means something else.

But using your definition....

There's entire industries built around renting capital investments. Sometimes purely, like rental equipment. Sometimes the investmentents are so expensive they come with the labor to operate them (the way many buildings have a building manager and a desk person). Many industrial transactions are structured basically the same way as commercial rent.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> First off you're using "rent seeking" wrong, it's a specific economic term that means something else.

It is a specific term, but it means: taking control of a limited resource (e.g. housing), most typically by ownership, that you do not have any direct use for, and then seeking revenue by then renting it to other people who actually want to use it (e.g. live in it).

Which, not suprisingly, is precisely what landlords are doing.

And also not surprisingly, those "entire industries" would be rent-seeking if the resources they rent out were limited. However, that does not apply to rental equipment, for example (though there are a few specific exceptions in the case of extremely expensive, very complex and/or very large equipment).

[potato3732842]

>Which, not suprisingly, is precisely what landlords are doing.

The bulk of the political will for this garbage doesn't come from landlords. Landlords want more, more, more. There literally aren't enough landlords in this country for that.

It comes from existing homeowners who are not landlords and don't want a bunch of high(er than them) turnover housing near them let alone cheaper housing because of the "neighborhood character" or whatever. Basically got mine fuck you.

And this is enabled with the remainder of the political will being provided by a select number of unconscionably ignorant non property owners who have insane takes about how the government should manage all this, be deeply involved in this, immensely scrutinize any sort of property development, etc, etc, all of which is to the benefit of megacorp landlords and developers and the detriment of the small time guys who own a number of properties you can count on one hand with a sum total of units you can count on two or thereabouts who make up the overwhelming majority of landlords on a unit basis and if even a small percent of them added a little bit of capacity would be a huge amount.

> However, that does not apply to rental equipment, for example (though there are a few specific exceptions in the case of extremely expensive, very complex and/or very large equipment).

They don't rent seek the literal equipment. They rent seek your ability to use it without a bunch of thugs showing up with a "stop or else" proposition. You can literally buy a car crusher on Alibaba but you can't open a junkyard in my state without a permit that they have a well known hospital-esque "we only allow X to exist overall" system for, assuming your town doesn't outlaw the business outright.

Once again, this is all to the benefit of big business for whom a few million bucks of donations to the right stuff and work directed at the right firms as needed to get a variance (i.e. pay the law away) for their billion dollar dildo manufacturing plant or whatever whereas the guy who wants to, IDK, take his HVAC bending business to the next level, open a second site and get into process equipment is shit outta luck because without greasing palms he can't afford to the government will hem and haw about every goddamn detail and prevent anything from happening. And the existing industrial plant that got in before the rules is laughing its way to the bank the whole time, well, right up until it gets regulated all the way to China but that's a different problem.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Your view of the world we live in is extremely different from mine. I don't think it is remotely correct, but hey, that's just, like, my opinion. I hope you find some peace in the midst of your experience.

[Plasmoid]

Let's expand on this.

People assume that renting out property is rent-seeking literally only because they both have the word rent in them.

I would note that people don't use the word rent-seeker (or parasite) when it comes to banks renting out money. I assume this is partly because banks use the word `loan` and partly because referring to bankers as parasites would be a little too close to dog-whistle antisemitism.

[tshaddox]

> People assume that renting out property is rent-seeking literally only because they both have the word rent in them.

It's not a coincidence that they have the same word in them. It's literally just the same word with the same definition and etymology in both cases. Rent is a payment demanded by property owners from people who want to make productive use of that property.

[Plasmoid]

But rent-seeking isn't renting. They're different terms that don't have anything to do with each anymore.

> Rent-seeking is the act of growing one's existing wealth by manipulating public policy or economic conditions without creating new wealth. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking)

This definition doesn't overlap with renting.

[tshaddox]

The term has been generalized in economics to refer to more cases than just rent paid to live on or farm a piece of land.

[kiba]

I blame econonists for reusing the same word to mean different things.

[triceratops]

> people who own homes and collect rent from the people who live in the homes). That is very much not the same as any other job.

Why are you thinking of it as a job? Is putting money into the stock market a job? Owning property to rent out isn't a job, and that's perfectly fine. People make money off non-jobs all the time.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

They said that because upthread someone else said that being landlord was just like any other job ...