[deepsun]

> landlords are rent seeking and nothing else

Noone says it's nothing else. But rent seeking is a big component of it, you just focus on other minor parts.

In general, locking down some limited but critical commodity (e.g. land) is bad for any economic system. It doesn't really matter whether it's "Wall Street" or "your neighbor". A healthy economy is geared towards creating an added value.

[A4ET8a8uTh0_v2]

<< A healthy economy is geared towards creating an added value.

I am trying to read this charitably, but it is hard to read as anything but: 'landlords do not add value'.

[deepsun]

Rephrasing my original point -- landlords do add value, but not as much to offset the negatives of locking down the resources.

[iugtmkbdfil834]

I disagree, but I am interested in pulling this thread somewhat. What would be alternative? The role will likely exist in some form regardless, but I suppose there are obviously ways to make it less common just by removing of its incentives. That said, I might be tipping my hand a little.

[deepsun]

Land Value Tax is one way, a very old idea.

Germany practices basically rent control, so that 60%+ of population rent and consider it stable. That's another way.

Maybe there are more, I didn't think hard. The basic idea is to prevent formation of an "aristocracy" that holds some limited but necessary (not luxury) resource. Pretty much every revolution happened because of that.

[iugtmkbdfil834]

But wouldn't this suggest that the solution is really just stopping ( and then keeping ) things from being too excessive?