[smt88]

It’s not. There are plenty of non-wealthy people who make money from things other than their labor.

Small-time landlords are an example, as would be anyone who owns a small business and draws cash from profits rather than taking a salary.

[tancop]

im going to be controversial and say no one should have anything other than labor as their main income until they retire.

anything you can do thats useful to society counts as labor (but not vice versa, you can work as a robber or corporate lobbyist). from line cooks to wall street ceos to open source volunteers and stay at home moms who dont get paid but still work. landlords and executives count because management is labor too.

if your income comes from a trust fund or owning properties that you dont manage thats a passive reward for doing nothing. you are not productive. you are a parasite living on the back of everyone else and expecting indefinite rewards for a fixed amount of work you or your parents did years ago.

[mech998877]

So if you buy a lawnmower and use it for your business to cut your neighbor's grass (instead of tearing it apart by hand), that should be illegal? You've used a capital investment to increase your productivity. Your productivity gains have driven anyone using a less efficient method out of the market.

What if it's a robot lawnmower instead of a push mower?

What if you and your neighbors pooled in some money to buy the robot lawnmowers?

What level of indirect management is unethical?

[93po]

I think they could have worded it better. I think they were saying that profiting from the labor of others is unethical. Using robots isn't unethical because you're not profiting from something that needs the income for itself. And it isn't really "working". Working requires expenditure of limited time and resources, which robots either of unlimited of, or is provided by the owner.

[triceratops]

What if you volunteer 30-40 hours a week but pay your bills with rental income? What's your position on that?

[93po]

What if you dump toxic waste into a river to make money, but volunteer 30-40 hours a week? Does it make the dumping less unethical? The point isn't about doing labor, it's about not profiting off of other's labor or rent-seeking.

[triceratops]

Rent-seeking is different from being a landlord. And I mean that in a "dictionary definition" way - they are literally different concepts.

And we all "profit off of others' labor" when we buy things.

I was responding to the person who said "anything you can do thats useful to society counts as labor". According to them only retired people are allowed to live off investment income. But what if the thing someone labors at doesn't make them income, and they support themselves with investment income? They've satisfied OP's "be useful to society" dictum, so why is it so immoral for them to be a landlord.

[93po]

Rent-seeking can be explained in a few different ways, but one of them is "extracting value without creating much new value" which is exactly what a lot of landlords do. Buy a house, rent it for more than the mortgage, and do as little work as possible in the process. This the renting experience for (I'd guess) 95% of people.

If someone buys housing primarily because they have access to capital and credit that renters do not, then charges more than the carrying cost while minimizing maintenance and labor, they are extracting value from ownership of a scarce necessity. The value they capture comes less from producing something new and more from controlling access to housing. This is rent-seeking.

It doesn't mean all landlords are rent seeking, but it's not accurate to say the two have nothing to do two each other, and that it isn't the net effect or intention in almost all cases.

"And we all "profit off of others' labor" when we buy things."

How exactly do I generate a profit when I buy a hairbrush? That's not how profit works. That hairbrush would presumably cost the same to me whether the profits of the company that made it to the owner or the laborer. Between me and the retailer there is a fair exchange of value. Between the laborer and factory owner who made the hairbrush there isn't when he sells the hairbrush at a profit and that profit doesn't return to the laborer. He is extracting the full value of that labor for himself while having done no work in making that hairbrush.

Also let's say buying a hairbrush was unethical - that's why the adage goes that there's no ethical consumption under capitalism. But we don't deserve to die or suffer because we're forced into it.

"According to them only retired people are allowed to live off investment income."

That's not what they're saying. They said "no one should have anything other than labor as their main income until they retire" - which could have probably been better worded as "the income you make in your life should come from your labor, not the labor of others".

[smt88]

> no one should have anything other than labor as their main income until they retire

No one should start a business and pay salaries to their employees instead of themselves?

What if I see that a biotech startup is working on mRNA cancer vaccines, and I want to invest in that? And then it pays off and I make money off of it?

[93po]

They're saying you should be compensated and make income for the time it took you to form the business and hire employees. You shouldn't (in their theory) then continue to earn income off the labor of the people you hired - the income they generate from their labor belongs to the laborer. You can also continue to make a salary from the business in exchange for the direct labor you do - management, accounting, whatever else. But if you stop working for 5 years and retire to a beach, you shouldn't be extracting continued income from the workers while you do nothing.

Investing as people think about it only exists because people who invest expect value from the thing they invest in. That value only exists because of a mixture of current and future expected income from the business. If the business itself doesn't generate income for people who aren't doing the actual labor, there's no reason to invest unless you have a personal interest in the continuation of the business, i.e. you're an employee whose income depends on that job. In this scenario you'd have employee-owned businesses.

Obviously this raises the question of where funding comes for new innovation and growth (public investment banks, worker cooperative financing, government grants), but then it goes down a rabbit hole about alternatives to capitalism.

[contagiousflow]

> non-wealthy

> landlord

If you think these two things are compatible you need to talk to more people outside of your bubble.

[artisinal]

Not American here. I know a couple of people who took out a second mortgage to buy a small appartement to rent out when mortgages rates were at 1%. They probably have €300k in equity in both the primary and secondary home. And around €600 in income from the rental. I do not consider that wealthy.

[torginus]

I would describe that as having invested in an appreciating asset (like stocks), and their main income comes from the gains of the property prices as they go up in value. Moreover, they leveraged themselves via loans to acquire income even faster.

These gains might be realized at any point if they're willing to pay taxes for them.

Having lots of money but choosing not to spend it doesn't make you any less wealthy.

[tonyedgecombe]

Most landlords are leveraged up to the hilt. They may look wealthy from the outside but a close look at the figures says otherwise.

[bigstrat2003]

You don't have to be especially wealthy to own a second house and rent it out. That isn't poor, certainly, but I wouldn't call it wealthy either.

[carlosjobim]

The original comment said "ultra wealthy".

[smt88]

> you need to talk to more people outside of your bubble

My bubble of... not-ultra-wealthy people? Are you saying I need to talk to more ultra-wealthy people? This makes no sense.