Letters: Readers respond to an article about quitting the rat race, with some saying their generation was handed an untenable position and others saying the struggle is nothing new
Rent seeking mindset I call it — too many people and companies seeking to press others to extract their money rather than providing tangible value to society, and it’s not generally millennials doing it. It’s the disgusting underbelly of the entrepreneurial mindset the many of the past used to frame capitalism.
I think there’s clearly some societal benefits to distributing the work of maintaining housing in this way. Is there a cartel making the prices go up more than they should in a working market or what is the reason for it?
Greed is the reason, because they can. People need housing. Same way grocery stores are getting away with charging so much, people need food. The working market theoretically should fix this in time, but so far it isn’t. New houses and competing grocery stores don’t appear overnight. I fully agree with you, rentals have their place and there can be many benefits, but without proper oversight and rent control this was always going to be the outcome - squeeze as much cash out of people until you literally can’t anymore. I don’t think there is some secret collusion going on between landlords (at least in most cases), there’s really no need. Just watch rental prices, then when the area average becomes higher than you charge for your unit, you raise yours slightly above that. By doing that you’ve now ever so slightly increased that area’s average, now other landlords will raise their prices slighy higher, causing other landlords to raise their prices slightly higher, rinse and repeat. Note that I might be completely off the mark here but this lines up with my experiences at least.
Rent seeking mindset I call it — too many people and companies seeking to press others to extract their money rather than providing tangible value to society, and it’s not generally millennials doing it. It’s the disgusting underbelly of the entrepreneurial mindset the many of the past used to frame capitalism.
Rent-seeking is essentially the core goal of capitalism.
I think there’s clearly some societal benefits to distributing the work of maintaining housing in this way. Is there a cartel making the prices go up more than they should in a working market or what is the reason for it?
Greed is the reason, because they can. People need housing. Same way grocery stores are getting away with charging so much, people need food. The working market theoretically should fix this in time, but so far it isn’t. New houses and competing grocery stores don’t appear overnight. I fully agree with you, rentals have their place and there can be many benefits, but without proper oversight and rent control this was always going to be the outcome - squeeze as much cash out of people until you literally can’t anymore. I don’t think there is some secret collusion going on between landlords (at least in most cases), there’s really no need. Just watch rental prices, then when the area average becomes higher than you charge for your unit, you raise yours slightly above that. By doing that you’ve now ever so slightly increased that area’s average, now other landlords will raise their prices slighy higher, causing other landlords to raise their prices slightly higher, rinse and repeat. Note that I might be completely off the mark here but this lines up with my experiences at least.