“[Landlords] are the only one of the three orders whose revenue costs them neither labour nor care, but comes to them, as it were, of its own accord, and independent of any plan or project of their own. That indolence, which is the natural effect of the ease and security of their situation, renders them too often, not only ignorant, but incapable of that application of mind.” - Adam Smith
What are the other two?
to those who live by rent, to those who live by wages, and to those who live by profit.
The house was not built by its owner. It was erected, decorated, and furnished by innumerable workers–in the timber yard, the brick field, and the workshop, toiling for dear life at a minimum wage.
The money spent by the owner was not the product of his own toil. It was amassed, like all other riches, by paying the workers two-thirds or only a half of what was their due.
Moreover–and it is here that the enormity of the whole proceeding becomes most glaring–the house owes its actual value to the profit which the owner can make out of it. Now, this profit results from the fact that his house is built in a town possessing bridges, quays, and fine public buildings, and affording to its inhabitants a thousand comforts and conveniences unknown in villages; a town well paved, lighted with gas, in regular communication with other towns, and itself a centre of industry, commerce, science, and art; a town which the work of twenty or thirty generations has gone to render habitable, healthy, and beautiful.
A house in certain parts of Paris may be valued at thousands of pounds sterling, not because thousands of pounds’ worth of labour have been expended on that particular house, but because it is in Paris; because for centuries workmen, artists, thinkers, and men of learning and letters have contributed to make Paris what it is to-day–a centre of industry, commerce, politics, art, and science; because Paris has a past; because, thanks to literature, the names of its streets are household words in foreign countries as well as at home; because it is the fruit of eighteen centuries of toil, the work of fifty generations of the whole French nation.
Who, then, can appropriate to himself the tiniest plot of ground, or the meanest building, without committing a flagrant injustice? Who, then, has the right to sell to any bidder the smallest portion of the common heritage?
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/conquest/ch6.html
Just the first line raises so many basic social questions:
Do all the workers who contributed to the building of the home own it? If so, do they all get to live in it? If not, must they then communally determine who lives in it? How would that be organized? Majority opinion? A reversion to primitive village social structures? What’s the purpose of supposing they get a minimum wage? What does it change about their contribution if they were highly paid by the owner? If you admit that their labor was commoditized to build the house, and they were compensated by the owner according to the socially agreed value of their work, then what does it matter if the owner didn’t build it and why does that prevent the owner from claiming it as his private property? What if the owner overpaid them - i.e paid each the amount it would cost to commission laborers to build their own similar home? Are they then self-exploiting if they use the money their labor earned to buy the labor of others to build homes?
Most of your questions are answered in the chapter I linked. It’s a good read, check it out. Obviously, the whole ordeal Kropotkin describes would require ingenuity, and patience, and M U T U A L A I D.
99% of questions about libsoc theory were asked and answered 100 years ago in that one book alone haha
If by “ingenuity and patience” you mean divine intervention, maybe. What he describes is spontaneous abolition of rent followed by well-meaning volunteers creating statistics for use in a program that would determine who gets to live in what house. It’s laden with romantic claims about the selflessness and infallibility of the masses, and a rosy view of the Paris Commune typical of the times.
If you actually read the book, you’d know how silly most of the things you just said are, especially about the Paris Commune. But I appreciate you sharing your opinion :)
edit: btw, its called conquest of bread. good stuff, check it out. you dont need to agree with it, but its a great intro to learning about some of the moral philosophies behind anarchy and communism and why they surged in the late 19th and early 20th century
I know its name and I read it years ago. It’s filled with silly propositions. And what I said about the Pairs Commune is actually uncontroversial. It was in fact greatly romaniticized by Europe’s dissident left.
I see you’re not actually interested in exploring these ideas, just insisting they won’t work with bad faith questions.
People like you are why landlords still exist.
Bad faith questions like “why does Kropotkin assume what he assumes.” Sure. You’re like a religious zealot, dodging around the tough questions deservedly asked of your text and blaming naysayers for the evil in the world.
It’s pretty apparent your questions aren’t in good faith, or you wouldn’t be so combative. It’s clear you’re not actually interested in answers, just in getting a “gotcha,” which is pretty lame. Also, I wouldn’t call any of the questions you’ve asked actually tough, because they’re almost all the first, second, or third questions he typically answers in the book. They’re fair questions, for sure, but they’re the ones Kropotkin anticipates while you’re reading, which is part of the fun of reading Kropotkin.
Then you go on to completely mischaracterize his view of the Paris Commune based on a single chapter of his book, while also insulting people who call you out. It’s totally cool if you disagree and don’t like Kropotkin’s ideas – I mean the dude wasn’t right about everything. But you’re just being a dick about it, sorry to say.
If you don’t like “combative” questions about your prescriptions for the entire social structure of the world, then do us all a favor and stop interacting with people who have an iota of skepticism towards them. Stick to your own bubble instead of moralizing about how we wouldn’t have landlords if people would just stop challenging you. And no, Kropotkin doesn’t answer what I asked regarding the organization of housing. He quite literally just claims that workers are inherently unselfish and “volunteers” will rationally alot it according to need.
That’s such an amazing fucking quote
Worse imo are brokers. Esp. here in parts of the US, where a landlord hires a broker to show their apartment and do nothing else, then collect 15% of your yearly rent for no fucking reason
Most Americans will never understand that housing would still exist without landlords. They have been convinced that landlords are like delivery drivers, a necessary part of the chain of production. “It won’t get to my table without the landlords to deliver it!”
No??? You’re crazy. People don’t think that.
Only one in my building who is getting a reasonable rate right now. Granted I live in Florida and most of my neighbors moved in mid covid.
To be fair, if you were to buy or build a house it won’t cost you any less.
Right, but at least it will be your house. Instead of paying someone else’s mortgage and coming out of it with nothing for yourself.
I’m not defending landlords here — just pointing out that housing is expensive right now regardless of who owns it. Construction costs are through the roof (no pun intended) even before factoring in a profit margin for the builder and/or the landlord. If I had to rebuild my house today it would cost at least 3x what I paid for it 15 years ago, and my income hasn’t tripled since then.
The things is, its expensive because of landlords and shit like airbnd. They have shrunk the market which increases the value of whats left in the market. Landlords are the reason why housing is unaffordable. Which puts you at their doorstep to rent from them.
Landlords are definitely not the reason that new construction is so much more expensive. They want the lowest possible construction cost, not the highest.
Corporate landlords are absolutely driving the prices up, combined with 3 decades of low interest and investors treating real estate like a speculative market. The material cost of housing is miniscule. North American homes are made out of paper and plywood.
If that’s the case, can you explain to the rest of us why landlords want high construction prices?
They’re not construction prices lol. Construction costs are like 5% of the total value of a home. The other 95% of the value of a home is due to houses being treated as assets in a speculative market.
Landlords want the prices to increase because it increases the value of their asset, which allows them to leverage it for greater loans to buy more assets, etc etc to eventually sell at hilariously inflated prices for massive ROIs. Or alternatively to charge massively inflated rental costs pegged to the value of the home. Higher value, higher rent, more $$$ in the landlord’s pocket.
So far costs of homes have only gone up since the 70’s. A house worth 200k 20 years ago is now worth 1.2 Mil. It is an excellent rate of return. The market shows no signs of slowing down, forget about getting cheaper. If you have the capital to invest, it’s basically free money. Or at least, it has been for the past 5 decades. I don’t see why it would stop now. Maybe climate disasters or war, we’ll see.
Have you considered that the reason labor prices have increased is because the cost of living has increased so much, primarily driven by housing prices?
Eh… Contractors are charging what they are charging now because they can, not necessarily because materials and labor costs justify it. I’ve been slowly rehabbing my basement this year, and I’m doing most of the work myself because the quotes I’ve been getting to have somebody do it for me are so steep that about half the time they would cover me setting up a whole competing company from scratch in addition to material costs. That’s not an exaggeration. For what the plumber wanted for a repipe I could buy all the tools I need, attend training, get certification and a license, set up an LLC, and go into business for myself, and still have enough money left over to cover my costs on the project.
Not that I think all that profit is going into the pockets of the tradespeople doing the work, well compensated as they are, but at the end of the day it’s down to high demand and a shortage of skilled labor due to decades of us devaluing the trades as a career. If I’m in the top third of the income distribution and the only reason I can afford to maintain my very modest house is because I have the skillset to do it by myself, something’s gone haywire.
Heres the thing. Landlords buy up housing, this shrinks the market, this increases housing prices, this creates a demand for new homes, this increases demand for supplies and the price of labor for construction.
Landlords obviously don’t want higher construction costs, but they do want more properties. Higher construction cost is a consequence of that, not the goal.
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Your housing budget shouldn’t be 2/3 of your income.
Many people have no choice in the matter.
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That is the worst take I’ve seen all week.
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Sorry, my bad. I had not noticed that you had labeled us chuds and you the Chad.
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All of what you said is a bullshit non sequitur that has nothing to do with the actual problem. If you thought you were clever for “looking at the obvious”, you were wrong.
Most people in America live in a house or apartment larger than they need
The only one in a position to determine that are the people that live in those apartments. Additionally, I doubt that most people choose apartment size as a deciding factor. With the cost of rent, price of the apartment is the much bigger factor.
saddled with credit card debt they chose
Most people didn’t choose credit card debt. They were forced into it because they couldn’t afford basic needs.
Most Americans complaining about the cost of living and housing could lower and share their expenses if they were serious about it
That’s total bullshit. Over 60% of Americans can’t afford the cheapest house in the cheapest state to live in. The living wage in this country is at the very least $25/hr and the minimum wage hasn’t increased in over a decade, but we’ll discuss wages much more later.
living here is easier than almost anywhere else in the world
Tell that to homeless people. Did you forget about them, or do they not count?
Even at the bottom incomes, the people complaining about earning $15/hr in the US should learn
Newsflash, suffering elsewhere doesn’t minimize suffering for you. Now let’s talk wages. Everywhere, there’s a cost associated with basic living called a survival wage, and a cost to live a dignified life that can accommodate hardship and enjoyment in equal measure known as a living wage.
The living wage for a given area has a lot of factors, but it’s relatively easy to calculate. Where I live, the living wage is $27/hr. I also happen to live in a state with a minimum wage larger than federal and tied to inflation, putting it at $11.13/hr. That’s an annual difference of $33k dollars between a living wage and the state minimum. I can’t tell you how I managed to conjure $3k to assist a single coworker once, let alone $30k on top of it every year for the foreseeable future.
Don’t forget that there are millions of people working on the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr. In Memphis TN, the living wage is $20/hr and the minimum wage is federal. There are people working for minimum wage that can’t even afford to rent a broom closet. This all also assumes everyone has a job, so it totally excludes anyone who can’t work or can’t find a job. These people exist too and still deserve a dignified life, even without an income.
I urge you to revisit this take, because it seems based only on a cartoonish vision that exists in your head. Let’s take seniors for example, who live on a fixed income and are often the most vulnerable to rent increases. How does anything that you said address the very real problems they are facing?
Landlords are an inherently monopolistic position over an incredibly inelastic good. That’s not good for a market economy.
You don’t have to defend them.
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You’re right, there’s nothing inherently evil about renting, however it’s inherently unequal. Now your home is in the precarious situation of being at the whims of someone whose only motive is profit. You’re also assuming capitalism is a law of nature. It’s not, and trying to frame it as such is a tired trick. Why do your strawmen have control over how a human right is provided? Why did you pick an example of extreme systemic injustice as an argument against providing housing instead of the litany of successful housing-first programs?
Houses wouldnt be so expensive if it werent for landlords
Not to mention, no one will lease to you if the rent is 2/3rds of your income.
Do you think people only have one job their entire lives?
