Exactly. For some people, maybe it’s part of the definition of a simulation that we are also simulated, but that’s not necessarily a part of the definition. We could be a part of it, or we could be an audience or consumers of it. Occupants. Whatever.
Just because we’re living in a simulation doesn’t mean we are simulated. So perhaps the architects of the simulation can’t simply program our questions away.
I’m not having trouble. You have yet to make any case whatsoever.
Your “explanation” is nothing but a string of pejoratives. Here’s how you describe someone offering the use of an object they own, for a price:
the license to withhold or take away housing from people.
They capture it and extort people for temporary permission to live in it.
In other words they offer the use of something for a price. Oh but they’re not offering it! They’re holding a license to take it away! LOL
A landlord owns a home, an object of great value, and they choose not to use it or sell it, but to sell the use of it. A tenant needs a home but has neither the resources to build or buy one. There is an exchange of value between these parties. That’s renting.
You do nothing to argue that this is parasitic except to slather it with pejoratives. Your list of anecdotal bad experiences people have had with landlords is utterly immaterial to the discussion of whether landlording is definitionally unethical.
I believe you exposed the core of your beliefs here:
The rental income that a landlord collects is not a wage based on any labor that they do.
First of all, how is that true? I purchased my home with money I earned from my labor. Am I not permitted to now own it? And am I not permitted to offer the use of the thing I own? Why? And while we’re at it, who says that all renters pay rent from labor wages? Some of them may pay with dividends from their investments.
To the core, though, the argument seems to be that labor is the only value that exists. Which is bad news for anyone past working age, I guess.
You need to establish some foundations like you think property ownership itself is unethical and labor is the only value before your case even begins to appear on stage.
Instead of this, you’re claiming that your string of pejoratives is an argument which I simply fail to understand. Which is, again, just a pejorative characterization. You’ve offered nothing but here.
Throwing it back at me to disprove your claim is a declaration of bankruptcy.
Clearly you don’t have a solution for bringing housing into being except an utterly dangling magical notion that “workers will create it” with no answers to where, out of what, and while eating what.
You just keep calling different economic actors “parasites” without describing exactly what it is you think they are feeding on which could stand on its own.
You can smear paid employment, land ownership, and property ownership all you want but these are pretty big features in our economy and unless you have something better to answer with, sweeping them away does nothing.
So try replying in an affirmative mode where you don’t just call something parasitic but describe how you really think it will work, and be a little more thorough than just one microscopic part of it. Because my dude, workers create housing today.
Well I’m aware of them, however small they might be, and I support their values. I would still never vote for their presidential candidates because of FPTP.
So I don’t think that funding and awareness are the issue. Even with those out of the way, it just doesn’t make sense to vote for them.
You’re probably thinking I’m not a real left voter but I assure yo I read the Green and P&F voter guides every time I fill out a ballot, to understand their advice on measures and candidates, but would never, ever vote for one of their candidates in any FPTP race. It would only help conservatives.
Who pays the workers and buys the materials? Whose land does this happen on?
I answered you, mate. These parties DO exist in the US they are just really small, and this is why.
Now you’re making faces and trying to discredit the most important question so you can avoid answering it. It won’t work.
Not exactly. In theory corporations need workers so they should benefit from a healthy public.
In reality, they don’t need everybody healthy - just enough to meet their needs. And their needs for workers are met. They’ve been exporting and automating jobs for decades. So even with the system leaving lots of folks behind, enough are left over to occupy the jobs that are needed. If anything, we have more healthy people than corporations need - what is lacking are skills.
And so in a very American sense of “business first,” the current system is operating just fine. People and their health have no intrinsic value here.
And now they say Obamacare didn’t go far enough and is kinda weak. I could strangle them.
Blue Shield of California is a “big corporation” that employers here often contract with for health insurance, and it is a non-profit. Somehow this doesn’t really result in a dramatically different experience.
You skipped the most important question, as all anti-landlord idealists do.
This video gives a great visual explanation of why third parties in US politics can only be spoilers. They cannot build anything.
America already has “real left” parties like the Peace & Freedom party and the Green party. Starting yet another tiny party to occupy the left will add nothing. And trying to grow any of these third parties can only do one thing: take votes from Democrats, thereby helping Republicans.
It’s easy to say “US doesn’t have a real left party” but most people who care about that would rather not hurt Democrats and help Republicans, because Democrats are at least closer to the left out of the two major parties, even if neither is as far left as we would like.
The only option is to join the Democratic party and attempt to shift it left. This is exactly what America’s most prominent 3 leftists have done: AOC, Dennis Kucinich, and Bernie Sanders. They know that 3rd parties are a death wish. This is an objective fact. Everyone who cares about the left needs to grow up, accept this, and move on. Just like Bernie has. You don’t see him calling for a 3rd party. And he’s clearly a “real leftist” by any measure.
Yeah as your air quotes indicate, it’s simple to say but extremely problematic to do. Still, there are incremental approaches to this. Public housing does exist, it’s just extremely small so it doesn’t have any of those systemic effects. We should dial it up. But until it’s universal, it will always face the good old American problem of “my taxes shouldn’t but you free stuff.” It’s things to like this that make UBI look simple.
Thank god the actual answer is already here. Now let’s please vote it above the well-meaning fantasy comments saying “yeah! do it!”
Because it will only spoil whichever major party is a little more closely aligned with it.
We need one, but a third party will not get the desired result. It will only subtract from whoever major party is a little more like it, in this case probably the Democrats. Sad to say: the only meaningful path forward is to change the parties from within. I know that sounds daunting and boring. But can anyone reasonably think this will be easy and fun?
We should not. This idea of starting a new party to do something has been exhaustively understood for a long time. All it is capable of doing is hurting the major party your new party is closest to. Best explained here.
It is exciting to create something new you have total control over, and that excitement can help you get off the ground and feel like you’re going somewhere, but this is an illusion, an eventually that momentum slams into a wall as you realize you’ve only shifted de facto political reality in the United States in the opposite direction you wanted to (again: because all third parties can do is steal votes from their most closely aligned major party).
Bernie Sanders has had this figured out for a long time. He shits on the rich morning and night. He’s also a grownup and knows that his only viable course is to try to shift one of the major parties themselves. He thinks he has better odds with the Democrats, and he’s probably right, though maybe “less bad odds” is a better characterization.
Entering into a major party is not fun and exciting and you don’t have a lot of control and quick momentum. But it is the only way. Small progress, long game. A flash in the pan 3rd party will only burn you.
Anyway it’s lunchtime and I need to go be objectively extorted out of the fruits of my labor by some parasite wielding a license to withhold food from me and the credible threat of starvation.