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Comment by anon4 | Hacker News Reader

Isn't he basically preaching a rentier economy? That sort of thing is not sustainable at scale - at best you can have something like 10% of people getting rent (leeching off of) the people doing the actual work. Speaking ethically, this is one of the sleaziest ways you can make money - you're making your own basic income, except it's 5 times bigger than the income of the people who actually do the work. You're depriving honest workers of the fruits of their labour.

People like him are what's wrong with society today and nothing short of a bloody revolution will set us back on the right path.

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Yep, he is. The guy is a leech. Another is mr money moustache with his 3 homes telling us to save by eating oats or whatever. These guys make me sick. I half agree that we need a revolution, these people can never be persuaded of their ills they are just horrible people.

What exactly is your argument here? Why is he a horrible person? Because he rents houses?

There's nothing inherently exploitative about renting homes. Owning a home in the US is within the reach of most American families. So lots of people rent because they chose to. Some people prefer the flexibility to move, don't want to do maintenance, or prefer to live in higher density areas where personal homes are less common.

People who rent real estate are just providing a service, and a critical one at that. If nobody rented places to live, then we'd have a lot of homeless people in the world.

Yes they are horrible and yes they are exploiting people. It's not a service, they are exploiting the capped supply of a basic need.

The argument about "if nobody rents out" is just wrong. Are they going to knock the place down if they don't rent? Yes there is a need for rentals but this should be within a world where we have land value tax so the bulk of the gain is passed onto the state to reduce labour taxes, reduce land costs and improve living standards.

These guys are adding nothing, they are taking labour.

The cost of a home is not the cost of the bricks it's the cost of the land in the main areas with employment prospects.

The USA was originally a land of opportunity. Why? Because you could get hold of land cheap. You were no longer constrained to near-serfdom by total land enclosure in Europe. Now here we are back to square one with the rentiers creaming off labour and books on how to join them.

> The argument about "if nobody rents out" is just wrong. Are they going to knock the place down if they don't rent?

They will construct a building that earns them money. So all those people who rented the apartments are now homeless and their former homes are now an office complex, a parking garage, or a CVS.

Net result: land owner makes money (still), but now people are homeless.

> this should be within a world where we have land value tax

We live in a country where property taxes exist. These people (usually) pay them and it's not cheap. In fact, high property taxes fuel higher property values in the US.

Also interesting, property taxes are also a form of rent. They are often used by the local governments to force people off of their land. This is usually the first step to gentrifying a neighborhood. Rising property taxes cause property values to rise, creating a property tax feedback loop that forces people from their homes. This exact thing happened in my home town where property taxes doubled, then housing values went from $40k to $120k in like five years, effectively increasing taxes 6-fold in the neighborhood.

> Yes they are horrible and yes they are exploiting people

People need food, clothing and shelter. Companies sell food and clothing and I'm sure you think that's okay, but a company selling shelter is exploitation?

You are telling me that I'm being exploited because I live in a rental property. I just don't see it. I gain more value from my place than I lose in rental fees. Being able to move cheaply and quickly has earned me tens of thousands of dollars in extra wages and saved me tens of thousands in real estate transaction fees and maintenance.

Plus, I get to sleep indoors.

> The USA was originally a land of opportunity. Why? Because you could get hold of land cheap.

There's cheap land all over the US. Throughout most of the midwest, you can buy acres and acres of productive, high quality land for <$10k acre. You won't have neighbors for miles and you'll have to construct your own roads, but it's out there and abundant, just like it was in the 19th century.

I totally disagree and the arguments you are supplying show me you aren't on the same wavelength, for example citing land outside cities as being cheap or that most landlords self-build (no). I can't write an essay on this but I disagree.

And suppose that someone follows the teachings of Rich Dad, Poor Dad but doesn't buy land or property, instead investing in something else that generates revenue, otherwise following the book's advice to the letter. Do you still object? On what grounds?

I can see you think that land tax would be fairer (I'm inclined to agree) but that's really not related to the message of the book. Are you opposed to private ownership of capital in general?

I think land prices are at the root of it all and I think for most of these advice books "assets" == "property", which includes pulling forward money creation in order (renting money from the bank) to capture labour via land monopoly.

Were this to stop I think that we'd see a lot more actual productive work and a fall in the need for people to work all the time. The existing system ensures we all work all the time. If we get more productive rents go up to capture the gain.

If this stopped we'd see more people able to opt out of the labour market and we'd see a shift towards employees dictating terms, who would demand a higher cut of their value added via higher wages. They'd also get to keep more as most income tax would be replaced by land value tax.

If you invest in wealth generation that's fine to take a share of this. I'd like to see the high end taxed so being born isn't like joining a game of Monopoly near the end but in general this works for me.

What I'd really like to see is people who create wealth getting to keep that. What I see now is a bunch of b@stards exploiting our flawed / corrupt debt based system to capture wealth creation.

Land is a special case. You can make more laptops so if want to corner the market in that go right ahead, waste your money. Land is finite and it's the source of all wealth. Why should someone own this in perpetuity and be free to extract a percent of labour from someone else, handing it down across generations like kings?

We should each contribute and if we contribute well we live well. An end to the rentier leeches.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltz3e9LDaJ0

First 10 seconds "the game Monopoly" used as praise. Originally called "the landlord's game" inspired by the writings of Henry George as a criticism of land enclosure and money. He retires early because he has a stream of income from the labour of others. Nice!

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/apr/11/secret-h...

Firstly, I'm tentatively in agreement when it comes to taxing land.

Secondly, I don't think this really has much to do with the book unless you think the returns to capital invested in land and housing is much greater than the returns to capital invested elsewhere.

Thirdly, land is only an issue because it's currently in short supply. You can't make laptops any more once we've run out of rare earth metals, say. When that happens we might have to start taxing stocks of them, too.

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