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Comment by s1artibartfast | Hacker News Reader

I always find statements like this to be a strange rhetorical tactic of debate.

They presuppose that a personally held view, and oftentimes fringe one, is universally true and accepted and then make a bold unsupported criticism.

The charitable take is that people making them don't know that their view is controversial and think it is shared fact.

The less charitable take is that they are intentionally misleading, and doing it as a debate tactic to claim ground while avoiding discussing the real disagreement.

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All throughout history, it is usually another society who comes in and takes an already occupied land by force and then charges a fee for the previous people to continue using it. Then there are complex laws set up to make it impossible for these previous people's to own their land again, becoming indebted in one way or another. After a while, after this land has been transferred, typically amongst the families of those who first took the land (or their friends), some people forget this history or are ignorant of it, and just go along with what has been done for years. Inevitably, those with the excess monetary value gained from rent is used to expand and establish these kinds of societal institutions so that it is part of the zeitgeist and thus a controversial take to think this kind of institution is an immoral, or bad, or exploitative one.

Source?

I believe you can Google "landlord history" and you'll get a plenty of results with some brief history of the term.

If you want to read further, look at history on colonization or apartheid which sets up these types of infrastructures or variations of it. History w/ Native Americans and what is going on in Israel are two recent/ongoing examples.

As for pre-capitalist history, you can look up "feudal land tenure", and before that is just different concepts of modes of land ownership across different geographies.

Is there a source that goes against this? I went to history class and I’ve read Wikipedia and stuff.

Are you saying that Adam Smith, the father of capitalism, and Karl Marx, the father of socialism and communism, both think like the above person, but they are the ones misleading?

Being a landlord is an economic and political matter. To pretend the status quo of current hierarchies is fine to go with because it is the status quo belief is an awful way to live. Imagine if any radicals you admire in history behaved this way.

Both Smith and Marx state their priors, and neither assume that their option is commonly held. Both make thoughtful and well articulated arguments.

this is like if Marx's Manifesto was one page saying "everyone knows landords are bad"

On the topic of radicals, there are a lot that I don't admire and were atrocious. being against the status quo is not inherently virtuous. Imagine if X mass murderer just respected the status quo.

you can be for challenging hierarchies, the status quo, and a more dynamic socio-economic structure without making yourself slave to your neighbor. For that matter, you can do it without trying to enslave your neighbor

I know this is an old comment (for HN) but I will check back in 24 hours), or we can take it offsite. I always like a good chat. "S1artibarfastHN" at Gmail

I have informed opinions on property ownership and housing. I was a director for 100-person housing Co-op. I have been a renter. I am currently a landlord squeezing one tenant for market rate and providing another tenant housing and perpetuity for utility costs.

I will contact you for sure.

- I’m unhoused and identify as a lumpenprole. - Everything is a spectrum imo. - I was referring to radicals that aren’t radlib or fascist leaning.

I’d be interested in the email I send you and a response on which orthodox left-wing radicals were atrocious. Or if we agree that those specific radicals were not atrocious but many others are.

Awesome being director of a coop! Though IME most housing coops are exclusionary and not remotely democratic*

*I mean real democracy, not what neoliberal countries have.

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