this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
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Rent-seeking behavior is when you seek economic rent (more compensation than is required for a resource to be employed) without creating value. If you repurpose a room to make it available to someone to rent, you’re creating value. Likely part of how you’re creating that value is via your own labor.
The home you live in is generally considered to be personal property, not private property, so ownership of capital isn’t happening in this scenario. “Doing X is immoral because it leads to you doing Y, which is immoral” (that it would lead to the exploitation of labor) is a slippery slope argument without any basis (and with plenty of anecdotal counterpoints).
You are not creating Value by allowing someone to use a room for a fee. This is just using the already created Value to rent-seek.
Using a room to rent out becomes Private Property, not Personal Property.
You created value when you made the room suitable for someone else’s use rather than your own. The room was not available and now it is. Value is an output, and the room didn’t intrinsically have value.
Your understanding of rent-seeking is not one I’ve seen literally anywhere else. What’s the basis for that?
How so?
The "Value" of the room was created when it was constructed and taxed. The "additional value" of a remodel will be reflected in the tax statements and property value (which is usually a return when sold). The room always had value, just not as a business asset which you want. These comments and the ones below are some of the craziest mental gymnastics I've seen this year. "but the landlord is my hero and stopped me from freezing by charging me 150% on the only place I can afford because all the real mean landlords took all the other houses". It's a scam, a con. A lord and serf arrangement carried on through centuries of oppression. It's a grift, has been since it's inception. Which came first, a house or a landlord? Which one was necessary and which one was created with excess capital that was distributed unequally?
There's no new value being created, the room was created once. Renting it out takes no labor, it isn't a service, it is literally just seeking income from ownership. "Value" isn't some mystical thing, it's a measure of inputs and outputs, and in the case of renting a room out, there are no new inputs.
It becomes Private Property the second you become a landlord and rent-seek. Rather than using it for yourself, you seek value from ownership.
I'm using fairly standard understandings of rent-seeking, pretending that allowing someone else to use something you own via a fee is providing a service is landlord justification, it isn't a service.
So there is absolutely no value to let someone else have a place to sleep safely?
No, there is no "value" being created by it. Value isn't a representation of "good" or "bad," but an expression of inputs and outputs, the inputs being labor and natural resources, and the outputs being Value itself.
The idea that someone can rent out housing and yet never lose ownership of the principle and thus perpetually gain money simply because they had more money in the beginning creates no new Value, and is thus rent-seeking.
Pretty sure you could count not freezing to death, having a space to keep your things safe, health, stability etc as a value output.
Did you read my comment? Value is an output measured by inputs, ie labor and natural resources, not how "desirable" or "good" a concept is.
All of what you listed is absolutely a good thing, but isn't value. Value is used for commodities, not what is individually a good thing.
Official Communist stance: there is zero distinction between personal property and private property. Hand over you toothbrush.
It's the People's Democratic Toothbrush, thank you very much. Now do 100 push-ups for Dialectical Materialism and become a Professional Letarian, a Pro-Letarian if you will, comrade! /s