i knew this. it's how the rents can skyrocket and the houses can just sit empty. individuals can't do that because they only have one or two spare houses.
like not to say landlords should exist, but the impact it would have, the *shuddering* impact it would have on life to just rule that one entity can't own *multiple* properties - one of their own, one to rent - would be unbelievable
*the reason* that landlords suck as much as they do is because you have no leverage. you can refuse to give them rent - that doesn't hurt them. they can survive without it and they have state violence to guarantee they will get it in time.
they can wait for your rent. they can wait for a tenant in fact. they can kick you out because losing $1500/mo. doesn't hurt them compared to having to lift a finger to do their supposed job. They're getting $1500/mo. from 30 other people.
the more tenants you have, the more buffer you have. where'd that put us? multinationals own most of the nations housing and there is n o t h i n g you can do to hurt them. they will never feel your petty little strongarm.
refuse to pay your rent because the shower doesn't work? who fucking cares. your property "manager" is a functionary who gets paychecks from a corp with billions in the bank. your sad little $1500 is a line item in a database in Delaware. no human has ever seen it.
no person is aware of your private revolt. a computer notices your lack of payment, a computer issues late notices, a person making minimum wage tacks them to your door. they don't even know what's in them.
leverage works against people. resistance works against people. these things don't work against businesses so massive it's literally impossible for any human to know you exist.
if we take group action they'll just grow to the point where they can survive that unscathed. they'll shrug, turn to each other, shake hands and monopolize, and you'd have to mobilize 40% of the nation before they'd even wake up and notice
the solutions to our social problems are in the form of laws so draconic that nobody would actually believe you're really proposing them. literally erasing entire industries that never should have existed.
There is no threat bigger than mergers and acquisitions. The *size* of companies is the problem. Businesses have socialism. They help each other out, they form coalitions. *They* unionize, because there are few enough that they can communicate clearly.
We would have socialism if there were only like 50,000 people in the entire nation. We could form a consensus, but with 300,000,000 it's just too hard. Businesses don't have that problem. Their CEOs can decide to buy one house and sleep two to a bedroom and spread the rent out.
And it works! It works fucking perfectly! Thousands of companies get absorbed into one, and then - surprise surprise - nobody has enough leverage to move the resulting boulder. It's unimaginable that you could do it because they're tied in to EVERYTHING.
Of course we can't hold out for perfection. We have to do what we can in the mean time, we need to apply SOME kind of leverage - but the ideal DOES need to be the goal, and sooner rather than later.
We *have* to eradicate the entire current structure of property ownership. We can't survive it long term.
