General Discussion
Showing Original Post only (View all)Why not outlaw landlordism? [View all]
Consider for a moment: What would happen if real estate could not be rented, leased, or borrowed against, but only either bought, sold, or used by the owner?
An obvious initial objection would be "But most people can't afford to buy real estate!" Then a beautiful thought occurs: Because they can't afford it, and the owners can no longer rent it out, lease it out, or borrow against it, owners have only two ways to make money from it - either sell it or use it as productive capital that creates jobs.
Since the vast majority of people - including (in fact, especially) real estate speculators - have no interest in or capacity to run a productive enterprise, the only practical avenue of profit for most real estate owners would be to sell the property. If they have no personal or professional use for it, they're only in it for the money, and they can't make money on it except by selling it, then that is what they will do.
So what happens when people with property want to sell it, but consumers can't afford to buy it? The price goes down. And without the hugely inflationary forces of bubble-speculation and landlordism, it would go down massively. It would go down as far as necessary for people to afford it, resulting in a huge redistribution of wealth back to the average person.
Sure, some holders of surplus real estate would try to hold on to their property and wait for a more favorable market, but unless owners acted as a single giant monopoly, enough would sell that the price would just keep going lower, causing still more to sell to avoid future losses. The price would then stabilize far below what it is in a market supported by renting, leasing, and borrowing.
Also, since you can't borrow against it, homeowners would be less tempted to use their property as a cash machine, meaning they would be more likely to hold on to it in the long-term.
Pass the law such that it unfolds gradually, so that present renters are not thrown out on the street, and I don't see a downside.
Thoughts?
(Edit: Wow, I didn't realize I was thinking so far outside the box here. It just seems like common sense that the tenant-landlord relationship is a fundamentally Bad Thing for society and democracy, given that it reduces a "free" market into a medieval Manorial estate. This should not be a radical idea on a liberal discussion forum. Be less conservative and more thoughtful about how things can be better, folks.)