ScoobyWon't

So when these companies that sell this crap to the consumer start using robots to fulfil order taking, dispatch, sales and the rest, instead of human staff who would otherwise earn a wage, these companies will sell crap to who?

If people aren't getting an income, surely there is no market to sell it to...

Dingdongler

Well you know we don't agree on this matter so it all comes down to how many times you want to go around and around with this.

(I'll take the bait for now though....)

The problem is your view point is, as I've pointed out before, too simplistic. Here is an example. My friend has just bought and rented out a house to four students near a University. None of those tenants have any intention of buying in that locality as they are only there for three years.

So how is that exploitative? Do you see him as taking advantage of those students by charging them to give them a roof over their heads close to their place of study?

tony de wonderful

He's is charging them so he doesn't exercise his right to exclude them from the property. This is what rent is Ding, an imposed cost.

markjmd

iTrader: (11)

Wrong. He's charging them as consideration for his having invested his spare cash in a house, rather than blowing it on an expensive car, h00kers and coke, or investing it instead in shares, a KFC franchise, etc, etc., all of which might have provided him more enjoyment or made him more money, but which he's now gone without since buying a house.

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Landlords have always exploited tenants ... right back since feudal times! No point getting upset about it, some people are born selfish greedy *****, others are more balanced!

Dingdongler

Tony, you regurgitate that line time and time again as though it answers all counter views, it doesn't. Actually it just sounds like O'level Philosophy nonsense.

Let's look at the options

If he doesn't buy the property and doesn't rent it out, what then? The students have nowhere to live, unless you want the govt to spend your tax money on building housing for them (which is an option of course)

My friend can't be held responsible for land enclosure acts from hundreds of years ago can he? Nor can the students. They all have to exist within the system, as imperfect as it maybe.

I'd be genuinely interested to know what you feel the solutions are. We all know what you see as the problem, what do you see as the solution?

daveyj

iTrader: (1)

Up until very recently, I had been a tenant for 14years. At no one point have I ever felt exploited. Landlords have supplied me with a housing service the bank and my own finances could not in terms of ownership. I've always viewed renting as a service. The law protected me as a tenant and my money ensured the building was in service and secure. If anything went pop through no fault of my own it was fixed. Granted, most tenants and landlords will have horror stories. Technically, a night in a hotel is no different. You, as a "tenant" are allowed access to a room and hotel facilities for a predetermined amount of time for an agreed price. Is a Hotel/Hostel/Motel exploititive? I don't think so myself but then if they are so is anyone else who has something someone else hasn't got but is happy to provide them with it for a price.

tony de wonderful

It's not a service; a service is doing something like mowing a lawn, washing a car, or doing someone's accounts. The landlord charges you rent so they don't exercise their state granted right to exclude you from their property.

If I was declared owner of the air in your house and you then owed me money so you could breath it, would I be providing you a service?

daveyj

iTrader: (1)

Or providing you with somewhere dry and safe to sleep for a monthly fee. The owner of the house is merely exercising their right to grant you use of their home for a fixed fee, in the same sense that a bank grants you a mortgage to become indebted to a house for a fee. It's a service. Nothing more nothing less. As long as it is conducted fairly and within the confines of the law, what's the problem? The air analogy is little bit daft as I could successfully argue that my carbon dioxide emissions and green grass and trees are equally as important for your air, therefore can countercharge you. Whilst it is totally a plausible arguement albeit a bit leftfield, it is highly unprobable. You'd need an airtight house to guarantee purity of your resource, I mean we wouldn't want dirty outside air coming in and ruining your stock or your income for that matter. Then when it ultimately runs out how do you replace it? Who do you charge, presuming I die from asphyxiation because I forgot my indoor, dry use, Scuba gear to get me through. Do I need to open a window and stick my head out or something? Technically if it's from outside and you control what's IN my home as you put it.................like I said, daft analogy. I'll refer you back to my Hotel Room/Accommodation one which hasn't been created out of thin air (I make no excuses for the pun) and is far more relevant in this day and age. You can't turn back the clocks on the assertive few who decided to carve up the land. It's not like we're suing the tectonic plates for shifting us all around is it?!

zip106

Goodness me.
A sensible and thought out post on NSR.


What is the world coming to?
I despair at mankind, etc etc...

daveyj

iTrader: (1)

Viva La Resistance. 36mg of Ritalin a day and one post at a time. Representing!!!

Dingdongler

Tony, you didn't respond to my question as to what you felt the solution was? May I assume you can only see problems but have no idea what the answer is?

tony de wonderful

The wiki definition of an economic service:

Property is neither perishable nor consumable being as it is essentially a monopoly right over an area of land. Nothing is used up by the tenant. Nothing is commissioned by the act of renting. Nothing is rendered.

As I've said before a landlord doesn't have to get off their sofa to claim rent, so what exactly is the service being provided?

Why would I have to guarantee purity of the resource? I'm only exercising a license to charge people to breath air within the boundaries defined by that license. If you don't like the air then leave.

You could have said the same thing about Slavery, how it can't be turned back and it's the way things will always be. People used to believe that.

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

The local scuba shop charge me £1 to fill up my scuba tank.

Did I purchase the air off them? Or did I just pay them to move it?

tony de wonderful

You purchased a service to be exact. You commissioned them to compress air and put it in the tank.

markjmd

iTrader: (11)

What's used up is the ability to put that space to an alternative use over time. What's commissioned or rendered is the assurance that no demand will be made to vacate the space for the purposes of putting it to an alternative use, for the duration of the rental contract.

I've made pretty much the same point to you multiple times in various threads when this subject comes up, yet you never seem to acknowledge it. Is that because it makes a nonsense of your tortuous neo-socialist pronouncements in such an embarrassingly simple way, or are you just extremely selective in whom you deign to respond to posts from?

Lisawrx

iTrader: (1)

Tony, I may have missed it in the many threads you have derailed with this topic, but what exactly do you want in terms of housing availability?

I mean, do you think everybody should be free to just occupy any unused property and claim it as their own? Should we all be free to just build our own home on any available land FOC?

Is your problem with just individuals that BTL, or do you feel the same about social housing providers?

tony de wonderful

An opportunity cost isn't an absolute cost.

You should read the definition of service again if you think an 'assurance' meet the definition. Clearly it doesn't.

Dingdongler

Tony, both Lisa and I have asked you what you feel the solutions are to the problems you perceive to be present with regards to housing/land ownership.

You've ignored both of us.

That makes you a troll, don't moan when I treat you like one then.

markjmd

iTrader: (11)

It's a cost nevertheless, the financial value of which the tenant and landlord agree upon when entering into a rental contract with one another.


Fine, if you're going to be that picky, in addition to providing the assurance not to use the space for some other purpose, the landlord sees to it that the space is occupied by a habitable dwelling for use by the tenant.

Adding my voice to Ding's and Lisa's, I'd also be very interested to know what you see as the solution, if you're still not happy with the above explanation.

dpb

http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/...sf06d8187.jpeg

Matteeboy

I'm happy being a serial renter and don't feel exploited - but then we rent places that are owned outright (and have been for decades) which means no mortgage being covered, otherwise we'd be paying double(ish) I reckon.

Somewhere has just come up nearby that we could buy outright if all goes well. A few hoops to jump through but we're ever so slightly excited...

joz8968

iTrader: (13)

JTaylor

Sorry to jump on the bandwagon here, Tony, but whilst I get your position from an ethical and philosophical perspective, I'm not really sure what you propose as an alternative or workable solution. I'm afraid I'm going to have to call you and see what you have.

tony de wonderful

There is an opportunity cost to me staying in bed on Saturday but it doesn't mean that I should pay someone for the privilege of doing this.

As for the 'contract' being something freely entered into, consider how one is supposed to live without being on some piece of land?

tony de wonderful

Ding this is a nonsenseical line of reasoning. Cancer has always been a problem but nobody used to know what to do about it, indeed still don't with some forms of cancers.

markjmd

iTrader: (11)

A tortuously absurd and irrelevant analogy. For one thing, it was you who denied yourself the opportunity in the scenario you're describing, not a third-party, and for another, it would normally be the person who's suffered the cost in opportunity who expects payment.

Unless you can show me where a specific tenant and a specific landlord have been forced to enter into a contract specifically with each other, then I'll say it's freely entered into.

So, now that's out of the way, how about we move on to your solution? Or are you already conceding with your cancer analogy that you don't have a solution?

Lisawrx

iTrader: (1)

Well it's a good job that everybody just didn't throw the towel in and accept it as problem they could do nothing about, and therefore cease to try.

An absolute cure does not exist, and we still fail to understand a lot about many cancers, but at least steps and developments have been made.

However with you, you come on here, thread after thread derailing them to moan about BTLs, but not only do you offer no alternative scenario (whether it would or wouldn't ever happen), you don't even say what you might like to see in an ideal world.

tony de wonderful

Now your argument is circular, you are saying that the owners should be paid because they are the owner. That they should exercise their right to be paid because they have a right to be paid.

The opportunity cost you invokes applies to the 'commodity' of property in an abstract way and doesn't imply an exchange of cash. If I live on piece of land X, it can't be used say to grow corn on or turn into a theme park, that is the opportunity cost.

Like I said, there is no absolute cost to land. Nobody has to labour to produce land, it comes from nature. So why should we pay for it, or more to the point, pay a private individual so we can live on it? They never produced the land.

JTaylor

So what do you propose?