Steve Nguyen runs two Airbnb units in a downtown Victoria apartment building, including one decorated and paying homage to the television show, “Friends”. He says he’s still reeling from the news he soon won't be able to operate it as a short-term rental since he doesn’t live there.
Dude we live in a world with actual billionaires. I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere calling people whose net worth is under $1mil “leeches”. If you get all these small-fry landlords to feel guilty and sell off their land, then the billionaires and corporations will happily shrug their shoulders and snap it right up, leaving us even worse off.
This honestly feels like that Oreos meme. “Pay no attention to us billionaires, it’s that guy’s uncle’s fault!”
i’m an anti-capitalist. i have a systemic critique with the systems of power which allow people who own things to acquire wealth on the basis of that ownership. billionaires are products of the same system which allows uncle landlord to impose rent on people who have no other option but to rent, because their obscene wealth comes from the exact same mechanism of ownership.
even if we didn’t have billionaires and corporate ghouls buying up every piece of property, and it was instead all owned by nice old uncles and aunties, the actual practice of owning land you aren’t using so people who need land have to pay you for it to live is still morally bankrupt, and is likely to reproduce new billionaires and corporate ghouls as those uncles and aunties consolidate their excess land into investment firms and property management companies to maximize the economic output of the land they own. the problem isn’t that billionaires exist, its that our economic system is set up to funnel resources towards the people who start out with the most resources.
i’m not saying that him selling the land is a good or morally preferable option, either. i just found the notion that a person is only a landlord because they inherited land a silly argument. there’s plenty of things you can do with land that isn’t renting it.