• 🏳️‍⚧️ 新星 [she/they]@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      Execute his will’s provisions now while he’s still alive and live off the state and any remaining Social Security checks. US policy only really gives help when you’ve finally ran out of money…

      • MaoTheLawn [any, any]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        I would not want to live off of United States social security if I had severe short term memory loss

        The alternative for the market is just someone else probably renting the building out anyway. Would rather have a disabled old man as a landlord than some corporate slime

            • Gay_Tomato [they/them, it/its]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Why is this random stranger expected to support this old man until death instead of the old man’s family or the government? Its on them to figure out a way to support the old man now that he can’t extort someone for a living. Like what are they even offering this guy in exchange for taking care of their father? Nothing but litigation? Guess the old man wasn’t that important. edgeworth-shrug

              • MaoTheLawn [any, any]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                The government should be supporting him. There should a good enough system in place that it’s normal to care for our elders. That is not the reality.

                Old man is a tiny part of a vast system. Yeah, fine, we can be scientific Marxists and outline the implicit relationships going on here, or we can be compassionate leftists and see that this clearly is a weird hill to die on.

                In my eyes, if you’re living with a serious disability in a nation where there is a terrible social safety net then hey, fuck it, landlord a small property. I don’t really care. I’ve got bigger shit to fry. There will never be a ruling disabled class.

            • CatoPosting [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Does something immoral become moral because a disabled person is doing it? Wouldn’t tricking an able bodied/minded landlord into giving up their property be good? Or do you think we have to just be better than our enemies at all moments?

              Landlords delenda est

              • AlpineSteakHouse [any]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                Does something immoral become moral because a disabled person is doing it? Wouldn’t tricking an able bodied/minded landlord into giving up their property be good? Or do you think we have to just be better than our enemies at all moments?

                The weird thing about morality is that depending on the circumstances, the same action can become more or less justified.

                An able-bodied landlord, at worst, would still be able to get a job like the rest of us. This man is entirely dependent on the income the property provides and has no way to augment his income at this point. The stock market is also unethical, would you feel the same if his 401k got signed over to someone? The answer is the dissolution of these predatory means of ownership while ensuring a good standard of living for everyone. Not taking an disabled, eldery man’s main source of income for your personal gain.

                The tenant is not some hero of the working class fighting against the landlords. They’re most likely some shithead swindler who would have stolen someone’s primary residence if they thought they could get away with it.

              • MaoTheLawn [any, any]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                I just think this rigidity is pointless and feels like leftist internet edgelording. The disabled elderly man will be rendered helpless. He’s taken a source of income that fits his means in a barbaric system. I don’t see a viable alternative, really. Short term memory loss. That’s severely debilitating.

                Maybe he did it back when landlording wasn’t his only means of income - I don’t know. It doesn’t matter to me because he probably wasnt educated about why landlording is exploitative. It’s sadly a normal thing to do, and sort of a natural reaction to alienation from normal labour for many people who again, are totally uneducated on the topic and inundated in capitalist realism. The chances are, elderly man was and is just some guy. Not inherently evil, and in my eyes deserving of compassion. It doesn’t sound like he owns a whole raft of properties.

                Landlord delenda est but this particular one I have sympathy for.

                No, we don’t have to better than our enemies in all moments. I don’t have a civility fetish. This is a fringe case.

                • CatoPosting [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  Just pretty weird to me for a person with Mao in their name to be defending a landlord, any landlord. If the man is truly that disabled, let his kid sell the man’s house and put him in a rest home of decent repute, or move him in with them.

                  • MaoTheLawn [any, any]@hexbear.net
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                    1 year ago

                    To be honest I don’t even think Mao would’ve been appalled by this landlord. Rogue take I know, but read up on accounts of landlords in 50’s China. Enslaving, raping, pillaging, torturing. Compare what they do to what this old man is doing. I don’t even think rural peasants in the throes of revolution would’ve considered killing this defenseless old man.

                    If they dispossessed him of his house - well, alright - the conditions in which landlording has become normalized have now changed. It’s fair. I just think this is not one of those scenarios, and the guy who stole the house off him probably isn’t some epic internet leftist. Probably just a generic swindler.

                • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  Not begrudging him taking an abusive method of getting money is one thing, but acting like he should beyond that be insulated from any consequences of that abuse, even a relatively mild consequence that doesn’t involve him losing the home he lives in, is ridiculous. If he wants to play the game and make enemies, that is his fucking choice.

              • MaoTheLawn [any, any]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                An elderly man with severe short term memory loss and one extra property is not even close to the same as Joe Biden and national security secrets.

                I know you’re sort of doing a bit, but that’s a bad comparison. Of course I would con an establishment warhawk rapist out of national security secrets. I would not steal a house outright off an elderly man with short term memory loss.

                • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  Class antagonism applies in both cases, and when we have a means to benefit as a class, we should leverage it to the hilt. This dude seems to have several extra properties, but if it was just the one, then congratulations to him, he gets to be a prole like the rest of us and receive that level of consideration. Perhaps he should have asked the renter why they were in the situation they were in first.

                  As long as the landlord chooses to obstruct progress, he has made his bed and he can lie in it. We should not systemically discriminate against people with dementia, but not using a concrete practical advantage that you have over someone in terms of functional competence, whether the senile, confused codger is a landlord or the President, is bullshit moralism. If someone is on a crutch and threatening someone else with a weapon, you can be damn sure that I’m kicking it out from under them unless they can be talked down. That such an action could be confused by fools for ableism is of no interest to the person being threatened.

                  We have no choice but to live in brutal capitalism, and we must brutally use it or else abstain all the way to the grave knowing that we failed to improve the world but at least were able to save the very people fucking us over from getting hurt by the consequences of their own fucking actions.

              • MaoTheLawn [any, any]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                Yes, but are they fucking them in some crazy way, or is this old man just doing what is often done by people are capable of it?

                With severe short term memory loss, I would say this is a fringe case where landlording is fair enough.

                Maybe he did it back when landlording wasn’t his only means of income - I don’t know. It doesn’t matter to me because he probably wasnt educated about why landlording is exploitative. It’s sadly a normal thing to do, and sort of a natural reaction to alienation from normal labour for many people who again, are totally uneducated on the topic and inundated in capitalist realism. The chances are, elderly man was and is just some guy. Now he’s some guy with no alternative means of income possible. Not inherently evil, and in my eyes deserving of compassion. It doesn’t sound like he owns a whole raft of properties.

    • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      What is this take? He can do the same as anyone in his position who doesn’t own an extra house does. Why should some random person be expected to support him? The tenant could do more good donating the rent money to a charitable organization helping elderly in need - but then we should ask why we’re asking that of that tenant specifically. We don’t know what the elderly man’s financial situation looks like but it’s obviously not the tenant’s responsibility to support him.

      • AlpineSteakHouse [any]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        What is this take? He can do the same as anyone in his position who doesn’t own an extra house does.

        This is only really available in hindsight. The old man doesn’t have the time nor money to figure out a new retirement strategy, especially if a rental property was just signed over. The best situation would be to sell the house and hopefully live off the investment from that until he passes. What’s not good is is removing a source of retirement income from someone when they don’t have a fallback.

        Removing landlords as an occupation while ensuring a minimum standard of living is good. Swindling an old man out of his retirement plan for personal gain and possible throwing him into the streets without a safety net is not.

        • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Absolutely ridiculous. That’s like saying we shouldn’t free elderly people’s slaves because they need them to care for them. The elderly man isn’t going to be “thrown into the streets” because he already has a home. Again, you have no basis to assume that this is his only source of income or that he doesn’t have sufficient savings. He at the very least has family, like the person who made this post.

          And what about the tenant? For all we know they could be elderly and disabled too, only they weren’t rich enough to “plan for retirement” by setting up a situation where they can steal rent from someone else. They could be saddled with medical debt, they could be a single mother trying to support a family, if you get to speculate about the landlord’s situation then I get to speculate about the tenant’s.

          Completely bizarre pro-landlord takes on Hexbear, can’t believe what I’m seeing. It’s not the tenant’s responsibility.

          • AlpineSteakHouse [any]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            The elderly man isn’t going to be “thrown into the streets” because he already has a home. Again, you have no basis to assume that this is his only source of income or that he doesn’t have sufficient savings. He at the very least has family, like the person who made this post.

            Property taxes, medical expenses, etc etc. Being retired and owning a home doesn’t mean you suddenly stop having to pay for things. They presumably live in shithole america where if you don’t have the money to retire when you get older you just die in the streets. It’s very reasonable to assume that if a significant source of your income disappeared overnight you wouldn’t be in a great place.

            And what about the tenant? For all we know they could be elderly and disabled too, only they weren’t rich enough to “plan for retirement” by setting up a situation where they can steal rent from someone else.

            Even in this situation, it would just be someone poorer fucking over someone else for personal gain. Stocks are unethical too, but if your retirement account was stolen by someone to pay for their medical expenses you’d still feel it unjustified. Landlords as a class should be eliminated, but that doesn’t mean literally senile landlords should be left with no safety net.

            It’s not the tenant’s responsibility.

            It’s an unequal exchange that could end up in the elderly man losing his home due to loss of income. If the tenant had paid the cost of the house in rent, you’d be more justified in thinking this. If the tenant had only been living there for a few years, then it’s a different story. You don’t get to play “not my responsibility” when one party is directly responsible for the state of the other.

            • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              if your retirement account was stolen by someone to pay for their medical expenses you’d still feel it unjustified.

              Which is exactly why I don’t approve of the landlord stealing rent.

              You don’t get to play “not my responsibility” when one party is directly responsible for the state of the other.

              Oh, I didn’t realize the tenant was the one collecting property taxes, causing the landlord’s disabilities, or crafting policy such that they wouldn’t have a safety net.

              The tenant is not directly responsible for the landlord’s state. He’s just not relieving the landlord’s state by giving him money out of his own pocket. He is no more responsible for giving him money then you are. You could track down the user and offer to venmo them every month, and the fact that you’re not doing so makes you exactly as “directly responsible” for his state as the tenant’s actions.

        • booty [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Swindling an old man out of his retirement plan for personal gain and possible throwing him into the streets without a safety net is not.

          If the old man is a landlord, yeah it is. It’s the least he deserves.

      • MaoTheLawn [any, any]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        yes haha funny but the conditions are clearly different, this guy owns one property compared to a farmstead with acres and slaves and the ability to kill or take your daughter’s with impunity. If the state dispossessed the guy of his home to give him an actual social safety plan it would be completely fine.

        • WhyEssEff [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          So, in the meantime, it’s cool that the burden of paying for this man’s retirement plan is placed onto the proletarians who pay the rent? hasan-ok-dude

          If a homeless person were suddenly gifted the deed to a house, would it be okay if they started renting it out for passive income? After all, there’s no social safety net, and this is the one opportunity they’ve been granted to gain stability. What are they supposed to do? Not take advantage of that? Call me a utopian, but yeah, they shouldn’t.

          Renting out a property simply shifts the burden that you take onto the less fortunate. It’s a fundamentally capitalist act. I’m not sorry for being a dick to this old man. If he planned to retire using the funds siphoned from people simply seeking shelter, he should have understood the inherent risks that come with such a plan and the burden he has thus shifted over to his tenants.

          Finding yourself oppressed in a capitalist system is not some magical moral hand-wave that allows you to conscientiously take up the position of the oppressor. Is he a victim of circumstance? Maybe. Sucks for him. Shouldn’t have staked his retirement on landlordism shrug-outta-hecks

          • MaoTheLawn [any, any]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            for me, it depends if the homeless person is capable of other work

            I’ll just leave it at personally it’s not something I would be able to do unless the old man was a truly vile human.