Forgive me for only TLDW and not watching, but was ack mentioned?

I’ve never looked back.

How would you defined a what a landlord does, then?

I’m happy to use a different word if that would help, but whatever you call it, there is a structure in place that allows people who own property to make money by doing nothing. Call it ‘land lording’, call it ‘passive income’.

is an inevitable component of life in contemporary society

Yes, but only if it’s:

a. Legal, and: b. Some people can accumulate enough wealth to buy up multiple properties, and: c. Some people are too poor to afford any property (or qualify for financing).

Which is the situation we’re in.

it’s problematic when excessive and greedy

Well we can agree on this. But I’d go further and say that’s always going to be the case, because:

a. Housing isn’t something you can opt out of. b. The people who own the homes have all the bargaining power. c. The more money you can accumulate through renting the more power you have.

Great questions!

1. Yep, you can sell it* to someone else. Or it’ll just sit there and then I would advocate for some kind of common sense squatters law to take effect.

2. Short answer: See 1; long answer: you could find somewhere run by e.g. a housing co-op, or a (long-stay) hotel, or a property management company* and stay there.

3. Yes I’d be fine with that, caveats:

   • You are also benefitting from someone tending to the house while you’re gone, so I’d expect the amount to be commensurate with that*.
   • You’re not going on holiday to another one of many other properties you own which you also rent out when you’re not in them.

Note: All my answers involve exchanging some kind of value (indicated by *) for money, and that’s my key point. If you’re actually contributing something then I have no problem with that. But that’s not what being a landlord is. A few ways this is evident:

1. We already have words for all the jobs: Architect, building super, cleaner, designer, engineer, landscaper, manager, plumber. These are useful skills, people should get paid for them, but:
2. A landlord is different. They make money by rent seeking, per Wikipedia: “the act of growing one’s existing wealth by manipulating the social or political environment without creating new wealth”. They don’t do anything except own a piece of paper (and the blessing of our current laws) which says they can do that.

Now, the water can get muddied when people are both landlords and do the other jobs (e.g. cleaning), but it’s pretty easy to think of other examples of this:

I also skim money out of the register, but I also get paid to work in the store. In both cases (rent seeking and skimming) I’m making money, but not actually adding any value.

Or, to my original example: Scalping tickets. I’m not putting on the show, I’m not the talent, or involved with the venue, I’m not printing or shipping the tickets. I’m not doing anything except gaming the system to make money.

Just like robbing a bank, just like ponzi schemes, and just like Sam Bankman-Fried: Gaining money, not adding value (aka creating wealth).

The only difference is we decided (as a society) some are legal, and some are illegal, and I have a good idea why (see Figure 1.).

The people who live in it.

Not a person who owns a piece of paper that says they own it.

Landlords create housing in the same way scalpers create tickets: They don’t.

The houses are built, the work is done.

Flashbacks to when I lived in the UK and so much misinformation in the (failed) referendum to get it there.

Made me realize: Consider the average voter and then consider explaining the merits of different voting systems to them. It’ll never happen.

What a lazy joke.

This. I’m a computer programmer, never been in a union, but after twenty years of startups I cannot believe how good it is to be at a small, stable, employee owned company.

Only looking back do I realize that the people doing the actual work were never in control, and just how damaging that is.

To pour you life and soul into building something (time, and time again), and then have it taken away from you again, and again.

Never going back.

I think the USA’s National Weather Service Twitter presence is a good example.

If you look deep enough you’ll see caveats like “supplemental service provided by NWS” and “Twitter feeds and tweets do not always reflect the most current information”, but the truth is that a lot of people (and news organizations) depend on Twitter as their main interface to the NWS, and rarely if ever go to their website.

That obviously creates a tension, which bubbles up in scares like this:

Before last weekend’s storm, the National Weather Service’s Baltimore-Washington office sent this tweet saying that because of a new Twitter policy, automated tweets that show advisories, watches, and warnings might not load.

Contrast that to a world where NOAA (the federal administration which runs NWS) has their own instance: they get the benefit of being able to disseminate updates in a consumer friendly ‘social media’ style and they retain full control of platform and can be sure the service won’t be held hostage, or go down in the middle of a storm.

Finally: if you’re reading this from the USA, consider contact NOAA/NWS to let them know you’d like a fediverse presence, I did!

Is is pronounced eye-vee-eye, or pipe-slash-(slash-?)slash-pipe(-pipe?)?

Bwahaha:

4. Even if you do want a pizza, you should probably be careful with this provider. In testing, I once nearly ordered every item on the Domino’s menu, which would probably have been expensive and embarrassing.

Reminds me of the old adage:

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history – with the possible exceptions of hand guns and tequila.