I disagree with you, and I won’t get into it with you because you write things like “I agree with you” and proceed to disagree with me.

Believe whatever you want.

That’s one of the greatest thing Valve is doing. They’re breathing life into Linux gaming.

Food and housing should be covered as part of basic income. We absolutely have the global production for it. The implementation is all but blocked because of earth-legacy, so I’m not saying it’s practical with today’s society. It would take extreme global change.

People make comments like “then why would anybody work” but that doesn’t take into account how damn efficient our farming and production is. We’re on the cusp of extreme automation and the actual number of workers required is very low. People would still work to own better homes, better food, better cars, better electronics, more access to travel, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not sure how to get there form here, but there’s nothing technical preventing it - only sociological. Which is a bigger hurdle in my opinion. Technology is easy. People are not.

I don’t believe binary logic is very useful. So I’m not going to answer “am I a leech” because I don’t think it has a yes or no answer.

You have an asset that you can’t afford, and to afford it you rent it out. That is absolutely valid in a capitalist society, and many people do it. This allows you to hold the asset instead of selling it. That means there’s one fewer property on the market, which means that if somebody wants that home they have to rent it from you, where your equity increases and they get a place to live. Again, in a capitalist society this is absolutely valid. And it’s not like you aren’t taking risk, you could get a bad tenant and they could damage the unit, in turn decreasing your equity. One common “protest” I’ve seen among renters is to poor grease down the sink, damaging the plumbing over the long time, creating a huge long term cost for the owner. Or flushing cat litter down the toilet, causing a blockage, and similar results. You are accepting risk, and capitalist society says if you accept risk you deserve reward. But from a human-focused perspective you get a very different conclusion.

An issue many people have with this is that the renter is gaining no equity and you are while you aren’t contributing production to society. In the world we live this is valid. Another example of this would be dividend stocks, if you hold KO (Coke) you get quarterly dividends, and really you’re not actually contributing anything. These are capital gains.

My biggest issue with capital gains is that they’re usually taxed lower than labour gains. I think that should be reversed. If capital gains were heavily taxed and that tax was used to better the community then I think it would have more justification. But I digress,

If you sold that property it would probably just go to an investor, but in a world where people couldn’t own investment properties it would go to a person or family who would live it in, allowing them to build equity themselves. The number of properties being held and rented out has an impact on the homes available to people buying, or rather being forced to rent.

But ultimately I believe that renting and charging rent is bad for society as a whole. But I also don’t think you selling your property wouldn’t have any meaningful impact. I think it needs to be a systematic change to be meaningful.

So I’d say you do you, but you are taking advantage of the system and renters. But that’s the reality of the world we live in. Doesn’t mean it’s OK, but does mean you can do it. Also means I won’t have sympathy for you if somebody damages your property. But maybe that’s because I’m a bad person, I don’t know.

I firmly believe homes are for living in, not generating income - even if that income is only to maintain your ownership on your asset. But if you follow that perspective your life will be a bit worse.

Like I said, I don’t take the binary perspective.

Easily done, I already avoid them.

Even without capitalism you need production, and children used to be part of that. Back then you would have as many kids as you could so that they could run your farm.

I’m not defending the current system, but profit isn’t the only reason the birthrate is declining in so many countries.

Tell that to the french

~2 days without food, for most people, I assume

Hey thanks, I do lean a little hard on the self deprecating humor sometimes.

Reddit has been getting worse for years, and the comments there are so adversarial and insincere.

Users definitely can get sick of bad sites, what happened with X shows that. Their user base is a small fraction of what it was a few years ago.

I’m definitely liking it here though!

More like I have no personality and just go with the flow 😜

In 2010 I was part of the Great Digg Exodus, and now in 2025 I’m part of the Reddit->Lemmy migration. Truly I’m part of the crowd.