On the morality of renting

[Battlegrinder]

This came up in another thread, it's not quite on topic there but it was interesting enough as an idea I thought it merited further discussion.

Also there is a strong argument to be made that renting as a business should be done away with. If you own more than one house either sell it, or keep it as a summer home or something. People who say that people should be able to use what they own to make money however they want are dishonest unless they are extreme libertarian. Most conservatives are pro renting and leasing(instead of buying and selling ownership in the property as a whole) and are pro usury because they say people should be able to engage in commerce however they want, yet they also pass laws to ban prostitution where a woman might want to use what she has to make money. It’s not consistent.

No what I have a problem with is you owning a house say worth $100,000. Then charging someone to live in there with rent $1000 a month within ten years if they lived there they would have paid more than the house is worth, that’s why I feel renting and usury should be banned because it’s immoral just like prostitution is immoral.

You seem to be making a few points here, which don't always quite align.

There's a clear difference between you renting out your property and renting out your person, and you can easily oppose one without the other. As your yourself seem to argue, the issue with prostitutes is not that they're cruelly taking advantage of thier clients, it's that they're often taken advantage of themselves and are often not doing this of thier own free will and cannot be verified to be doing so, a situation that is not the case when it comes to landlords, where as you again say, the moral issue is client side.

Which brings us to your second point. I would first note that "paid more than the thing is worth" is hardly unique to apartments. It can happen with mortgages, vehicles, vehicle repairs, appliance repairs, etc.

That aside, I don't see why it's immoral to allow such a thing to happen. Perhaps someone prefers the cheaper rent over the cost of a mortgage and likes the convenience of not having to maintain the home, for example. Why is it wrong to allow them to make that choice?

 

[Rocinante]

This came up in another thread, it's not quite on topic there but it was interesting enough as an idea I thought it merited further discussion.





You seem to be making a few points here, which don't always quite align.

There's a clear difference between you renting out your property and renting out your person, and you can easily oppose one without the other. As your yourself seem to argue, the issue with prostitutes is not that they're cruelly taking advantage of thier clients, it's that they're often taken advantage of themselves and are often not doing this of thier own free will and cannot be verified to be doing so, a situation that is not the case when it comes to landlords, where as you again say, the moral issue is client side.

Which brings us to your second point. I would first note that "paid more than the thing is worth" is hardly unique to apartments. It can happen with mortgages, vehicles, vehicle repairs, appliance repairs, etc.

That aside, I don't see why it's immoral to allow such a thing to happen. Perhaps someone prefers the cheaper rent over the cost of a mortgage and likes the convenience of not having to maintain the home, for example. Why is it wrong to allow them to make that choice?

I'll address your last paragraph.

I rent. I have a stable income, savings, and nearly an 800 credit score. I can afford to buy a house, and get good terms on the loan. I rent because I WANT TO. Because I might take a new job far away. I also have landscaping take care of the premises and if anything breaks, I don't have to pay for it, and I don't have to pay for maintenance. My apartments even provide us with light bulbs.

I rent, because I WANT to rent.

But by @King Arts logic, I shouldn't be allowed to do this because land lords are taking advantage of me somehow....by providing me goods and services that I want, for a price that I feel is fair.

 

[Bear Ribs]

The idea that "They're paying more than it's worth" is a thorny and contentious one in the first place. Money is largely a social construct, a thing is "worth" whatever a person pays for it in the first place.

A home buyer can't get a home for 100,000 by paying 1,000 a month either, mortgage interest is a thing and to buy a house on credit you're going to be looking at quite a bit over, for a 100,000 home at 3.8% interest (extremely low) you'll pay $264,959.50 over 30 years, so you're still paying "more than it's worth." Meanwhile, a renter across 30 years at 1,000 a month will wind up paying $360,000. Rent doesn't seem so unreasonable in comparison now does it?

Now consider that the landlord is paying the home's insurance. The average homeowner's insurance runs a bit over a hundred dollars a month. Renter's insurance is more expensive, insurance companies know renters don't take care of their homes since it's not their property and raise rates to match, about half again as much.

So across the 360 months of the mortgage, the homeowner will pay another $39,240. We're up to $304,199 for homeownership.

Now let's consider taxes. The landlord pays property taxes, not the renter. Taxes are all over the place but tend to be between 0.5 and 1.5 percent, with a few places on the east coast being much higher. Let's assume 0.5%. Five hundred dollars a year, fifteen thousand across 30 years. We're up to $319,199 for homeownership.

The average landlord does six repairs to a rental home per year. The normally assumed calculation is that annual repairs will eat 1.5 monthly payments. So 1,500 a year, 45,000 across 30 years. The homeowner is down 364,199 in the end, while the renter is down 360,000. All in all, the renter is not actually paying more than the owner is.

These calculations are going to get a bit fuzzy once taxes get involved, there are several ways for both homeowners and landlords to take significant deductions, and they vary so much it's not easy to compare. Renters can rarely deduct anything so they will lose out there. However, I think this makes it clear that the renter really isn't being fleeced dramatically more than the home buyer is. At the end of the period, the homeowner has the advantage of owning their own home, while the renter does not, however the renter has greater convenience, ease of movement, and peace of mind since they are not going to be financially ruined if something happens to their house and repairs are always somebody else's problem. Renters also notoriously tend to scam landlords by refusing to pay rent until evicted and walking away having run up tens of thousands in bills and damages. The biggest advantage to rent is that you can often find a place cheaper to rent than you can ever buy one, a studio apartment can be had for very inexpensive rent while houses don't come in those sizes, and condos tend to eat any savings with management and HOA fees.

Rent and homeownership really aren't comparable in function, I've said before they're not substitutable goods because they tend to be used by different segments of the population for very different situations and often to different financial ends. Due to various tax breaks, homeownership often comes out ahead in the end despite being more costly up-front if all else is equal. However the idea that the renter is paying vastly more than they would to own the same home is based on some very false assumptions.

 

[Terthna]

The idea that "They're paying more than it's worth" is a thorny and contentious one in the first place. Money is largely a social construct, a thing is "worth" whatever a person pays for it in the first place.

A home buyer can't get a home for 100,000 by paying 1,000 a month either, mortgage interest is a thing and to buy a house on credit you're going to be looking at quite a bit over, for a 100,000 home at 3.8% interest (extremely low) you'll pay $264,959.50 over 30 years, so you're still paying "more than it's worth." Meanwhile, a renter across 30 years at 1,000 a month will wind up paying $360,000. Rent doesn't seem so unreasonable in comparison now does it?

Now consider that the landlord is paying the home's insurance. The average homeowner's insurance runs a bit over a hundred dollars a month. Renter's insurance is more expensive, insurance companies know renters don't take care of their homes since it's not their property and raise rates to match, about half again as much.

So across the 360 months of the mortgage, the homeowner will pay another $39,240. We're up to $304,199 for homeownership.

Now let's consider taxes. The landlord pays property taxes, not the renter. Taxes are all over the place but tend to be between 0.5 and 1.5 percent, with a few places on the east coast being much higher. Let's assume 0.5%. Five hundred dollars a year, fifteen thousand across 30 years. We're up to $319,199 for homeownership.

The average landlord does six repairs to a rental home per year. The normally assumed calculation is that annual repairs will eat 1.5 monthly payments. So 1,500 a year, 45,000 across 30 years. The homeowner is down 364,199 in the end, while the renter is down 360,000. All in all, the renter is not actually paying more than the owner is.

These calculations are going to get a bit fuzzy once taxes get involved, there are several ways for both homeowners and landlords to take significant deductions, and they vary so much it's not easy to compare. Renters can rarely deduct anything so they will lose out there. However, I think this makes it clear that the renter really isn't being fleeced dramatically more than the home buyer is. At the end of the period, the homeowner has the advantage of owning their own home, while the renter does not, however the renter has greater convenience, ease of movement, and peace of mind since they are not going to be financially ruined if something happens to their house and repairs are always somebody else's problem. Renters also notoriously tend to scam landlords by refusing to pay rent until evicted and walking away having run up tens of thousands in bills and damages. The biggest advantage to rent is that you can often find a place cheaper to rent than you can ever buy one, a studio apartment can be had for very inexpensive rent while houses don't come in those sizes, and condos tend to eat any savings with management and HOA fees.

Rent and homeownership really aren't comparable in function, I've said before they're not substitutable goods because they tend to be used by different segments of the population for very different situations and often to different financial ends. Due to various tax breaks, homeownership often comes out ahead in the end despite being more costly up-front if all else is equal. However the idea that the renter is paying vastly more than they would to own the same home is based on some very false assumptions.

Something that skews the numbers, I think, is the fact that property values in the big cities are astronomically higher right now than they ought to be (due to landowners in those areas treating property like an investment, and employing various tricks to artificially inflate the value of said investment, rather than a commodity that people are supposed to use); so comparing the cost of renting in those areas, to the cost of owning property in more rural areas, makes it look like the former is vastly more expensive than the latter.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Something that skews the numbers, I think, is the fact that property values in the big cities are astronomically higher right now than they ought to be (due to landowners in those areas treating property like an investment, and employing various tricks to artificially inflate the value of said investment, rather than a commodity that people are supposed to use); so comparing the cost of renting in those areas, to the cost of owning property in more rural areas, makes it look like the former is vastly more expensive than the latter.

This is true, however a bit outside the scope of what I was trying to show. Rent in big cities tends to also be commensurately higher so the general comparison of rent vs. ownership probably doesn't change too dramatically. The biggest advantage for renters in cities is as I mentioned, cheap rental apartments that simply have no equivalent whatsoever for homeowners.

 

[sander093]

As someone renting a place right now, I'm fine with it. I would never have been able to afford a house even three or four times as far from my job as the place I'm in right now (landlord is a chill dude as well.) And while I'm saving up to actually try and buy something, I don't think I could get even close to a short of a commute as I do now(which is saving me a lot each day). So if I hadn't been able to rent I wouldn't be able to work where I am now.

 

[LordsFire]

Something that skews the numbers, I think, is the fact that property values in the big cities are astronomically higher right now than they ought to be (due to landowners in those areas treating property like an investment, and employing various tricks to artificially inflate the value of said investment, rather than a commodity that people are supposed to use); so comparing the cost of renting in those areas, to the cost of owning property in more rural areas, makes it look like the former is vastly more expensive than the latter.

Rent controls, onerous and excessive regulations and restrictions on new home construction, high property taxes, and similar, are at least as likely as culprits, if not more so.

If you look at the cities with insanely high rent (at least in the US) you almost invariably discover that government interference in the housing market is either the biggest cause, or the close runner up.

 

[ShieldWife]

Landlords actually have to do a lot of work. They also take on responsibilities, risks, and expenses that renters don’t have to worry about. Landlords must make the initial investment in the building, have the risks and expenses of ownership, including insurance, must watch out that the renters aren’t damaging the property, must fight to get rent and sometimes evict (or be unable to) renters who won’t pay, must maintain the property and complete repairs, must pay taxes on the property, and so on.

All of that stuff has a value and the renter pays a little more than a home buyer not to have to worry about it.

There are certainly parasitic rich people who leech off society to make millions, but landlords typically aren’t unless they live in a area with heavy regulations that create unfair advantages for them. Lots of landlords aren’t even rich, just middle class. Unquestionably, the parasitic rich benefit more from the sort of regulations and economic intervention that the left usually favor.

 

[bintananth]

Lots of landlords aren’t even rich, just middle class.

A fair number also became landlords when they needed to move for some reason and realized they'd end up writing a check after the mortgage on their home was paid off if they sold it because Realtor fees are not cheap (~7% of the sale price where I am) and the Realtors get paid before the seller sees a single penny.

 

[Bear Ribs]

From my personal experience in the industry, the most common path to landlordship is a middle-class family that saves up, lives sensibly, are lucky enough not to get a horrific medical bill wiping out their savings along the line, and eventually own their own home after 20-30 years of paying the mortgage.

Then as they get older, the parents pass away and they inherit that home as well, which becomes a rental and generates a couple of hundred dollars a month extra income for their retirement (after taxes, maintenance, and insurance that 1,000 dollar rental check doesn't actually have such a massive payoff).

This is basically how I came to be a landlord and several of the other landlords I associate with did the same. I'm not certain it's true across the entire nation but it seems to fit the statistics well.

 

[Zachowon]

I'm in the military.
Most people who live off base rent, because it is easier as one is always moving, so renting makes things so much easier for those situations.

 

[King Arts]

You seem to be making a few points here, which don't always quite align.

There's a clear difference between you renting out your property and renting out your person, and you can easily oppose one without the other. As your yourself seem to argue, the issue with prostitutes is not that they're cruelly taking advantage of thier clients, it's that they're often taken advantage of themselves and are often not doing this of thier own free will and cannot be verified to be doing so, a situation that is not the case when it comes to landlords, where as you again say, the moral issue is client side.

Which brings us to your second point. I would first note that "paid more than the thing is worth" is hardly unique to apartments. It can happen with mortgages, vehicles, vehicle repairs, appliance repairs, etc.

That aside, I don't see why it's immoral to allow such a thing to happen. Perhaps someone prefers the cheaper rent over the cost of a mortgage and likes the convenience of not having to maintain the home, for example. Why is it wrong to allow them to make that choice?

I am sorry I am so late in responding, but the prostitution thing is off topic, but since you are the OP you get to decide. For prostitution they aren't always taken advantage of, and it is easier to prevent the sex workers from being taken advantage of if it is regulated instead of illegal.

As for the second part paid more than the thing is worth, while worth is a social construct there are generally laws even in the capitalist united states that prevent excessive price gouging. As for mortgages I am philosophically against them also.

I'll address your last paragraph.

I rent. I have a stable income, savings, and nearly an 800 credit score. I can afford to buy a house, and get good terms on the loan. I rent because I WANT TO. Because I might take a new job far away. I also have landscaping take care of the premises and if anything breaks, I don't have to pay for it, and I don't have to pay for maintenance. My apartments even provide us with light bulbs.

I rent, because I WANT to rent.

But by @King Arts logic, I shouldn't be allowed to do this because land lords are taking advantage of me somehow....by providing me goods and services that I want, for a price that I feel is fair.

When you think about it for even more than a minute you'll realizing a landlord is turning a home into a money printing machine, leveraging their ability to get a loan to give out infinite loans to others.
Landlords in this sense are little different from the Federal Reserve - the difference is instead of counterfeiting money, they're counterfeiting labor; that is, they're making people pay over and over for labor that was completed 40 years ago and they likely had no part in.
In short, making money off money.



Usury is so ingrained in the way the West does things now that people don't even notice it. This has nothing to do with communism or any other philosophy, but when you see someone trying to shadow replicate things to print unlimited amounts of money, whether in serial or parallel, they're trying to counterfeit something... and this act of counterfeiting is what creates distortions in the market, causing economic cycles

The idea that "They're paying more than it's worth" is a thorny and contentious one in the first place. Money is largely a social construct, a thing is "worth" whatever a person pays for it in the first place.

A home buyer can't get a home for 100,000 by paying 1,000 a month either, mortgage interest is a thing and to buy a house on credit you're going to be looking at quite a bit over, for a 100,000 home at 3.8% interest (extremely low) you'll pay $264,959.50 over 30 years, so you're still paying "more than it's worth." Meanwhile, a renter across 30 years at 1,000 a month will wind up paying $360,000. Rent doesn't seem so unreasonable in comparison now does it?

Now consider that the landlord is paying the home's insurance. The average homeowner's insurance runs a bit over a hundred dollars a month. Renter's insurance is more expensive, insurance companies know renters don't take care of their homes since it's not their property and raise rates to match, about half again as much.

So across the 360 months of the mortgage, the homeowner will pay another $39,240. We're up to $304,199 for homeownership.

Now let's consider taxes. The landlord pays property taxes, not the renter. Taxes are all over the place but tend to be between 0.5 and 1.5 percent, with a few places on the east coast being much higher. Let's assume 0.5%. Five hundred dollars a year, fifteen thousand across 30 years. We're up to $319,199 for homeownership.

The average landlord does six repairs to a rental home per year. The normally assumed calculation is that annual repairs will eat 1.5 monthly payments. So 1,500 a year, 45,000 across 30 years. The homeowner is down 364,199 in the end, while the renter is down 360,000. All in all, the renter is not actually paying more than the owner is.

These calculations are going to get a bit fuzzy once taxes get involved, there are several ways for both homeowners and landlords to take significant deductions, and they vary so much it's not easy to compare. Renters can rarely deduct anything so they will lose out there. However, I think this makes it clear that the renter really isn't being fleeced dramatically more than the home buyer is. At the end of the period, the homeowner has the advantage of owning their own home, while the renter does not, however the renter has greater convenience, ease of movement, and peace of mind since they are not going to be financially ruined if something happens to their house and repairs are always somebody else's problem. Renters also notoriously tend to scam landlords by refusing to pay rent until evicted and walking away having run up tens of thousands in bills and damages. The biggest advantage to rent is that you can often find a place cheaper to rent than you can ever buy one, a studio apartment can be had for very inexpensive rent while houses don't come in those sizes, and condos tend to eat any savings with management and HOA fees.

Rent and homeownership really aren't comparable in function, I've said before they're not substitutable goods because they tend to be used by different segments of the population for very different situations and often to different financial ends. Due to various tax breaks, homeownership often comes out ahead in the end despite being more costly up-front if all else is equal. However the idea that the renter is paying vastly more than they would to own the same home is based on some very false assumptions.

I'm going to say that I am also against mortgages and almost all loans that bankers do in the modern world. Even if a 3% interest rate is low it is still usury, protestants and western nations changed the modern definition of usury to excessive interest like a loan shark asking for 50%. But no usury traditionally was ANY interest if you take a $100,000 loan the banker forcing you to pay even one cent more than $100,000 is wrong. It should be $100,000 and no more. And yes I am aware this would crash the current economy because the current economy relies on usury, and the argument if there was no usury then lenders would not lend because it would be all risk with no reward.

 

[Rocinante]

When you think about it for even more than a minute you'll realizing a landlord is turning a home into a money printing machine, leveraging their ability to get a loan to give out infinite loans to others.
Landlords in this sense are little different from the Federal Reserve - the difference is instead of counterfeiting money, they're counterfeiting labor; that is, they're making people pay over and over for labor that was completed 40 years ago and they likely had no part in.
In short, making money off money.



Usury is so ingrained in the way the West does things now that people don't even notice it. This has nothing to do with communism or any other philosophy, but when you see someone trying to shadow replicate things to print unlimited amounts of money, whether in serial or parallel, they're trying to counterfeit something... and this act of counterfeiting is what creates distortions in the market, causing economic cycles





.

No, often times they're paying off that mortgage themselves, they're paying for all the maintenance, and they're taking all the risks.

And you're ignoring that a lot of people rent instead of own, because they WANT TO.

I'm not sure why I'm even bothering telling you this, because it's been said to you multiple times a s you're either too dense to understand it or intentionally not listening.

And since you're against both renting and mortgages, how do you propose one secures a home? Because if there's no incentive, people aren't going to build and sell/rent them.

 

[Bear Ribs]

When you think about it for even more than a minute you'll realizing a landlord is turning a home into a money printing machine, leveraging their ability to get a loan to give out infinite loans to others.
Landlords in this sense are little different from the Federal Reserve - the difference is instead of counterfeiting money, they're counterfeiting labor; that is, they're making people pay over and over for labor that was completed 40 years ago and they likely had no part in.
In short, making money off money.

Usury is so ingrained in the way the West does things now that people don't even notice it. This has nothing to do with communism or any other philosophy, but when you see someone trying to shadow replicate things to print unlimited amounts of money, whether in serial or parallel, they're trying to counterfeit something... and this act of counterfeiting is what creates distortions in the market, causing economic cycles

I'm going to say that I am also against mortgages and almost all loans that bankers do in the modern world. Even if a 3% interest rate is low it is still usury, protestants and western nations changed the modern definition of usury to excessive interest like a loan shark asking for 50%. But no usury traditionally was ANY interest if you take a $100,000 loan the banker forcing you to pay even one cent more than $100,000 is wrong. It should be $100,000 and no more. And yes I am aware this would crash the current economy because the current economy relies on usury, and the argument if there was no usury then lenders would not lend because it would be all risk with no reward.

By your somewhat extreme definition literally all economic activity ever is "making money off money." The farmer didn't create the land he lives on but sells crops grown on it to generate infinite food. The trucker leverages his ownership of a truck to force others to pay for infinite transport. The captain buys a ship once and provides infinite overseas shipping. The weaver uses their ability to buy a loom to produce infinite clothes. The only things that could possibly not fall under that umbrella are purely crafting but even then, you're making money off the money spent on tools and materials and education to be able to do it.

Housing is no less vital than food or clothing and the landlord who provides it no less vital than the farmer growing the food, the manufacturer making the clothes, or the sailor transporting them.

 

[King Arts]

No, often times they're paying off that mortgage themselves, they're paying for all the maintenance, and they're taking all the risks.

And you're ignoring that a lot of people rent instead of own, because they WANT TO.

I'm not sure why I'm even bothering telling you this, because it's been said to you multiple times a s you're either too dense to understand it or intentionally not listening.

And since you're against both renting and mortgages, how do you propose one secures a home? Because if there's no incentive, people aren't going to build and sell/rent them.

How did people build homes in the middle ages where usury was against the law? Also the price of homes would go down if people couldn't get mortgages they'd have to lower the price, or do something similar to land lord tennant relationships where you pay a certain part of the price every month until it's payed off without interest. Basically layaway, but once it's paid off unlike with land lord tennant relationship the house transfers ownership to the one who lives there instead of the person paying for all time. People could also live with their ancestral homes longer, or the government could just create homes. Those are all options.

By your somewhat extreme definition literally all economic activity ever is "making money off money." The farmer didn't create the land he lives on but sells crops grown on it to generate infinite food. The trucker leverages his ownership of a truck to force others to pay for infinite transport. The captain buys a ship once and provides infinite overseas shipping. The weaver uses their ability to buy a loom to produce infinite clothes. The only things that could possibly not fall under that umbrella are purely crafting but even then, you're making money off the money spent on tools and materials and education to be able to do it.

Housing is no less vital than food or clothing and the landlord who provides it no less vital than the farmer growing the food, the manufacturer making the clothes, or the sailor transporting them.

I mean there is kind of a differance. With renting it's going to be the same house again and again and again. But with farming the person is going to the farmer to buy just that produce, the apple belongs to the buyer. It remains with the buyer, the buyer could buy another apple but the apple itself is not loaned out to the buyer. Though this doesen't apply with groups like monsanto who try to stop farmers from reusing seeds from the last season they planted them. That example fits with renters more. The farmer when he buys the seeds should mean the seeds and all that come from them are his unless he gives them to someone else later. The seller(monsanto) should not be able to retain an interest, or patent, or trademark the seeds to prevent farmers from using seeds from the produce to replant without having to buy them from monsanto.

 

[Bear Ribs]

How did people build homes in the middle ages where usury was against the law?

Well ignoring that the middle ages were several centuries across a number of nations so there was no one rule...

Most often poor people didn't own their own homes in the middle ages. They rented from land lords who were typically nobility. Also the definition of "usury" used in the middle ages was not remotely as extreme as yours, plenty of money lending went on.

Also the price of homes would go down if people couldn't get mortgages they'd have to lower the price, or do something similar to land lord tennant relationships where you pay a certain part of the price every month until it's payed off without interest. Basically layaway, but once it's paid off unlike with land lord tennant relationship the house transfers ownership to the one who lives there instead of the person paying for all time. People could also live with their ancestral homes longer, or the government could just create homes. Those are all options.

This sounds like a great deal of wishful thinking. How do you know the price of homes would go down and they'd have the lower the price? How would the government create these homes and why would they be better than the free market?

I mean there is kind of a differance. With renting it's going to be the same house again and again and again. But with farming the person is going to the farmer to buy just that produce, the apple belongs to the buyer. It remains with the buyer, the buyer could buy another apple but the apple itself is not loaned out to the buyer. Though this doesen't apply with groups like monsanto who try to stop farmers from reusing seeds from the last season they planted them. That example fits with renters more. The farmer when he buys the seeds should mean the seeds and all that come from them are his unless he gives them to someone else later. The seller(monsanto) should not be able to retain an interest, or patent, or trademark the seeds to prevent farmers from using seeds from the produce to replant without having to buy them from monsanto.

The landlord, when he buys the house, should mean the house and all that come from it are his unless he gives them to someone else later.

The only difference is in your mind. The apple belongs to the buyer. A month with a roof over their head and a safe place to sleep belongs to the renter. Both supply temporary satisfaction of a biological need. The apple is gone in a couple of hours when the buyer gets hungry again, the rent is gone at the end of the month when the next payment is due. Both are used to satisfy a material need for survival and need to be constantly renewed as life goes on. If anything the rent is a better option, if you drop the apple and it gets ruined the farmer owes you nothing but if you break the hot water heater the landlord comes and fixes it for you at no charge.

 

[Battlegrinder]

I am sorry I am so late in responding, but the prostitution thing is off topic, but since you are the OP you get to decide. For prostitution they aren't always taken advantage of, and it is easier to prevent the sex workers from being taken advantage of if it is regulated instead of illegal.

I'd argue it is relevant, because the relationship between buyer and seller was a major aspect of why you found renting to be immoral.

In reality, it's incredibly hard to determine if someone is being taken advantage of or exploited, even in a legal, regulated sex industry (as demo's by the porn industry, which is infamously abusive and explotive despite its much smaller scale compared to the overall field of sex work).

As for the second part paid more than the thing is worth, while worth is a social construct there are generally laws even in the capitalist united states that prevent excessive price gouging. As for mortgages I am philosophically against them also.

There's a fair bit of debate if even those laws banning proce gouging are justified or have unintended consequences, and you seem to be taking things quite a bit farther than opposing a mere excess.

How did people build homes in the middle ages where usury was against the law?

They didn't, private home ownership was extremely rare in that era.

Also the price of homes would go down if people couldn't get mortgages they'd have to lower the price,

Because? If they build a house with the expectation of making a profit off the mortgage, it seems just as likely they'll just raise the price to hit that target figure rather than lower it.

Also, I would note you're radically overstating just how much money the bank is making, because you're not accounting for inflation,which will hit the bank's profits and not the homeowners savings.

or do something similar to land lord tennant relationships where you pay a certain part of the price every month until it's payed off without interest. Basically layaway, but once it's paid off unlike with land lord tennant relationship the house transfers ownership to the one who lives there instead of the person paying for all time

That's awful. Without interest, the seller is either going to lose out massively via inflation (as he's still out the same amount of money at first, and then each passing year the money you repay him buys less and less), or he'll have to demand an even steeper repayment rate and a much higher down payment to stay in the black, which will hurt buyers by making housing much worse, because the sort of housing you'll get for, say, $500 a month is vastly different when the principle is due in 30 years vs when it's due in 5.

 

[ShieldWife]

I can’t think of any society that banned renting as usury. In the Middle Ages and among more doctrinaire Muslims, usury was banned but renting was widely practiced. As I mentioned before, being a land lord requires a lot of work, which saves the tenant and for many is worth the price.

Having responsibilities - like a land lord has - is a really important role in society and is worth responsible people making more money. That is one source for income inequality that is seldom acknowledged. Bob may make $100K a year and Jim might make $50K a year, but Bob has lots of responsibilities that Jim doesn’t.

I actually do think that usury is a problem in the modern USA, but not land lords, but rather Wallstreet, the Federal Reserve, big banks, hedge fund managers, and so on: people that can make laws to increase their profits and can get away with all sorts of shenanigans, like what lead to the 2008 crash.

 

[Abhishekm]

Seriously though did I miss something? Since when is Rent Usury? Did Jesus hold a grudge against that innkeeper for being born in a barn or something? Also kinda find it funny that the Monarchist is the one that thinks taking a Lease is a sin.

Edit: King Arts is a monarchist right? Or am I mixing up users?

 

[Battlegrinder]

Having responsibilities - like a land lord has - is a really important role in society and is worth responsible people making more money. That is one source for income inequality that is seldom acknowledged. Bob may make $100K a year and Jim might make $50K a year, but Bob has lots of responsibilities that Jim doesn’t.

That's true, but only to a point. As communists are fond of pointing out, loads of people earn incomes entirely disproportionate to thier share responsibilities, an income that also insulates them from any mistakes they make exciting those responsibilities. A Sears manager that screws up really badly stood a real risk of losing his job and a huge portion of his income, meanwhile Eddie Lampert single handedly steered the entire company into the ground and is still a billionaire.

I actually do think that usury is a problem in the modern USA, but not land lords, but rather Wallstreet, the Federal Reserve, big banks, hedge fund managers, and so on: people that can make laws to increase their profits and can get away with all sorts of shenanigans, like what lead to the 2008 crash.

The term for that specific issue regulatory capture, not usury. In general, it's called "people are flawed and sinful" and there's not really a political solution to it.