this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2026
592 points (98.5% liked)
Showerthoughts
43588 readers
871 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Why not?
That was a kind of aggressive way for me to express that, but, in all seriousness, the reason is that:
Being a "landlord", that is, very specifically, an "owner of houses you don't live in, but rent to people for profit", is a way to live that is inherently abusive to the people you rent to.
You have ownership of a basic good people need to survive (housing), which is effectively scarce (because it's not allowed for just anyone to build a house without incredible amounts of money, even homelessness is fairly illegal in many places), and you say to people:
"Either give me a monthly fee for me to allow you to have a roof over your head, or I'm calling the police (the only people allowed to be violent in the country) to kick you out"
It's a way of making money, where the owner doesn't do anything helpful to society, except find people who are desperate to survive, and milk them of what they make.
How is it not helpful to society to allow others to live in your house? And it's not landlords who are looking for tenants, it's the other way round.
There's a reason "rent seeking" is a derogatory term.
The problem is being a landlord as a job. The problem is rich people buying up housing (or land and building on it) they don't use, in order to rent for profit.
It's about everyone who has no house. All the people who have no alternative, apart from renting from some rich people.
If someone "allowed" others to live in his house, without demanding half their salary, you wouldn't see me complaining.
And the reason that buying or building a house is so expensive, is explicitly because rich people clamber over each other, to make the best investment of their lives: Housing.
People have a right to invest.
Housing can be affordable or an investment, not both.
People can invest elsewhere, in markets not necessary for survival.
We're saying that maybe, just maybe, basic human necessities shouldn't be the object of speculation.
Agreed but we shouldn't prevent people from buying or selling houses.
Nobody's saying that.
We should however prevent the hoarding of residential buildings
That's like saying people with major medical issues "are looking for" insurance salespeople to fix their medical issues. They "need" insurance because the system is fucked, not because insurance will make them better. Likewise, no one "looks for" a landlord, they look for housing they can afford.
Yes but housing is much more expensive than healthcare. The government can't afford to provide it for free.
No, what the government actually can't afford is to have homeless people overutilizing public services (ambulances, police, hospitals, and jails) because they don't have stable housing. It's way, wayyy cheaper to provide people free housing than let them be homeless, Finland has proved this with basic arithmetic, our culture is just really into performative cruelty for some reason.