• aesthelete@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    “Not saying your tutor is a bad person, but they have interests that oppose your own”

    Not really.

    “Not saying your doctor is a bad person, but they have interests that oppose your own”

    Not really.

    You could say that if they were ruthlessly in pursuit of money above all other interests, maybe, and then only if they were short-sighted enough to think that keeping you stupid or sick was the best way to make the most money.

    Doctors have other goals and are paid salary. Tutors are often working temporarily and part time. I don’t think either of these groups actually oppose your interests.

    A landlord, on the other hand, directly opposes tenant interests in multiple ways. Every dollar they spend on repairs is a dollar less profit. Every dollar of rent increase they can get you to pay is a dollar more in their pocket. Every competing housing development being built threatens the value of their asset as well as the future profitability of their current housing stock due to the competition.

    Of course there are “good” landlords that don’t maximize their own interests just like there are shitty doctors (mostly holistic, to be fair) out there that want to milk you dry and never cure anything. But that doesn’t change the calculus much. They’re just the exceptions that prove the rule.

      • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You can do the same justifications for landlords that you did for tutors and doctors though.

        Kind of, maybe, if a high percentage of landlords was in it to “provide housing”…which I didn’t see any evidence of in my decade and a half of renting.

        I’m also a bit of a weirdo too. So, I had a lot more opportunity to see any of that. I probably moved over 10 times in my ~15 years renting because I couldn’t stand the yearly rent increases they were trying to force on me and was stupid/stubborn enough (and well off enough) to vote with my feet.