Member-only story
Got Poverty? It’s Not an Accident.
Your problem is with Landlord Rents
Ever wonder why life is so hard? Feel a bit furious about the high cost of living? Yeah, me too. So, I’ve spent the last year exploring the reasons why we’re all stuck in a world that makes 1980s dystopian films look tame. And one part of the answer is something known as “Rents.” These can be rents on actual properties, but the fundamental issue goes farther. And here’s the thing: If we can get people talking about this, we can change it.
“Landlord Rents” describe the experience of generating profit from the sole ownership of access to some item or service, and they are a drastically dangerous concept because they encourage monopolization behavior.
Cory Doctorow offers a good example of this in one of his podcast episodes, where he describes the situation in terms of a ferryman.
Imagine there’s a ferryman who owns a ferry. He takes merchants across the river on it, providing a safe and easy way for them to get their goods to the big city. This is all well and good… as long as there are also other ferrymen doing the same thing, and some bridges to distribute the traffic even more.
But now imagine that our first ferryman gets laws passed against all the other ferrymen, prohibiting them from ferrying anyone across the water…
