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It's just as "totalitarian" either way. It's esentially the same system without the surplus being taken out of your pocket.
In a landlord system:
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You pay $2000 a month. Of that, $1500 goes towards mortgage. Another $200 goes to maintenance, utilities, etc. The landlord pockets $300 for himself.
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You have no choice but to rent from a landlord, buy housing yourself, or be homeless
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Eventually the landlord pays off the mortgage, and pockets the additional $1500 for themselves because it's "market rate". Your rent remains at $2000/month.
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The landlord dictates the rules of the building. You cannot get rid of a tyrant landlord except for moving, which isn't free, easy, or time convenient
In a co-op:
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You pay $1000 a month. Of that, $800 goes towards mortgage, far less because it is no longer a speculative investment. The remaining $200 goes to maintenance, utilities, etc. There is no landlord, the collective collectively owns the housing. Nobody pockets any money for themselves.
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You have no choice but to rent from a co-op, buy housing yourself, or be homeless
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Eventually the co-op pays off the mortgage and your rent then drops to $200/month.
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You vote for who is the manager/council of the building(s), which is almost always a tenant themselves. It's generally not a full time job usually single digit hours, and they are compensated. If the manager/council become tyrannical, you vote them out.
You have a clearly better system available, both in terms of your freedom and your wallet. And the better option isn't the landlord. They're all too happy to use your paycheck to buy another yacht or private jet.
And this isn't fantasy, non-market co-ops do exist. Look at the above link about Pittsburgh.
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Why do you not want a system of cheaper housing, with more power/freedom in your hands?
it's clearly just a landlord pretending to be a happy renter
While possible, there is no way to be certain. Corporate interests like these don't get perpetuated solely by the owning class. It requires swaths of the working class to have stockholm syndrome. So until it devolves into insults, generally I try to give people the benefit of the doubt.
Botting on the other hand is a different story.
Don't attribute to malice what is adequately explained by ignorance. Owners have had centuries of propaganda to fool people that they actually do anything.
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It is bizarre that you think that housing is used as a “speculative” investment.
No it's not.
https://create.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Real-Estate-Speculation.pdf
people simply need a place where they can store wealth without having it destroyed
That's what banks are for.
If people could use money to store their wealth housing would be demonetized and prices would go down, then your coop model could naturally outcompete renting if it truly is superior. Fix the money, fix the world.
This is a load of nonsense. People already use money to store their wealth.
Coops haven't taken off because it is in the financial interest of the owning class to maintain the status quo. They do everything in their power to buy up every property they can, and to influence the law to keep their business in power.
The problem is systematic, it requires a fundamental change to the structure of our economy.
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I guess you never heard about a savings account or corporate greed, must be nice to be that privileged.
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If you believe that a savings account outpace inflation I don’t know how to help you.
Mine does, at least, actual inflation.
The fake inflation that is just corporate greed is something that can never be outpaced by anything, not even housing as an investment which just makes your point double moot.
The solution is to put an end to the current economic system. It's not serving me or you. It's just stealing from us:
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