The Romans built off of Greek culture, Europe built off of Roman culture, the US built off of European culture. US math is very much based on Greek math (and US education in general). You may remember doing Greek proofs in school. Greek math was by no means superior to any other culture's, it just so happens that US culture descends from Greek culture.
Saving $50 per employee when you have 5 employees is $250. It's nice, but not a game changer. 50 employees: $2,500, 500 employees: $25,000. When you have more employees squeezing pennies out of your workers becomes a relevant boon to the company.
The price someone would pay a repairperson to fix things is already factored into rent. If a homeowner didn't have the time/energy to fix the thing, the homeowner could just hire their own repairperson and be in the same situation, except not me renting.
The issue is the profitable part. The landlord purchases and rents a property because it's profitable. So presumably, with enough starting capital, the tenants could be living there, with their own mortgage, for less. In addition, their mortgage payment would be going towards equity rather than funneling to a landlord. The distaste for landlords exists because for many rental situations, it is literally someone with money, leveraging their money against someone with less money. People don't have the option to not live anywhere, so they are forced into extractive contracts.
"I try to do a thing on my computer and I get an error message."
"What does the message say?"
"I don't know."
The story of me helping people with computers.