I don’t think you’ve actually read any Objectivist philosophy. Some people like to wave Ayn Rand around as a boogie man like Fundies wave Satan around. (God lies to Adam and Eve and Satan tells them the truth in the Garden of Eve fairy tale)
The basis of society is the contract and these “landlords” are clearly violating the most basic aspects of it in using thee tactics, lying and cheating, to force people who are holding up their end of the contract by paying their rent.
What’s going on in New York is no more capitalism than what China is doing is Marxism. Both situations are caused by people with no moral center or ethics making the maximum amount of money while trying to screw everyone on the other end of the contract.
WNYC, the New York NPR radio station, ran a very good podcast that looked at this: “There goes the neighborhood.” One of the episodes touches specifically on the big money behind some of this “gentrification.” It’s well worth a listen.
This is a key issue that rarely gets addressed when blockbusting or sly, contract-driven theft gets discussed: who is doing it. From the main article:
“The buyers at these prices are, more often than not, private equity funds that manage pools of investors’ money: a typical participant in the Central Brooklyn market describes itself as an asset investment firm that specializes in the “repositioning” of multifamily buildings”
It’s never a slimey, chain-smoking slumlord named Mo. It’s these very distant, organized groups who hide behind LLCs and REITs with information-free names that sound like a new make of sedans. They could be in Greenwich, CT or Boca Raton, FL, and probably are. They have discreet offices in glass & steel clad buildings, furnished with uninspiring quasi-modern decor. A very presentable, well-groomed receptionist out front who screens visitors, etc. And they are screwing the living daylights out of regular people. Because they can. If New York City took on a couple of these surficially prudent, clean corporations, sued them into insolvency, and perp-walked the upper management to a court house this problem would shrink into nothing. And it would be cheaper than housing the people tossed out of these buildings (cost numbers are in the main article).
It’s yet another classic instance of socialized losses funding private profits.
The worst of it is that if these predatory speculators succeeded in turning the middle-class into working poor into homeless, followed by collapse of the city, they wouldn’t be the ones holding the bag. They’d sell the property at a paper loss, probably get a tax write-off, and move on to a new host.
I think some automation could be used too, with a conveyor belt moving the condemned along at high speed. Perhaps something from the lumber industry, you know, because there are a lot of them to get through.
Ridiculous. It’s raw capitalism, where the corporation and owners are more important than citizens. It’s what happens when you deregulate capitalism and ignore the fact that a strong, partially socialized government is needed, especially in a complex society such as ours. It’s sort of like how police are needed to keep the peace. Business has to be regulated, or it goes wild. Why libertarians can’t see this simple fact is beyond my comprehension.
I have read Objectivist philosophy, so you’d be wrong. I’ve also read Rand’s biography, and observed the behaviour of those who subscribe to Objectivism.
I don’t consider Rand a bogeyman, I consider her a blinkered fool and a hypocrite whose work is no basis for an engaging novel, let alone an economic philosophy. You can draw a direct line from the kind of corporate fans who parrot her anti-statist nonsense while using the mechanisms of the state when it suits them to Ayn Rand herself, who collected Social Security just like the other “moochers” who paid into that eeeevil system.
Your straw man is unconvincing. For example, I doubt you’ll find a lot of Boingboing readers who’d conflate a hobo-for-hire willing to engage in criminal acts on behalf of a sleazy landlord with a woman who’s lost her home due to (off the top of my head) being evicted by that sleazy corporate landlord. No, if you’re looking for an Internet community that views all homeless people as a monolithic group of degenerate losers, your best bet is to head over to an Objectivist BBS.
As someone who benefits from capitalism in a more balanced form I’d agree with your first sentence. But make no mistake, the people you describe, with the amoral attitude and single-minded focus on making money at the expense of society, tend to be the same arrogant greedpigs who would be more prone than BB readers to subscribe to Rand’s extreme version of “free” market fundamentalism.
What happens when all those apartment buildings and townhouses are all empty, and the place becomes a ghost town?
Will the bubble “pop”, as they say?
But…then how do the people living there deal with empty apartment blocks, like they have in dubai and china, with people living in squalor just a kilometer away from empty, unsalable, palatial complexes…
Why libertarians can’t see this simple fact is beyond my comprehension.
Shorter Objectivism: “Using the cold logic as taught to me by Saint Rand I have deduced that I am more awesome those guys over there and thus don’t have to pay taxes.”
Shorter Libertarianism: “How dare you ignore my cold logic and make me pay taxes! I will dedicate my life to destroying the government!”
There are advocacy groups which are small, underfunded and not as well known as they should be. Unlike the other 4 boroughs, Manhattan’s courts are somewhat landlord friendly as well.
From what I’ve read, Kushner is up to his elbows in these kinds of tactics, in addition to routinely surprising former tenants with penalties for breaking leases even when they got authorization to do so from the company. I can see why he and Trump get along.
