Millions of Tenants Now Have AI Landlords
As if life for renters isn't hellish enough
Land-lording, as we’ve discussed many times, is a biblical sin (it’s a form of interest), a crime against humanity (for putting private profit over the human right of shelter), and a guaranteed way to destroy one’s civilization (see: ancient Greece, Rome, revolutionary France, etc.)
Land-lorders will not stop until they are stopped — they will continue raising rents and re-invest the profits to buy more houses over and over until a handful of hyper-rich monopolists own the majority of the nation’s housing, millions are homeless, and everyone else toils for their neo-feudal overlords just to keep a roof over their heads.
This compounding parasitism has played out time and time again in human history and we will not be the magical exception.
But, if there’s only one thing worse than land-lorders, it’s having an AI landlord.
What exactly does an AI land-lorder do?
Well, basically everything that a parasitic human land-lorder does, except without any human feeling whatsoever:
auto-generate rental listings
handle complaints from tenants via a chatbot
harass tenants for rent via email, text, phone calls, and letters
interview prospective tenants, filter out “bad” tenants, half-answer their questions with generic answers, and book virtual tours
at least one AI tenant filter — appallingly called SafeRent — has already been sued in a class-action lawsuit for discriminating against poor people
sending tenants videos of how to locate their water shut-off valve when they complain about leaky plumbing (true story)
doing real-time market research to aggressively raise rents to achieve the algorithmic maximal income
manage complaints
collect tenant references
make extra money by advertising broadband and energy options to tenants
force tenants to insure their landlord’s property
building and sharing profiles of all tenants in order to create blacklists
sneak sketchy clauses into rental contracts
file evictions
build a massive property empire by using machine learning to find the most profitable properties to monopolize
If there’s one thing vampiric land-lorders love, it’s doing even less work than they already do.
That’s why AI property management software is spreading like cancer.
Just one AI landlord service, called EliseAI — like “e-lease,” get it? How very droll and clever — manages 2.5 million tenants. One of their selling features is that their software “helps renters self-service their unit.” (Isn’t that what land-lorders are always saying that’s why they deserve to get paid rent?)
Don’t worry, they all have equally wretched names — TurboTenant, LandlordAid, ValPal, GoodLord. Talk about face-punchable.
Their “dynamic pricing models” ensure millions of families live in a permanent state of terror, with rents rising at all times.
This is a nightmarish recipe for growing homelessness, widespread housing hardship, the total destruction of the rest of the economy, and unfathomable human desire.
Calls to action
First and foremost, and I hope this goes without saying, but artificial intelligence should be banned from the landlord con.
Life as a tenant is miserable enough.
Luckily there’s some minor progress on this front. San Francisco, the very heart of Silicon Valley, has already banned AI rent pricing because it’s obviously a form of illegal cabal price-fixing.
Getting to the roots
The world’s first and fundamental economic injustice is the privatization (monopolization) of land.
What was once common to all is now hoarded as “property rights,” and enforced by taxpayer-funded violence.
Why aren’t all land “owners” paying a monopolization fee to the commons for barring others from using collective land.
The economist Henry George was right to say this is the root cause of poverty. When people can’t freely access the natural resources required for human survival, they have no choice but to turn a profit for someone else in order to get those resources — either they can work for an employer for shareholder profit, borrow from a bank for interest profit, or borrow from a landlord for rent profit. This mathematically guarantees perpetual poverty.
Why does society refuse to see this undeniable reality?
There are three ways we could solve this fundamental economic corruption:
Give everyone an equal share of free land. (Not feasible, politically possible, or economically efficient.)
Stop taxing work (income tax), spending (sales tax), and development (property tax) and introduce a land monopolization charge on all land. Deliver the proceeds equally to all as a citizen’s dividend.
Introduce a land monopolization charge but use the process to build millions of hyper-affordable homes.
Moral justice demands all people be given free access to the natural resources required for survival.
Anything less is injustice.
We should also just ban for-profit land-lording
From a purely ethical basis, we should ban for-profit land-lording for moral justice reasons.
Rent is just interest on a house — that’s the literal definition of rent in ancient Sumerian — and compounding interest paid to elites has destroyed civilization after civilization throughout human history.
Are we morally strong enough to break the cycle?
I am not overly hopeful.
And mark my words, when housing hardship destroys the economy and Western civilization, the day is coming when landlords will be seen in the same light as slave owners and Nazis.
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