Quote:
Originally Posted by loquitur
um, no. Libertarianism rests on the rule of law.
|
I think you mean the rule of the market. Isn't that the problem with our current system with respect to libertarianism? That those pesky laws get in the way of the market?
Quote:
|
If the landlord is keeping an unsafe premises, you have legal remedies.
|
Yes, there are legal remedies and they all involve government intrusion on the workings of the free market. That's my point. In a libertarian system my power would only exist in direct proportion to the money in my wallet, which is stupid.
And really, you're a lawyer. Don't tell me about "legal remedies" as if it's a simple matter of going down to city hall and checking a box. Do you know what happens in Minneapolis when shitty landlords owe tenants money? Nothing. Not only do you have to go to court to make them accountable, but once the court has decided that they are, you have to go to court again to make them pay the fines the court levied against them the first time.
Clearly the system is fucked. But it's not fucked in a way that would be improved by regulating it less.
And even then, fighting to get out of our lease would essentially have the same net effect of spending hours and hours meticulously tearing a stack of $20 dollar bills up into unrecognizable little pieces with the reward of being homeless when we finish.
The only saving grace would be that it would cost our landlords just as much time and money. They would then be forced to fix the lead problem, but only because we live in a society that lets the government tell landlords to fix lead problems. In libertarian system, they would be free to re-rent the place to the next set of unsuspecting rubes to come along because in libertarian systems the government doesn't tell business people how to run their businesses.
Quote:
|
And there is market accountability, just as the other commenter said, which is, that bad landlords end up either with unrentable premises or tenants who trash it. Yes, tehre are bad landlords just as there are bad tenants. Slumlords tend to be on the receiving end of law enforcement. If they're not, it's usually because of political connections - once again the government getting in the way.
|
I know you believe this, and I know it's true sometimes, but if you'll read my link you'd see that it is quite possible for a shitty landlord to get by just fine, profit even, with minimal government intrusion, the same kind of minimal government intrusion that one would expect under a libertarian system.
The market can't provide equity. It can't even approximate it, because all the market is, when you distill it down to its purest form, is an economic system of natural selection. Those who can amass the most resources dominate those who can't.
The accountability of the market is inversely related to the wealth of a person participating in the market. The slum lord in the story I linked to can afford paying the fines the city has levied against him-- they're more of a "slumlord tax" than a deterrent. Meanwhile, unsuspecting and/or desperate folk still find themselves stuck in leases with him. Clearly, the fact that this guy is a notoriously bad landlord hasn't effected his vacancy rates. How does that fit in with your concept of market based accountability?
Quote:
|
Your complaint is that the remedies aren't immediate and that all suffering isn't averted. Sorry, this is the real world.
|
No, I don't expect remedies to be immediate, exactly because we live in the real world. My complaint is that the remedies would be a great deal worse or nonexistent under an unregulated system.
Of course suffering isn't averted, and of course remedies aren't immediate. I don't think a system exists that is capable of providing immediate remedies and ending suffering. This is what libertarians fail to see (or perhaps see to well, depending on the size of their pocketbooks). At least the system we have now contains in it some sort of consideration of human value beyond "human capital".