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Wasn’t my idea at first either, but then its hard to say no to free money.
I agree the system is wrong and bad, but we are all living in it. I decided I’m not going to make choices against my own best interest. Hard to compete with people who play by fewer rules than you, so giving myself artificial rules would certainly limit my happiness/wellbeing/etc.
Anyways we all “harvest” money from others in some way or other, either directly or indirectly. Someone working at a restaurant harvests other peoples wages when they want a hamburger. The only way it’s different is that housing is scarce because you can’t build any more in most places where people want to live, but hamburgers are easily obtainable.
Being complicit in the system is what props it up. If everyone acted like my partner and I, there would be no housing crisis. Your "the system is broken so I might as well take advantage" mindset is the cornerstone of so much wrong in this planet. It's why slavery existed, it's why factory farming exists, it's why child sweat shops still operate, it's why global warming runs rampant. Your hamburger analogy also isn't very applicable. A hamburger salesman provides me with a product that I choose to occasionally enjoy. If hamburgerlords suddenly bought up every hamburger and started scalping them, I'd go without hamburgers. Whereas you've used your wealth to scalp houses, something people can't go without.
I think that’s wrong. Slavery existed because the government allowed it. If you were a farmer and you could afford slaves but didn’t have any, you wouldn’t be competitive with other farmers who had slaves. You were encentivized to do it. But then ol Abe did an amendment and a war, and then once it’s illegal you aren’t pressured to be terrible. You’re off the hook. It was the amendment and the war that ended slavery, not people voluntarily doing anything.
It’s literally why we have laws. If people would just do the right thing otherwise, we wouldn’t need them.
It sounds like your morals are beholden to whatever reprehensible things are allowed by the government, if you are competitively incentivised. If slavery became legalised today, would you buy yourself some slaves to make sure you're keeping up with the Jonese's? Just because the government allows you to negatively gear and buy stacks of houses off of an initial investment, depriving others of their first home - solely because you legally can - doesn't mean you have to, or should. This opulence of multiple home ownership, where you literally charge your tenants more than your mortgage costs, profiteering during a housing crisis, is really reprehensible. Look, I'm sure if we were at the pub together we'd have a great time, but buddy, you're objectively an immoral person.