Submitted by zoom_zip in Anarchism

hey, i just came over from reddit

someone on one of my comments there challenged me to explain why i thought landlords were parasites and i couldn't really be bothered to type it all up, so i was looking for a website or something that explained it in a concise and readable way. i couldn't find that website, so i ended up having to type it all out anyway. since i typed it all out, i figured i might as well throw it up on a static page.

i've been trying to solicit some feedback but not had much success. are the points here clear? did i miss anything important?

idk, that's all i really wanted to ask. thinking about registering a domain for this and distributing it on business cards around the city or something. someone else suggested making QR stickers for it, which was a neat idea.

peace

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southerntofu wrote

hey thanks for the share that's pretty great what you did over there! i think it's pretty clear and i'd like to do french translation

if you consider acquiring a domain name, please do so without giving money to this fucked up industry. there's plenty of domains giving away subdomains (delegations) for free, like eu.org, netlib.re...

also i haven't got the beefiest server/network but if we're having french translation i'm happy to host the website on ~fr though i need to ask the comrades first :) (we have onion domains on there as well)

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southerntofu wrote

Some feedback:

  • the page is really heavy, with some images weighing several megabytes!!! the site will be just a good with lesser-quality images, and will not take 26MB (!!!) to load
  • i really love that you're not using JavaScript at all :)
  • fonts should probably be loaded from your own domain (or use locally-available fonts), not from google (if only, for privacy reasons)
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moonlune wrote

It has a great zine aesthetic to it.

white text on the image with the kid & bear makes it a little hard to read.

Also, maybe you could add sources & links to further reading at the end.

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Tastybiscuits wrote

Landlords are independent entities from the government. By signing into a lease you are choosing to enter into a civil business contract that absolutely must outline these issues in detail. Most landlords do not possess the personal skills required to maintain properties, but must pay for & provide these maintenance services as required by contract despite the cost to do so, in a timely manner. If anyone (service professionals, renters, etc.)are injured on the property, the landlord is at fault. If the house burns down, the landlord takes the loss, not the renter. By failing to pay rent, the renter is knowingly breaking that contract whether intended or otherwise. If the renter does not agree to the terms of the rental contract, the renter is not required to or forced to sign it in any way, & may find an alternate location more suitable to their preferences. The landlord does not choose the renters career or income. The landlord cannot be blamed for poor decision making, lack of financial planning, or minimized opportunity in certain communities as these issues are beyond the landlords control. If the landlord were to default on his loan, the bank would blame the landlord, not the renter.

Otherwise I love the raw feel of the images has a very grunge look. I agree that the slide with the white background & text was extremely hard to read. I would like to see that one changed to a more legible background.

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Tastybiscuits wrote (edited )

I love the inexplicable internet mindset of, “if you don’t agree with me than you obviously must be one of the (landlords).”

It is no more their fault that they own something than it is your fault that you don’t. In actuality it is probably quiet the opposite. Do you think everyone who owns something had it handed to them for free? Hell no. I for one have worked extremely hard to get to where I am & I don’t even have that much to my name. (I definitely do not have any land.) But I also realize that the way I got here was by making sacrifices. You want to know how I bought a nice car? I saved my money for a long fuckin time & chose to make sacrifices in favor of an ultimate goal. Do you know how I was able to afford the rent on my place? I worked a full time job & started a side business that I dedicated all my free time & energy too, even when I didn’t want to. My landlord doesn’t give me any breaks just like I don’t give her any. We have an agreement that we both entered into willingly with the expectation that the other person would hold up to their word if and when the day comes. If my plumbing stops working, it is her responsibility to provide the required fix as per our agreed upon deal- whether that fix is by her own hands or her pocket I don’t care as long as it is sufficiently corrected in a timely manner. In return it is my responsibility to pay my rent on time. Your logic in the matter makes absolutely no sense when you actually dissect it & I fail to see where your preconceived notion that landlords are parasites because they have ownership of something that you don’t is a justified concept. The reality is far from the picture you have conveniently painted.

By your logic we should either all be poor and own nothing regardless of how hard one works, or we should all be rich even if you do nothing to earn it or maintain it properly.

Edit: You know the whole “every kid gets a trophy” issues so no one feels bad. Your analogy is that but worse.

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no_ wrote

I for one have worked extremely hard to get to where I am & I don’t even have that much to my name.

So your entire point is "i have busted my ass so everyone should struggle just like i did"

You complain about the "every kid gets a trophy" yet your whole thing is "nobody gets trophy because i didn't got any".

Others have went about your landlord loving shit so I won't bother with that part. You can go back to your "shoplifting" forum, where most members are garbage like you.

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zoom_zip OP wrote

yeah a french translation would be great! feel free to take it and use it. don't worry about attribution or anything like that. just take it and use it. put it anywhere you like.

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zoom_zip OP wrote

yeah thanks, i was thinking about putting it into a zine, but then i thought i could probably hit more space by just throwing it onto a static page. if i need to make one on any subject, i can just throw one up and blast it out there, and then it's free for anyone else who wants to share it and distribute it (no printing costs or anything like that, just a link or qr code or whatever).

i'll fix that image with the kid. i like the picture, but yeah, you can't read it.

i should add sources, but i'll be honest, i typed this up in a rage off the top of my head; it's less sourced, and more just an angry rant using ideas that i have picked up along the way. i'll have to do some research to really support it with sources. i'm sure it's there, it's just a chunk of work i'll have to find the time to do.

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zoom_zip OP wrote

hmm

not sure the existence of a contract absolves the landlord of their exploitation. they still position themselves in a power position over their tenants. they still use their access to a resource that the tenant doesn't have access to in order to extract wealth.

saying things like "By failing to pay rent, the renter is knowingly breaking that contract whether intended or otherwise" is just callously disregarding the issue. the idea that a tenant can just "go somewhere else" is kind of dismissive as well. where the fuck do they go when landlords buy up property in droves and the only two options are rent from a landlord or take out a mortgage (and the majority of the people who rent are doing so because they cannot get a mortgage). what is this magical alternative option?

i'll fix that slide with the unreadable text. thanks for the feedback.

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zoom_zip OP wrote

right, yeah. i need to fix the image sizes. didn't know how to do that but i'll figure it out.

i didn't think about the privacy implications of loading fonts from google. i'll look at replacing them with hosted fonts.

thanks for the feedback!

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zoom_zip OP wrote

"It is no more their fault that they own something than it is your fault that you don’t."

weird take tbh. you can be in poverty for reasons that are not your "fault" at all. you can be rich for reasons that are entirely your "fault"--through your exploitation of other people. seems kind of weird to be like "well, it's not my fault that i'm exploiting you."

that said, if you read my opinion that i put on the page thoroughly and still disagree, i don't think there's anything more i could say that would result in either of us changing our minds so :shrug:

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southerntofu wrote

i'll have to do some research to really support it with sources. i'm sure it's there, it's just a chunk of work i'll have to find the time to do.

Advertising the repository to contribute to the document could help! I'm happy to provide whatever links i have at hand :)

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southerntofu wrote

windows :(

You may consider using a free, not-for-profit operating system like Debian or a Tails USB stick. Struggling for self-organized free-software development is interesting in itself, but if you're posting to anarchist forums (which may be a criminal offense depending on where you reside) you may be more confident using free, privacy-friendly tools.

Notably, you may have heard of the Tor Browser which enables to conceal your location from the websites you connect to, and to conceal from your ISP which websites you connect to. While it's not entirely foolproof (a nationwide attacker may still try to disanonymize you, though that will be costly), it may help to protect you from daily concerns of surveillance and other security issues.

Tor Browser is bundle within the Tails system (intended to be setup on a USB stick), but if you really want to stay on Windows to publish (i would never recommend this to anyone, but the choice is up to you), then using Tor Browser on Windows is an option, so your personal IP address will not appears in the raddle.me server logs.

Let me know if you need any help to setup any of that. There may also be Linux User Groups, or other free-software/community-networks/privacy-workshops collectives in your neighborhood. Don't hesitate to get in touch with those, you may meet interesting persons including quite a few fellow anarchists.

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southerntofu wrote

didn't know how to do that but i'll figure it out

GIMP may be a way to reduce the size of images directly in the source. Otherwise, you may consider using a static site generator which deals with image manipulation like zola. Both tools work on Windows.

i'll look at replacing them with hosted fonts.

let me know if you need some help, with that or any anarchist-related web/sysadmin stuff :)

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zoom_zip OP wrote

thanks. switched over to tor. will look into setting up a tails stick.

anarchist views are not illegal where i am, but i wouldn't be surprised if they were in the future.

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ziq wrote (edited )

If you install Gimp, you can reduce image size easily by going to image > mode > indexed > Generate optimum palette - and entering in e.g. 128 or 256.

https://docs.gimp.org/2.10/en/gimp-image-convert-indexed.html

I do it for all the backgrounds on raddle.

Also be sure to scale the images to something close to 1920 × 1080 pixels if they're bigger than that. (Image > Scale Image)

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