2 Jun 2023

Leftism is fundamentally incompatible with what universities do

So it is a considerable tragedy that universities are a great bastion of Leftism

The besetting fault of Leftists is that they propose solutions to problems without first making much effort to understand the problem.  Their ego makes them sure that they know it all without effort.  Sadly, their ignorant solutions often make the problem worse

I have just come across a classic example of that.  It appeared in the glossy magazine put out by my alma mater, the University of Queensland -- and was written by a UQ academic. For details, see:

https://stories.uq.edu.au/contact-magazine/2023/australias-housing-crisis-is-deepening/index.html

To understand how brain-dead the article is you need only to know that there is a great shortage of rental accomodation in many advanced countries  -- including Australia and the UK.  Many people are not in a position to own their own homes so rely on what they can rent.  And all governments -- including Soviet-style ones -- are very poor at providing housing. Even welfare housing is usually only a small fraction of the available rental housing

So in Australia, the UK, and elsewhere, it falls on private landlords to provide most of the rentals.  But at the moment there are just not enough rentals to go around.  People end up living in their cars and in the streets.  And some groups cram six people into an apartment built for two.

So amid such a dire shortage of rental housing, you would think that governments would be going all-out to encourage  more people to go landlording, would you not?  But that is logical -- too logical for short-sighted Leftists.  Instead, they are doing their level best to DISCOURAGE private landlording.

They seem to think that they can give tenants more rights without reducing the rights of landlords.  But that is in fact a zero-sum game.  A right for a tenant is a restriction on rights for a landlord. 

A good example:  Mandating that tenants must be allowed to keep a pet restricts landlords from forbidding pets.  And landlords do usually want to forbid pets -- for good reasons.  When a pet-owning tenant moves out, the piss and shit that has fallen on the landlord's carpet makes the carpet so stinky  that the property is unlettable to new tenants.  So the landlord has to spend thousands replacing the carpet.  As a former landlord, I have been there and done that.

And making it compulsory for landlords to allow pets has actually been done where I live.

So the first two things listed as needing to be done for tenants in the UQ magazine are solidly aimed at advantaging tenants -- without the slightest evidence of thought about how landlords might respond to that.  Real estate agents have already warned that new rights being contemplated will cause owners to withdraw their properties from the rental market.  So the reforms that would supposedly "help" tenants are  likely to leave more of them on the streets

Apartments and houses are being sold for very high prices at the moment so it will be very tempting for landlords to sell up.  One despairs for our universities.  Deep thought has become alien to them

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This note originated as a blog post. For more blog postings from me, see
DISSECTING LEFTISM,
TONGUE-TIED,
EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL,
GREENIE WATCH,
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH,
AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and
IMMIGRATION WATCH.

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