The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain

I personally think landlords are skewing way too much towards rent seeking right now.

But in theory, a landlord could serve a similar function as a futures trader. They are speculators who mediate risk of rent. If renting becomes unprofitable then landlords lose money as rent_money < (mortgage + property tax)

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're advocating for the landlord to lose ownership of their property?

If so, question of my own. The landlord worked and spent resources (time, money) to increase his assets (develop the property). You, at your job, worked and spent resources (time, etc.) to increase your assets (e.g. size of your bank account). Do you think you should have indefinite ownership of your bank account?

> His record in Britain’s former colonies more closely resembles that of a war criminal

> Churchill has the blood of millions on his hands whom the British prefer to forget.

If only citations mattered to people.

> Churchill was one of the few British officials in favor of bombing Irish protesters from the air, suggesting using “machine gun fire bombs” to scatter them.

A thought without action. War gaming is common. You suggest a full range of ideas and only use the most sensible option.

> In fact he argued that poison gas was more humane than outright extermination: “The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum.”

Referring to tear gas. And they never used it! He was war gaming.

> Churchill was an open admirer of Mussolini, declaring that the Italian Fascist movement had “rendered a service to the whole world.”

That's called politics. Politicians have to flatter less than savory world leaders all the time.

> “the superiority of [the British] race” and that those who resisted would “be killed without quarter.” He wrote happily about how he and his comrades “systematically, village by village, destroyed the houses, filled up the wells, blew down the towers, cut down the great shady trees, burned the crops and broke the reservoirs in punitive devastation. Every tribesman caught was speared or cut down at once.”

He was a war correspondent -- a journalist. He has to say these things. Coverage of wars is always heavily censored and filled with propaganda.

> He fantasized luridly of having Mahatma Gandhi tied to the ground and trampled upon by elephants.

Gandhi was asking for Indian independence while Imperial Japan was invading Bengal. Not great timing! In Churchill's eyes, Gandhi was sabotaging the war effort and breaking up the empire that he loved so much. Churchill and Gandhi were political enemies. No doubt every one is guilty of wishing this on their opposition... Hell, there's a common fantasy of killing "baby" Hitler in America.

> Thanks to Churchill’s personal decisions, more than 3 million Bengalis died of hunger in a 1943 famine.

Ignoring the fact that Japan was attacking India through Bengal... Bengal is a casualty of war not a "personal decision" of a racist imperialist. The author conveniently ignores the fact that Churchill asked the US for food aid to end the famine... The US refused because it was not possible to provide aid. So Churchill ordered Australia to begin shipping food but Australia's capabilities to ship food were not great because of...you know WORLD WAR 2. Should Churchill have ceded India to Japan? Would Japanese occupation been better for Indians? Not in China's experience!

Although the linked article by Tharoor only touches on the Indian connection, here's an article by Johann Hari that takes a broader view: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/not-his-fines... (“He may have been a thug, but he knew a greater thug when he saw one”) — interesting bit of trivia: “[Barack Obama's grandfather,] Hussein Onyango Obama, was imprisoned without trial for two years and was tortured on Churchill’s watch”.

> Isn't the problem in SF that the wages have gone up hugely for a small subset of the population?

Wages of the renting population is irrelevant to the 'fair economic price1' of an apartment. The equilibrium/fair cost of a latte doesn't go up because a few millionaires move into a neighborhood, it might go up because of a barista labor-shortage, a coffee bean-tariff, or other supply-side effect.

You're not wrong that the rent prices are being driven up because there is an influx of wealth to a subset, but the core problem is that the supply is artificially constrained. If you put a quota on lattes sold in our hypothetical neighborhood, only the rich will be able to drink them - and will pay 'rich people prices' to ensure they can (or if you prefer, Starbucks will maximize its profit in the latte constrained environment. Let Starbucks serve all the lattes it wants, and prices will stay more or less constant.

1 to be specific, the fair economic price is the breakeven + opportunity cost (profit!) to build an operate an apartment building, which can be amortized to a monthly rent per unit that would be required in order to make building the apartment worth while to the builder, architect, et al. In SF, and much of the Bay Area, monthly rents far exceed this value - which if SF was a functioning market would drive the construction of more apartments driving rents down towards their fair economic price.