Derek Canino's Blog

 What is the function of a landlord?  I have recently begun to classify the pseudo-profession of being a landlord, and its detrimental effect on first world society.  This effort began because of my need to question the ethical value of someone who purchases land and uses the resultant property to charge people for shelter.  I will attempt to clarify the vestigial properties of such a person, and attempt to provide a more elegant solution for the challenge of finding housing for people.  While doing so may not have much more value than a need to question the status quo, I still feel that I have an obligation to my personal values and opinions on this matter.    First and foremost, I would like to establish the severity of the problem of housing and illuminate the critical importance of shelter.  Housing in the United States is overlooked as an aspect of security that I believe government has an ethical mandate to fulfill.  If it is the jo...

This is to be a multi portioned response to a complex question regarding the nature of labor, servitude, and liberty.  I will be making several entries to address a simple question that I think many people would expect to be condensed into a simple one sentence answer and provide rich detail and context that might elaborate on the complexities of a seemingly simple concept.  I am doing this because I feel that in an effort to oversimplify things to address a large volume of issues, the simplest issues have been overlooked.  To the best of my ability, I will answer:  What is Slavery?  When considering the question, which may appear simple on its face, I am left to consider the very complexities of the nature of labor.  Slavery, according to popular and societal definition, places the emphasis on labor provided with no wages granted.  This is also to say that labor is forced or expected without exception.   The key emphasis on slavery is that...