I’d happily pay $20-40ish for a quality textbook. I have many times before. It’s when they want to charge $300 and give almost nothing to the authors that I have a problem with. Extra scummy when they make a new edition that’s just barely different enough you can’t use it for class because the practice problems don’t match or give you one time use online codes that render it worthless for resale.
It’s also not as lucrative as most would think. I have a few rentals and it’s certainly not enough to quit my day job in IT. It’s maybe an extra $15-20k in my pocket at the end of the year after expenses and taxes and such, and I spend at least 10-20 hours a week doing accounting, maintenance tasks, coordinating contractors, legal stuff, etc. Sure, the equity is nice too, but it doesn’t do a whole lot for me until retirement age.
As far as whether landlords can be “good”, I see myself as providing a valuable service to those who cannot or don’t want to become homeowners. In a perfect world, those who cannot but want to become homeowners should, but the cost of housing has little to do with rentals and almost everything to do with zoning, development restrictions, and tax structure. Until that world exists, someone has to offer rental properties to these people, otherwise where would they live?
Longshoreman overtime is ass-backwards though. They clock crazy high OT and do shit like sleep on the clock and they get any shifts outside normal business hours counted as OT. The average pay is well over $100k iirc
They’re also super insular and basically the only way to get a job with them is to be a family member of someone who’s retiring.
I like unions but the ILA is basically a front for the mob. Their leader literally got involved in a ton of RICO charges that didn’t stick because a key witness mysteriously turned up dead in a trunk.
Also part of the reason they’re so insistent on paper records and refusing automation is so they can traffick humans, illegal goods, and steal stuff.