I agree with everything you are said. I think where people in this thread get talking past eachother about practical decisions versus ethical and just behavior.
This was introduced with the comparison to extortion. I dont think knowing the risks of extortion, makes the extortion just or moral.
In the context of general usage, calling something a "business decision" is an intentional severing of choice from questions of right, wrong, justice, and emotion.
At the end of the day, I guess I'm just objecting to the idea that the landlord won because the squatting only cost them $1000. I did some petty B&E vandalism when I was young and dumb, and wouldn't consider it a win-win for owners when we didn't destroy move property. Im assume you'd agree it isnt a win for the landlord if the counter-factual was no squatter, so I dont really have much to debate.
At any rate, thanks for sharing your personal stories.
There's won (outright) and "won (given the situation)" - nobody would say that being hit by a car is "winning" but someone who was hit by a car, and survived when expected not to; they probably count the survival as winning.
No landlord wants to pay a tenant or squatter or whatnot to leave, but often it's the quickest and cheapest way to the goal; though if it becomes too common it ends up as a downside overall.
Some quite old (think 80-90s) landlording books I've read even talk about hiring a moving crew and a truck, finding a new apartment and paying the first and last month's rent for the tenant to get them out. Not out of goodness of their heart (though it may have seemed like that) but because those costs were less than lost revenue + cost of eviction + (potential) loss of a sale.
This was introduced with the comparison to extortion. I dont think knowing the risks of extortion, makes the extortion just or moral.
In the context of general usage, calling something a "business decision" is an intentional severing of choice from questions of right, wrong, justice, and emotion.
At the end of the day, I guess I'm just objecting to the idea that the landlord won because the squatting only cost them $1000. I did some petty B&E vandalism when I was young and dumb, and wouldn't consider it a win-win for owners when we didn't destroy move property. Im assume you'd agree it isnt a win for the landlord if the counter-factual was no squatter, so I dont really have much to debate.
At any rate, thanks for sharing your personal stories.