I'm very grateful that my landlord chooses to own an apartment and rent it to me on a short-term basis. I needed housing for four months, I already own a house (which is being remodeled), and I certainly didn't want to try to buy a second house for five months.
For that rental, I'm happy to let my landlord earn a profit, in exchange for taking on the risk of owning and maintaining the property.
The profit he earns is because he's providing a service that I need -- short-term housing. To do that, he's taking on various risks associated with homeownership, such as a lack of available tenants and fluctuations in capital due to market conditions.
Some of the issues discussed on the linked post aren't fundamental to the idea of profiting from what you own, they're examples of something closer to monopoly abuse -- buying out all of the available properties in an area, etc.
It's not great when there's not enough property available for outright sale, but it's also not great when there's no room available for short-term housing either.
The linked article has several issues with it, though I won't disagree with the problem of using regulation to lock-in a high-profit monopoly. That's a bad thing, and it's common, and it's something we should fix. But some claims in there -- "A professor at an architecture school or law school does not earn a six figure salary due to providing superior mentoring and teaching. They earn their money because they are the legal gate keepers to entering licensed occupations." -- are baloney. The earn that salary because that's what it takes to pay them to not go make substantially more money in practice, and the university carefully calculates that minimum to keep their professors at minimum cost.
(This one I do have specific knowledge of - I'm a professor who just spent the year in industry, and the degree by which my salary increased during that year was... large. That's not specific to computer science, either; I know a lot of law professors who're in a nearly identical situation. They do the job because they love teaching, and the university is happy to give them a pay cut in exchange for that.)
I'm very grateful that my landlord chooses to own an apartment and rent it to me on a short-term basis. I needed housing for four months, I already own a house (which is being remodeled), and I certainly didn't want to try to buy a second house for five months.
For that rental, I'm happy to let my landlord earn a profit, in exchange for taking on the risk of owning and maintaining the property.