>What, exactly, do landlords contribute to society?

Efficient allocation of resources to property development. Although that's just a technical distinction, you can get rid of it by separating out the improved vs unimproved value of land (the former is much less problematic than the latter).

>All money means is that you convinced someone else to give you money at some point in life.

Presumably, the convincing is because giving you money is better than the alternatives.

The efficiency there is their contribution to the economy. I think often it is not much of a contribution to society.

(compare a pleasant and profitable development to a development designed to exploit government incentives...the latter may well be more "efficient" in terms of economy)

So—this means the value of a landlord is directly proportional to the minimization of their profits.

Unfortunately, that's also more than you can expect from humans who know they can charge more and find tenants.

Yeah, that's how capital markets work in general. If you can charge more and still find a tenant, you're replacing low-value land use with higher-value land use. This is particularly true in commercial real estate. Though that's kind of a side issue to my original point: the excess profits attracts and incentivizes similar investment, which increases the cost of investment, which lowers profit down to the general waterline of the economy.

If anything, this has convinced me that public transit and other public services should be funded entirely with property tax.

Georgism brings up some really fantastic points along this line.

If you want to be technically pedantic, exclude the value of improvements on the property. You don't really want to tax the act of replacing an empty lot with a $10MM factory. You do want to tax the right to use land within the catchment of the various services the state provides. Land isn't produced, so you can't disincentivize producing it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism

They contributed value by giving a pile of money to the previous owner (part of the economy). Now they're recovering their investment. If they can't recover it in rent/resale, then why would they buy in the first place? Then where would the previous owner get their pile of money from? Ultimately it went back to the original developer who was smart enough to build a house in a good place that people in the future will want. Without that chain of incentives, he could just as well have built it in the desert. That's what I think the value is - incentivizing property development where it'll be needed in the future.

Having convinced someone else to give you money is usually the result of demonstrated value.

Effective asset management is valuable, just as ineffective asset management destroys value.

> Having convinced someone else to give you money is usually(^) the result of demonstrated value.

^ Except in the case of inherited assets (and titles). There is a reason the term is "land lord" after all...

If we look at the real estate visas (i.e. "invest 500k and get a visa") then what happens is that someone brings in 500k from outside and gives it to an american so that they get the real estate. That'a simple 500k upfront gain to the local economy.