Just buy land to deprive society of assets, charge people to live there, and spend the stolen labor on whatever nonsense you like.

- I'm not sure how buying land means depriving society of assets, even in shared economies every person would have access to a share of said assets.

- Moreover, is it stolen labor if you provide goods (land) in exchange of money (rent)?

Renting isn't the biggest evil out there, all things considered, but it's not the most moral thing either. You are by definition (for what this guy is doing) profiting off of a limited resource, because you have better financial leverage than the end user. You are making interest money. I'm no muslim but I see merit in calling making interest money a sin.

But then so is making money from index funds so I suppose we're all going to hell!

This is insane. There are plenty of reasons to rent besides financial leverage, chief among them flexibility. Providing housing that you don’t have to commit to for thirty years is a valuable service and that’s why people pay for it.

It depend on rent/mortgage ratio in where you look, and they do vary a lot. Alas if the market and the banks are prepared to sell a mortgaged house the deal is not much less flexible than rent, the transaction costs are not zero but often less than cost of moving your stuff.

I suppose this depends on what kind of landlord you are. At the end of the day, a lot of people don't want to deal with home ownership and want to think about providing society with other things. Is that evil?