I was thinking about my grandfather today.

He was pretty well off—owned millions of dollars in real estate back in the 60s and 70s. Not billionaire-rich or anything, but comfortably wealthy by any normal standard.

And here’s the part that sticks with me:

I honestly don’t remember ever hearing a single story about him evicting anyone.

I’m not saying nobody was ever late. I’m not saying tenants were perfect angels. I’m sure there were problems, because real life always has problems.

But what I remember hearing is that he would sit down with people and make payment plans. He’d work something out. He treated tenants like human beings who had hit a rough patch, not like revenue streams that needed to be squeezed.

And I also don’t remember stories of people taking advantage of him.

That’s the part a lot of people today refuse to believe.

There’s this modern landlord mythology that says:

“If you show flexibility, everyone will exploit you.

If you don’t crack down hard, tenants will walk all over you.”

But that belief mostly comes from a story people have been sold, not from real experience.

My grandfather’s life was basically the opposite case study.

Decades of owning property.

No eviction war stories.

No tales of being constantly scammed.

Just… normal people paying rent and being treated decently.

And yet when I talk about that, a lot of people react like I’m describing some impossible fantasy.

Because modern “thought leaders” in real estate have convinced them to imagine tenants as villains by default—lazy, dishonest, always waiting for a chance to cheat you.

Once you accept that story, harsh policies feel justified.

Dehumanizing people feels necessary.

Extracting every possible dollar feels like “just business.”

But most people, most of the time, are not villains.

Most tenants want stability.

Most tenants want to pay their bills.

Most tenants respond to respect by acting respectfully.

If you assume people are enemies, you create systems that force them to behave like enemies.

If you assume people are basically decent, you get very different outcomes.

My grandfather seemed to understand something simple:

Wealth gives you the ability to be patient.

Owning property isn’t just owning buildings.

It’s being responsible for the places where other people live their lives.

And kindness, paired with firmness and good judgment, isn’t naïve. It’s often just good business.

I think about that a lot when I look at the direction education and society are going too.

Right now we’re watching public systems—schools, universities, communities—slowly get hollowed out. Money gets pulled away, redirected, turned into tax cuts. And people are told to stop thinking of education or housing as public goods and start thinking of them as private transactions.

But when big systems weaken, human beings don’t stop learning or stop needing shelter. We just default back to older, more personal models.

More mentorship.

More community learning.

More relationships instead of institutions.

Kind of like how in the ancient world philosophers would teach in public spaces, under porticos, to whoever showed up.

My dad joked about it the other day. He said the future might be like a computer: when the current system crashes, society just “boots to last known good configuration.”

And honestly, he’s probably right.

We’re not heading toward some perfect utopia. We’re heading back toward older versions of things that at least sort of worked—more informal, more human, less bureaucratic.

Which brings me back to my grandfather.

He didn’t treat tenants like abstract economic units.

He treated them like neighbors.

And somehow, the world didn’t collapse.

Maybe that’s the part people forget.

You don’t need to imagine villains to protect yourself.

You can just treat people like people and expect most of them to act like people in return.

And weirdly enough, history suggests that approach works a lot better than we’ve been taught to believe.