I personally know way too many permutations of 'landlords' to feel comfortable judging them all in a similar way, but I'm still inclined to judge most of them negatively and harshly. Because in most cases, it's just so obvious how their owning and 'rentier' status is not a consequence of 'fairness' or even 'fair competition'.

My landlord got what he had because of his age. Most of my rentier friends have what they have because they inherited it. I'm okay with my landlord because he's disabled in some way and scraping by, but it's still weird that I pay for his entire mortgage + more just because he bought a house at the right time. I'd prefer a situation where I can choose to support him rather than feel, weirdly, as part of the precariat that he can kick out whenever he can benefit more from others paying his mortgage and more of his monthly expenses.

The only reason why he can't and won't do this is that legally there's a limit to how much rent he can ask me.

Anyways, point being, there's something fundamentally iffy about the fact that every single 'rentier' I know acquired this status through nepotism or timing, and not via whatever meritocratic measure one could conjure up.