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Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous

bloomberg.com

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Re: Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous

#11

Post by tootie »

ModernMech wrote: post #4

> The nation was based on the notion that property ownership gives individuals a stake in the system. It set Americans apart from feudal peasants, taught us how property rights and incentives operate, and was a kind of training for future entrepreneurship. Then rents went up, education became more expensive, wages went stagnant, the rich got richer, and suddenly owning property and buying "stuff" to fuel the insatiab…

I think that was all intentional. He's not at any point saying this is good or bad. Just that it's uncharted territory and the long-term impact is unknown and not being prepared for.

Re: Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous

#12

Post by ryandvm »

As someone who has given away a couple thousand dollars worth of crappy music from the 80s and 90s, I can say for certain that I am glad I don't own it anymore.

A Spotify subscription that allows me to listen to practically any song that was ever recorded is of far more utility than a pathetically limited personal music collection.

Re: Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous

#14

Post by paulintrognon »

amelius wrote: post #6

It may be better for the environment to not own stuff, but instead use services. For example, take a fridge. If I buy a fridge, the company I buy it from has an incentive to make it break in N years, so they can sell me a new one, i.e. "planned obsolescence". However, if I subscribe to a service to keep my food and beverages at a certain temperature, then the company has the incentive to make the fridge last as long…

Interesting, but in your example how would the food be delivered to your home? But maybe a delivery service once a week or so is better than every individual taking their car to the supermarket? Interesting topic anyway.

Re: Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous

#15

Post by ilamont »

Amazon’s Kindle and other methods of online reading have revolutionized how Americans consume text. Fifteen years ago, people typically owned the books and magazines they were reading. Much less so now.

The statements about books are not accurate. Ebook sales are still just a fraction of print sales in many genres - NPD data indicates ebooks are less than 20% of total unit sales for nonfiction, children, and young adult titles (self-published ebooks excluded). Total ebook unit sales were 162 million in 2017 from the 450 publishers tracked by NPD, down from 180 million units in 2016.

Source: Publishers Weekly, "Ebook sales fell 10% in 2017" https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/content...

Re: Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous

#17

Post by brightball »

amelius wrote: post #6

It may be better for the environment to not own stuff, but instead use services. For example, take a fridge. If I buy a fridge, the company I buy it from has an incentive to make it break in N years, so they can sell me a new one, i.e. "planned obsolescence". However, if I subscribe to a service to keep my food and beverages at a certain temperature, then the company has the incentive to make the fridge last as long…

They really just have an incentive to make sure that on average you pay more than enough to make them a profit over the expected lifetime of your fridge. They also have an incentive to get you the least expensive fridge with the longest lifetime, regardless of power consumption or any other factors.

You already have something very close to this with home warranties and the providers tend to be awful in my experience. The goal is just to extract money from you and keep costs down.

Re: Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous

#19

Post by jerf »

Someguywhatever wrote: post #7

>We used to buy DVDs or video cassettes; now viewers stream movies or TV shows with Netflix This I don't care about really. Although I remember Richard Stallman wrote a satirical article about there being no libraries and having to pay to read anything (as in pay to read per page or something kind of ridiculous) now his article doesn't feel so ridiculous anymore. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html T…

"They'll all be too busy with their bread and circuses and the 2 minutes hate or whatever."

Is that really it, though? I mean, that seems really weird on its face... "I'd like to own my own copy of this movie rather than just stream it, but I really have to get back to hating Republicans." That doesn't seem all that plausible.

Personally, I am happy streaming things I don't care to own. At this point, most of the things I watch, I want to watch once. The world is so abundantly overflowing with good video content that I have little reason to return back to something. Those few things, I frequently will buy. Some of my "season DVDs" I'm quite glad I hung on to... some of them were on Netflix for a while, but are no longer, and are still fairly expensive to buy.

If the stream services went away, ultimately I'd be slightly inconvenienced.

Music, by contrast, I tend to listen to a given track/album that I like quite a bit, and I take possession of. YMMV. I'm very music oriented compared to most people.

And Stallman's arguments about software are yet again something different; there are reasons for having the source and using open source that have no media equivalent, because software isn't just media, it's a machine.

Re: Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous

#20

Post by vcolano »

I'd agree young Americans are less interested in owning their media and there does seem to be a general trend away from materialism and towards spending any extra income on experiences over objects. However, I reject the notion that the younger generations are less interested in owning property. Young people do want to have a stake in the system, but most places young people are living (especially where they're moving to) it's nearly impossible for most of them to get into the property/housing ownership game to begin with due to housing price inflation and stagnant wages.

If you took millenials and plopped them in the economic context that the young generations of the 50s (or even 70s/80s) had I think this would be a very different story.

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