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

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

#151

Post by sailfast »

amelius wrote: post #131
jonwachob91 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 as possible. You just described a grocery store... They keep food and beverages…

I think you missed the point that in both situations there will be a fridge in your house. It's just that in the case of a service, you don't own it but a company does.

"All our customers live in rented flats above the cold storage unit as a service, and pick up the things they need on demand."

Fixed :)

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

#152

Post by baochan »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #8
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…

To help change the system, we could build The Machine: http://tlalexander.com/machine/

I kept reading expecting The Machine to be a metaphor for local economies or something, but no, they want to actually build a Star Trek-style replicator that runs on a trickle of water and garbage that's funded by Kickstarter.

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

#153

Post by swebs »

jerf wrote: post #19
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 thi…

>"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.

That was actually a perfect summary of /r/technology

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

#154

Post by mikestew »

magduf wrote: post #101
grogenaut wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If how+mortgage is even slightly more than rent you still end up doing well as soon as you are able to clear the agent and closing costs in recouping. Renting is easier to move for sure. But stay there 3 years and the story may be different. Stay there 8 years and you're making out well over rent. But being statitioned I can see why you might not. Then again I have friends with rentals in 5 cities for the same reason…

A 16-year-old car will kill you in a crash that a new one will let you walk away from. That's one big, important factor in the new vs. used debate. There's also the factor of how it's going to affect your job and life if your car breaks down. A 2-decade-old car is going to break down at some inopportune time, like it or not, even with the best maintenance.

A 16-year-old car will kill you in a crash that a new one will let you walk away from. That's one big, important factor in the new vs. used debate.

One can be a Chicken Little to the point that I would ask, why drive at all? It's just not worth the risk. A sixteen-year-old car has airbags and designed-in crumple zones. It ain't no 2019 Volvo, but "kill you in a crash that a new one will let you walk away from" is ridiculous hyperbole.

A 2-decade-old car is going to break down at some inopportune time, like it or not, even with the best maintenance.

Brand-new cars do the same thing. In fact, I view cars like I do electronics: if it makes it through the first six months, you're probably good for 100K miles. And if it breaks down, so what? You email your "flexible hours" employer, tell them you'll miss standup this morning, then dip into the massive amount of funds you saved by not having a car payment to get it fixed. Oh, it's an inconvenience for sure, but is it worth $600/month to avoid once in a great while (or not at all, if Honda or Toyota)? Hell, our VW camper is 37 years old, and I'd rely on it to get me to work every day, and I think VW makes shitty cars. Take care of your shit, and it will take care of you, even if it's a VW.

Some are obviously so scared of breakdowns and that life-ending crash that is assuredly just around the next corner that they'll foot the $600/month (or whatever a car payment is these days) for their big-ass SUV that they make any excuse to justify. Others, IMO, manage risk much more realistically.

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

#155

Post by amelius »

digikata wrote: post #99
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…

It sounds like a nightmare to me. A fridge service provider might run the hardware longer, but they wouldn't care much about your power bill, nor fridge features - if old phone monopolies, cable boxes and current isp's are any indicator. And good luck trying to prove to a fridge service provider that their unit has an intermittent thermostat problem... Recycling might be the responsibility of the company, but they mi…

> Recycling might be the responsibility of the company, but they might systematically find the cheapest way to do it without regard to the full externalities of how it's accomplished.

It's a lot easier to hold few companies accountable, than to hold millions of consumers accountable.

> And good luck trying to prove to a fridge service provider that their unit has an intermittent thermostat problem...

That's also a problem when you buy a product.

> but they wouldn't care much about your power bill, nor fridge features

I suppose the market will do its job. Cost of ownership is transparent (monthly fee plus power use), so consumers can easily choose, and they can easily switch.

> It sounds like a nightmare to me.

I'm already having nightmares about the environment right now.

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

#156

Post by chipotle_coyote »

amelius wrote: post #109
gascan wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you assume too much about which type of fridge represents the lowest cost. Countless enterprises have already embraced "cheap to buy, cheap to replace" products in favor of long lasting reliable products. Now, the one place a company with a fleet of fridges could really do the world good would be maintenance & repair. When you've got all your own repair crew on the payroll and you operate one kind of fridge,…

> The one place a company with a fleet of fridges could really do the world good would be maintenance & repair. When you've got all your own repair crew on the payroll and you operate one kind of fridge, those costs plummet. Yes, so the market will ensure that this kind of company will prevail.

There are a lot of assumptions hidden in "the market always works" statements like that. In this case, there's the assumption that the line you're quoting represents a business model that's cheaper than "buy the cheapest fridge possible and replace it with another cheap-as-possible fridge when it breaks," especially when you factor in that you no longer need a repair crew on the payroll (because you don't repair things).

Here's another, more complicated problem: even if the math proves that, say, over a long enough horizon, you'll make more money with the longer-lived, repairable version of the product, that isn't necessarily the best way to maximize returns for shareholders/owners. If that concern overrides all others, then you may well be better off maximizing profits short-term, through any (hopefully legal!) means possible regardless of the effect on the long-term viability of the business, and investing them in other markets with higher returns.

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

#157

Post by sailfast »

LUmBULtERA wrote: post #143

I own very few things . No house. No Car. But I own a lot of equities. As to why the author thinks I have no "stake in the system" because I don't own shit is beyond me.

This is an excellent point.

The only reason I could think of was a potential implied subtitle: "the reason to be nervous is that if we stop buying things then those equity values go down" (which is honestly what I first thought when reading the headline)

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

#158

Post by sevensor »

digikata wrote: post #99
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…

It sounds like a nightmare to me. A fridge service provider might run the hardware longer, but they wouldn't care much about your power bill, nor fridge features - if old phone monopolies, cable boxes and current isp's are any indicator. And good luck trying to prove to a fridge service provider that their unit has an intermittent thermostat problem... Recycling might be the responsibility of the company, but they mi…

Cable, certainly, but the phones you rented from Ma Bell were nearly indestructable. My uncle has a lake house with several phones that were originally provided by the phone company. They still work and will no doubt continue to do so as long as pulse dialing is supported.

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

#159

Post by pc86 »

ictoan wrote: post #147
_bxg1 wrote: post #134

The article identifies some problems but totally misses their actual source. The problem isn't that we own less stuff, it's that the ownership is replaced by a dependency on a handful of corporations which we have no ability to influence or appeal to. The substitution of individual ownership for a communal one in which individuals retain a stake - a real community, or at a larger scale, a democracy - is not inherentl…

In other words, monopoly.

Nothing in the parent comment indicates or requires a monopoly. At all.

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

#160

Post by apozem »

ictoan wrote: post #147
_bxg1 wrote: post #134

The article identifies some problems but totally misses their actual source. The problem isn't that we own less stuff, it's that the ownership is replaced by a dependency on a handful of corporations which we have no ability to influence or appeal to. The substitution of individual ownership for a communal one in which individuals retain a stake - a real community, or at a larger scale, a democracy - is not inherentl…

In other words, monopoly.

That is absolutely the end goal of all these network-effect companies. Uber wants to be a monopoly on transportation, Google a monopoly on search, Spotify a monopoly on music consumption, etc.
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