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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

#171

Post by nepeckman »

paultopia wrote: post #137

The classical notion that property is a kind of independence, which this article implicitly draws on, has always felt wrong to me. Rather, property feels to me like vulnerability. When you own things, they can be stolen, they can be destroyed by extreme weather (a real consideration living in the Midwest---for folks in CA, think of the fires), they can randomly stop working, they can be devalued by market crashes. If…

The other side of this is when you rent, you're beholden to the company you're renting from. If the car-as-a-service company says "Car service is now $10 more per month" you have to pay that. If the company says "We are no longer offering $your_favorite_car as a renting option", you no longer have access to your preferred vehicle. Given the overhead involved in setting up a car-as-a-service company, I'm willing to bet that competition will be low, and company leverage to hike prices will be high.

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

#172

Post by Pica_soO »

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 may be better for the environment to not own stuff, but instead have it produced by a socialistic society.

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 communistic society to keep my food and beverages at a certain temperature, then this society has the incentive to make the fridge last as long as possible.

EDIT: Besides eliminating planned obsolescence, there are more advantages:

- Increased market transparency. The market is more transparent if I know exactly what a 4 years planned product costs me per month, as opposed to buying a product and not knowing when it will fail. A more planned society leads to better resource distribution.

- Another advantage is that the whole life-cycle of the product, including recycling it, becomes a natural responsibility of one society.

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

#173

Post by ryanwaggoner »

Spooky23 wrote: post #105
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…

That’s a perspective that is common these days, but awful in practice. I don’t want to be a tenant, period — it’s almost never a better deal or value for me. I don’t need to pay a premium for the overhead and financing of a “cold food as a service” company while getting a level of service that meets the most minimum standard possible. What we are missing today is meaningful competition. You can’t buy an appliance tha…

Eh, I just think this reflects changes in lifestyle and values. You can still buy shoes that are handmade in America and will last decades (like Alden and Allen Edmonds for mens dress shoes), they just cost a fortune and people don't wear those kinds of shoes nearly as much as they did 50 years ago. People today own more shoes, they wear fitness shoes as everyday shoes, styles change constantly, etc. Most people seem to want to buy hundreds of different styles of shoes over their lifetime, so they need to be cheap. There are people who want to own 5 pairs of shoes for their entire life and are willing to pay for the privilege, but they're a vanishingly small minority.

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

#174

Post by emblaegh »

jonknee wrote: post #139
Teknoman117 wrote: post #116

I sometimes worry about how many Kindle books I own. eBooks are extremely convienent (except maybe the need to consume power to view them), but as this article points out, the ownership problem is concerning. All it takes is my Amazon account getting stolen, or Amazon exercising some right they've given themselves to take the book away. What I'd really like to see is a push for "drm-less" books, so you wouldn't be ti…

FWIW it's fairly simple to make your own DRM-less version of Kindle books you have purchased.

Is that legal though?

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

#175

Post by pc86 »

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…

> If I buy a fridge, the company I buy it from has an incentive to make it break in N years

They also have an incentive to make it last a long time so you're a loyal customer. Loyalty is extremely important if you only purchase a half dozen of something your entire life. Guess which incentive is stronger?

As a corollary, there is a big difference between being incentivized to do something and simply not being incentivized to do the opposite. The average full-size refrigerator lifespan is 17 years. The fact that Maytag doesn't spend millions of dollars developing a fridge that can last 30 years doesn't mean they're incentivized to make a shitty fridge, it just means people don't care enough about years 18-30 that they're willing to pay what it would cost to get that fridge.

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

#176

Post by User23 »

drewmassey wrote: post #38

I think there is a difference between “owning stuff” and “owning assets” that this post is clouding. It is the owning of assets - that are worth more than what you paid for them - that seems to form the backbone of American entrepreneurship in the way that the author wants the owning of “stuff” to do in his setup. There is of course value (to me) in owning a library of books - but for different reasons than, say, own…

Owning a library is a fun example, since some books are assets by your definition. I have several in my library that cost multiples of what I paid for them. One was recently destroyed in a move and that was quite the bummer.

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

#177

Post by Retric »

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #163
Spooky23 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a perspective that is common these days, but awful in practice. I don’t want to be a tenant, period — it’s almost never a better deal or value for me. I don’t need to pay a premium for the overhead and financing of a “cold food as a service” company while getting a level of service that meets the most minimum standard possible. What we are missing today is meaningful competition. You can’t buy an appliance tha…

The only way you can possibly justify that sort of view point is the implicit hard cap on what you're willing to pay. You can't find "quality" (in appliances, in shoes, in just about anything) because you're not willing to pay for it.

You can easily spend 3000$ on a crap fridge.

The problem is optimization as energy efficiency and lifespan for example are often at odds. Further you can measure energy efficiency much easier than lifespan so the incentives get out of whack from what consumers want in favor of what they can measure.

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

#178

Post by User23 »

elicash wrote: post #37

> The nation was based on the notion that property ownership gives individuals a stake in the system. Why is the fact that people without property were not given the right to vote because they "didn't have a stake" as our nation was founded being lifted up as a good thing? It's such a bizarre thing to say that this ideology was a good one. The author can't really believe that renters have less a stake in the system a…

Renters have less skin in the game than owners, and this drives a number of long term sub-optimal decisions.

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

#179

Post by owie829 »

EADGBE wrote: post #60
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…

Sometimes it's just not worth it to own everything. Renting makes a lot of sense for a lot of people. Blockbuster et al were doing this forever ago. If you only cared to watch/use something once; renting it made a lot of sense, and still does.

renting at blockbuster made sense. You could watch a movie unlimited times within a 5 day period for $1.99, versus purchasing the video for $29.99.

renting at Amazon Kindle doesn't make sense. You could pay $9.99 to rent a digital version indefinitely (or until Amazon loses the rights to rent), or you can pay $6.50 to buy a paperback version that you have second sale rights to.

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

#180

Post by jonknee »

emblaegh wrote: post #174
jonknee wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW it's fairly simple to make your own DRM-less version of Kindle books you have purchased.

Is that legal though?

Probably not, but I have no personal problem with backing up my own content and it's not like there's an actual legal risk for doing so.
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