He makes a lot of generalizing, and his track record is pretty poor. He said many years ago America is in a stagnation. hardly. The stagnation is in countries such as Turkey. not America. The S&P 500 is at record highs, Tesla and Facebook and AI technology..all sorts of cool stuff and innovation..quite the opposite of stagnation. Consumer spending at record highs too, so evidently people are still buying. Maybe instead of buying knick-knacks and do-dads they are buying services and subscriptions instead.
Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous
201–210 of 566 posts
Re: Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 pr…
Consumers largely dispose of waste through municipal pickup which is already well overlooked. Setting up oversight for industrial disposal by a bazillion corporate entities in this theoretical shareconomy of appliances would be an enormous burden on the already undercapable county and state EPA offices. It would probably all just get shipped out of the country anyway.
If you think modern refrigerators are wasteful I'd ask you to prove it. The design choices they make are manufacturing trade offs—not simply cutting corners to make it break. A refrigerator might only last 10 years, but its a net gain if it cost 1/10 the energy to build, uses 50% of the power, never leaks refrigerant and uses a small ammount.
Re: Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous
#203It's simple. Less stuff equals more freedom. Freedom to move. Freedom from debt. Freedom from "keeping up with the Joneses". Freedom from soul-crushing jobs.
I think it's more subtle than that. Needing less stuff gives freedom. Renting stuff instead gives less freedom... you have many of the same expenses as ownership, but if you ever stop paying your useful stuff disappears. Owned objects of utility provide insurance to ride out times with limited income.
It's even more subtle than that :)
Renting the exact same stuff for the same period of time still gives more of one kind of freedom: flexibility. You can usually more easily get rid of that stuff, and you're usually less responsible for it if it breaks, etc. Yes, there's usually a higher financial cost for that, which is less freedom in another sense.
But the reality is that renting often means just paying for the time that you're using an item, instead of paying for it forever even if your utilization window is small. So jumping in an uber for 20 mins a day instead of owning a car 24/7, or renting a movie for 20% of the price to buy it, which might make sense if you're only going to watch it once or twice, etc.
Re: Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous
#204I 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.
I was avoiding mentioning this, not just because of the questionable legality in some counties, but rather because it's more of a workaround. All Amazon has to do is sufficiently alter the encryption mechanisms for new books.
Same thing goes with Spotify. Tools exist to strip the encryption from the offline cache (they are either encrypted mp3 or vorbis, don't remember), but it's a workaround. I suspect it's why they killed off libspotify, which sucked because I used that to make a hackjob spotify client for RPi...
Re: Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous
#205The 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…
Minor quibble, but Airbnb doesn't own the hosts' homes or apartments, and Uber doesn't own the drivers' cars.
Renting is an accurate descriptor of Netflix or Kindle (and Google Play movies actually does have "rent" on the label of the button when you want to rent a movie). And I can see what you mean from the perspective of the guest or rider, but not from the perspective of the host or driver.
Re: Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous
#206A lot of this "stuff" are one-time-use items for the majority of people. I very rarely read a book for a second time nor do I rewatch television shows. When I do, reread a book or rewatch a movie, I usually end up paying for it again because I lost the original or I saw the movie in a theater. The good thing about the digitization of this content is the fact that it will be more likely to be preserved in the long ter…
I fear it will be the complete opposite. Once Netflix decides something is no longer worth streaming to your country there is no way to get at it again. Compared to the possibility of going to a second hand market looking for a dvd-set I’d say the situation will be worse for old movies.
Re: Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous
#207The 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…
>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 inherently bad. IMO it's still terrible if there is effectively only one product option. A democratic decision is just as bad as a shareholder one if it's choosing to favor a majority group over the minority (2 wolves and 1 sheep voting for dinner choices). >o…
If the local can company had an option for me to call one of their cans and i could track it to my door, I probably never would have used Uber. There's some value in being an app you can use in any city, but the number of people who are jet setting around the world _and_ need a cab is probably quite low
Re: Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous
#208This shouldn't be a surprise. Ownership comes with maintenance costs, and maintenance requires time. Americans work more than most developed nations [1] and work more than they used to. American commutes have also increased [2] steadily over the last 30 years. Given that, is there any surprise that Americans are less willing to own, and maintain, their things than they used to be?
[1] https://nypost.com/2017/09/03/americans-work-harder-than-any...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/02/22/the-a...
Re: Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
FWIW it's fairly simple to make your own DRM-less version of Kindle books you have purchased.
I was avoiding mentioning this, not just because of the questionable legality in some counties, but rather because it's more of a workaround. All Amazon has to do is sufficiently alter the encryption mechanisms for new books. Same thing goes with Spotify. Tools exist to strip the encryption from the offline cache (they are either encrypted mp3 or vorbis, don't remember), but it's a workaround. I suspect it's why they…
Well my point is you can make that backup now for any books you already purchased and if they change it in the future you can decide to not buy any more books. Spotify doesn't let you buy any music so I have never wanted to strip its DRM and haven't even looked into how to do it.
Re: Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's fair to say that eBooks haven't revolutionized the way the majority of people read books to anything like the degree that was expected (or has happened with music and video).
While ebooks are somewhat similar to the shift to streaming in music and video, the actual experience of watching a streamed show or listening to streamed music is essentially the same as it was when you owned a movie on DVD/VHS or had an album/CD (Play-Stop-Pause-Rewind-Fast Forward). It's the discovery process that's been revolutionized). With an ebook, the experience is fundamentally different - the concept of "pa…
>ebooks have wildly improved the footnote experience
I actually disagree with that one--at least for certain types of footnotes. When I was an IT industry analyst I got into the habit of using footnotes at the bottom of the page to provide parenthetical detail, substantiation, caveats, etc. that I thought might be useful but which would break up the flow of the writing. On the page, this works well because you can just glance down. On an ereader, it's often more distracting than just putting it inline would be.
For just references that you'll only sometimes want to look at, it's fine but for the way I often use them, I liked the old way better.
I mostly agree with your broader point. The fact that used books are often cheaper and you can't typically lend your ebook when you're done probably also contribute.