31–40 of 566 posts
It'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.
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 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…
An essentially never discussed option is also that the fridge could be open source. Now when it breaks there is both motive and opportunity for third party repair companies to offer upgrades and fixes.
> 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/
1) Some groups will just use the resources of the Machine, while others will work on improving The Machine. Over time, Machines in some areas will be vastly more capable than other areas. This will create haves and have-nots, urge migration and give rise to a system very similar to the current worlds (first-, second-, third-).
2) In your utopia, the corporation has no incentive to build a long-lasting Machine, especially since the Machine can build it's own parts. The corporation may also upgrade Machine capabilities (a new XBox/PS) that make it desirable to upgrade, forcing the town to pony up more money or resources. And what about the people who work at those corporations? Do they not live like the folks with the Machine? Why do they have to work, for money presumably? Again, haves and have-nots.
3) Resources in a local area are finite. What happens when the water runs out?
4) If the Machine removes the need for money, how do the townsfolk pay for the Machine? How does it all start?
You are a technological optimist. Like other technological optimists, there is a basic human psychological need that is not being acknowledged in this solution. That is, the desire to be better than your fellow man: Whether this is at an individual level, family level or society level is less relevant, but so long as this need exists, no amount of technology can fix the problem, as any new technology can be bent to increase, not decrease, disparity.
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 ad…
For me, it’s less strain on my eyes, it always works even without electricity, I can lend it out to friends easily, and I like to expand the aesthetic of my bookshelf. I’m also more likely to reread all or part of a physical book. Ebooks are simply inferior.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But society has willfully embraced living "in the present"...who here would give up their SF rental in exchange for a property in Gilroy they will eventually own? How many here would give up their leased 2018 BMW for a used Toyota Yaris?
>How many here would give up their leased 2018 BMW for a used Toyota Yaris? If someone gave me a BMW, assuming it wasn't a close friend or someone I had to worry about offending, I would sell it and continue using my old car.
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 as property owners?
There is of course value (to me) in owning a library of books - but for different reasons than, say, owning intellectual property or real estate.
I don't know about you, but one of the reasons I am accumulating less stuff is that I already have plenty of stuff, more than I can comfortably fit in my house. I need to get rid of stuff before I can get more stuff.
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.…
Sure, as long as you assume higher power consumption doesn't increase the cost of operating the fridge.
If you're not willing to assume that, then "regardless of power consumption" doesn't make a lot of sense.