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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

#301

Post by TangoTrotFox »

nostrademons wrote: post #270
hotgoldminer wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're protocol. Without a trusted party in the middle, there isn't a market.

...which makes me wonder if maybe the blockchain aficionados are onto something. The problem that blockchains solve is precisely to replace the "trusted middlemen" with a distributed network of miners and coin-holders, and to split the rewards that would accrue to them across a competitive market. If every Internet marketplace were replaced with a smart contract, that's a massive potential market.

Yip. In my opinion this is the real future of blockchains. There are even incredible possibilities like connecting decentralized services to create new businesses. Imagine a digital farmers' market that directly connects consumer to farmer using our decentralized vehicle transport service.

Only problem is that this/these sort of project(s) would entail an enormous amount of energy and effort to develop. And then you'd also need to ensure you have sufficient marketing clout so it doesn't just lay dormant. And then in the end it's a completely decentralized system. The idea of a creator sitting around skimming money off every transaction is not really part of this picture.

So it's not really the most enticing of projects to take on. Big investment, minimal personal reward. On the other hand, I think it will happen - eventually. We just need another Tim Berners-Lee type individual. Except preferably one that happens to be a brilliant engineer, salesperson, and billionaire.

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

#302

Post by eanzenberg »

minitoar wrote: post #188
eanzenberg wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fear monger. A 2002 car still has safety features such as airbags, seatbelts, anti-lock brakes that a 2018 will also have.

This is not fear mongering, it is actually true. NHTSA reports have shown repeatedly that newer cars have fewer fatalities. Perhaps there is some other reason for this correlation, e.g. maintenance. https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

There’s so many confounding variables that will affect fatality rate such as age (in the link but not corrected for) income, education, etc.

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

#303

Post by lossolo »

emodendroket wrote: post #275
fallingfrog wrote: post #187

Everything this guy illustrates in this article as frightening and subversive, I see as positive. Americans confuse control with love; that's why we say things like "you belong to me" and "I only hurt you because I love you". That's why we substitute possessions for relationships. It's a thoroughly poisonous attitude. The most bizarre statement is when he says "The nation was based on the notion that property ownersh…

I don't think you've really taken in the article if you think what it says is we need to buy more cars. The point here is that we use things we don't really own, and in fact ownership (particularly home ownership) has traditionally been one of the things that's ensured the stability of the country. People who feel they've got something to lose don't generally seek to burn down the whole system.

> People who feel they've got something to lose don't generally seek to burn down the whole system.

This is such an important sentence. People high in the chain need to understand, that exploiting and hoarding every dollar from those at the bottom will only lead to one thing. And as history shows, first victims of rising of the masses are the people highest in the chain of an old system.

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

#304

Post by fallingfrog »

_louisr_ wrote: post #236
fallingfrog wrote: post #187

Everything this guy illustrates in this article as frightening and subversive, I see as positive. Americans confuse control with love; that's why we say things like "you belong to me" and "I only hurt you because I love you". That's why we substitute possessions for relationships. It's a thoroughly poisonous attitude. The most bizarre statement is when he says "The nation was based on the notion that property ownersh…

> It's pretty obvious to me that a deliberate and intentional effort has been made to ensure that only people who own a lot of property have any voice in the system; to flip that relationship around and make it a moral statement is frankly a little scary. Well, it hasn't been a deliberate and intentional effort to exclude those without property or net worth from the decision making process - People like that, who res…

First off, a lot of people are born at the bottom, and born at the top, of various hierarchies. I'm certain that the people at the top think they earned it. They didn't.

Second, maintaining these kinds of hierarchies does not happen as the result of some kind of natural process. It requires violence.

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

#305

Post by ppeetteerr »

_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…

I don't own a safe, I rent a safe. It's fine.

If ever these corporations cause trouble, our government (well, maybe not the US government, but most sensible governments) will step in to remedy the situation. We've done so with privacy laws, we've done it with non-compete laws, we're going to do it with other companies as well.

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

#306

Post by gaius »

ryandrake wrote: post #241

I’m surprised at the criticism here and I think the critics are missing the author’s point. He’s not saying, “buy more stuff you don’t need” or even, “possess more stuff.” He’s saying, “you ought to own the stuff you possess.” Which I didn’t think was a controversial opinion but I guess I stand corrected. I might be an outlier. I make a deliberate effort to own instead of rent. My commute is enormous because I moved…

saying, “you ought to own the stuff you possess.”

I succumbed and buy music and movies online because that battle is already lost; I'm not going to commit to maintaining VHS, DVD etc players forever and obsolescence is built into the format. Hell there are probably people with laserdiscs that they can’t play anymore.

But I still buy physical books because they are a real thing.

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

#307

Post by qubex »

_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…

I might add that Silicon Valley et al has not simply cleverly redefined the meaning of ’sharing’ to cover their rental practices, but even the meaning of community has been totally warped out of shape. A community used to be a group of geographically proximate people whose collective survival depended on getting over their sometimes conflicting mutual interests and opinions in order to survive; now we use the term ’community’ to cover collections of isolated loners who are on average many hundreds of kilometres apart but are united by a common and often generally speaking controversial opinion that puts them at odds with their actual neighbours. The Information Superhighway was meant to usher in the Global Village but instead it begat a landscape of virtual ghettoes.

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

#308

Post by qubex »

lallysingh wrote: post #266
_bxg1 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a centralized company which outsources the generation of actual value to others I would argue that you're still renting from Uber and AirBnB, who are just outsourcing their labor and properties to others. Companies like this - I'm looking at you, Facebook - like to claim that they're only impartial platforms, but the reality is that they gain an enormous amount of power over both sides; stealthily, because they hid…

They're brokers.

Market-makers, even.

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

#309

Post by qubex »

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #224
qiqing wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd also agree that Uber/AirBnB do not really fit well in that comment. These are companies that mostly just serve as middlemen. They could theoretically be entirely decentralized enabling people to genuinely connect directly with other people to offer a service. There are even technological solutions towards avoiding bad actors and abuse. For instance mutual facial recognition to ensure people are who they say they…

As lallysingh noted just above, Uber and AirBnB are brokers.

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

#310

Post by philwelch »

dionidium wrote: post #262
ryandrake wrote: post #241

I’m surprised at the criticism here and I think the critics are missing the author’s point. He’s not saying, “buy more stuff you don’t need” or even, “possess more stuff.” He’s saying, “you ought to own the stuff you possess.” Which I didn’t think was a controversial opinion but I guess I stand corrected. I might be an outlier. I make a deliberate effort to own instead of rent. My commute is enormous because I moved…

> My commute is enormous And: > rather than be beholden to some landlord whose interests are not aligned with my own It sounds like you're now beholden to a situation that's misaligned with your interests. You've traded one kind of serfdom for another.

Not to mention that he's still probably beholden to his bank.
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