Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 566 posts

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

#311

Post by supernovae »

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…

What is the value of "owning" something?

I've owned VHS's, they're worthless I've owned houses - that I had to short sell I've owned DVD's - they're worthless I've owned Books - they're worthless

What is the value of owning over just paying to enjoy access?

I like spotify because i can sync music to my phone to play offline - but "owning" all this music is worthless... I had a HUGE cd collection growing up but they were all stolen one day. Owning was worthless..

It seems we're substituting "ownership" with control. There are landlords that let you "control" your house - paint it, update it, customize to your liking - without having to own it yourself. This is a win-win since you get the benefit of fix annual costs whereas owning the place you could be liable for so much more.

heck, Everything i "own" actually owns "me" and burdens me with costs... but i can cancel spotify/netflix/hulu and re-sub later. I like the flexibility of our new model. I get the 4k version without having to "Re-own", i get higher bitrate songs without having to re-encode or re-buy, i get more quality content because i'm paying the producer - not a middleman distribution.

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

#312

Post by daxfohl »

This seems to be the antithesis of the lesson taught in Rich Dad Poor Dad. Stuff is a liability. Even in "owning" it you're still beholden to it. You have to maintain it, store it, protect it, make sure nobody injures themselves with it and sues you. You don't own it, it owns you. Rental, in many areas, is an improvement. Own the couple things that matter to you, rent the rest.

Perhaps it's not so much that Americans own less stuff, but rather the supply of stuff has grown so much that we became overwhelmed with too much ownership and have resorted to rents on more and more of those items by percentage.

Cellphones are an interesting side point, as they don't fully fit into either classification (own or rent). They kind of take on the worst of both. In fact, perhaps there's a market for a phone that's more purely "rent". Given the state of technology and the speed of change, I don't know if there's any real market for a purely "own" phone, unless it's like an ultra-secure dumb phone, in which case yeah there's probably a market for that too.

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

#313

Post by ubernostrum »

metalliqaz wrote: post #232
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…

> "The nation was based on the notion that property ownership gives individuals a stake in the system." It's technically true. It's clear that the original law of the land assumed that only landowners had a stake in running things. I didn't get the impression that the author claimed this was a moral truth. Rather, I thought he was saying that the resulting culture made the country prosperous and productive. As more a…

It's clear that the original law of the land assumed that only landowners had a stake in running things.

The Roman Republic had a rule that to serve in the army you had to be a landowning Roman citizen (with a minimum-value requirement for the property). Largely for this reason: if you owned land, you had a stake, something to fight for.

It didn't work out so well, because -- and it's up to you if you see parallels here -- the Roman Republic was also incredibly corrupt, and its wealthy/powerful classes used every trick they could come up with to commandeer productive land, leaving Rome in a situation where there weren't enough eligible citizens to form a useful army.

The further, and longer-lasting, consequence was that Gaius Marius reformed the system, creating essentially a standing force of professional soldiers, rather than a landowners' militia that had to be re-recruited and re-trained for every war. This was a big boost to Rome's military capability, but also resulted in soldiers having loyalty to their general (who would pay/reward them) rather than to Rome. And that played a part in the eventual change from Republic to Empire.

So do keep in mind that a "rights for property owners" system can in theory expand rights as more people gain property. But can also reduce them and concentrate power as unscrupulous people work the system to accumulate property in their hands instead of others' hands.

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

#314

Post by atomi »

qubex wrote: post #307
_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 ’c…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality

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

#315

Post by supernovae »

tjr225 wrote: post #293
dionidium wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Eh, that's kind of a stretch...also, there are usually multiple ways to approach a long commute (I don't have a long commute, but I have had one in the past).

how is it a stretch? he's traded an ideological view for another?

I live in Austin, and I'm tired of hearing how traffic bad is from people who decided to buy a 3,500 sq foot home 40 miles outside of town and complain about "traffic" driving in.

we have a pretty messed up view of "owning" something without realizing that "owning" doesn't mean much other than "being owned by..." that big commute owns YOU

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

#316

Post by Someguywhatever »

dionidium wrote: post #269
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…

> Americans confuse control with love Ownership culture has always exhibited this sort of pathological tendency. People who live next to a park with a basketball court insist on an inferior hoop in their driveway. The suburbs are littered with garden sheds full of identical, mostly-idle tools. We insist on a car for every member of the household. Similar examples are readily conjured. To the extent that any of these…

If you want to share tools with your neighbor you have to know them and be on and maintain a good relationship with them. There are numerous downsides to borrowing and sharing, so much so that people would rather not do it. Nobody wants to pester their neighbor over and over to use some tool X. It's annoying for them and annoying for you. Ideally the tools would exist off both of your properties in some neutral place that either of you could just go and get the tools out of without pestering one another but for most people this just isn't practical. It's so much easier to just buy your own tools, or pay a contractor.

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

#317

Post by LeftTurnSignal »

gnicholas wrote: post #239
ilamont wrote: post #15

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…

My reading-related startup is in the middle of conducting a poll on ebook usage. So far, the data is showing that most people still prefer reading on paper versus on screen, by a decent margin (only 14% prefer screen). However, people still read more ebooks than paper books, likely due to the convenience factor. This can be squared with the NPD data because library ebooks are included in our poll, not just purchased…

Doubt you would have this data but in case you do...

I wonder what the numbers are for people who read books to completion on ebook or paper formats. Or how far into the different formats people choose to read.

I know that most of the time when I read any ebooks, I end up never finishing the book. When it's paper, I usually finish the book.

I think it's mainly because with a paper book it's harder to get distracted than when I'm looking at ebooks. If it's a topic I'm studying, or need / really want to know then I'll get the paper version.

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

#318

Post by ithilglin909 »

taurath wrote: post #284
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…

> I make a deliberate effort to own instead of rent. In GENERAL, it seems like it takes a lot more money and resources nowadays to do this, relative to other benefits you can have. In Media, having a wall of $19.99 blue-rays and an apple music full of albums is going to cost you a lot more given how must people consume media (a lot, and constantly). The cost to get that permanence is like an order of magnitude over m…

> In GENERAL, it seems like it takes a lot more money and resources nowadays to do this, relative to other benefits you can have.

If you're talking about small ticket items, this seems true, but it certainly doesn't hold for more consequential expenditures like real estate or even cars.

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

#319

Post by johnchristopher »

_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…

> Silicon Valley has morphed and commercialized the term "sharing". You aren't "sharing" when you use Uber or AirBnB; you aren't pooling resources when you use Netflix or Amazon Books. You're renting. You're renting from a centralized company which outsources the generation of actual value to others, and pays them as little as possible. You aren't shifting your dependence from yourself to a community, but from yourself to a company that wants nothing more than to make money.

Amen. What grind my gears even more is when governments adopt that novspeak and promote the uberization of entire sectors under the guise of "sharing resources".

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

#320

Post by ddingus »

burfog wrote: post #194
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…

I got burned by "buying a product and not knowing when it will fail". Samsung made the largest fridge available. I got the $2500 model: stainless steel, no IoT but digital, double doors over drawer freezer. It looked really solid and durable. It failed in so many distinct and interesting ways! The door shelves constantly shattered, at $50 each. The structure had been compromised by artistic design, with two kinds of…

"cut that fridge up with a demolition saw to get it out of my house. This was satisfying."

So, Mr Customer, how do you really feel about our product?

Yeah, definitely satisfying. Well played.

Post reply on HN