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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

#351

Post by pathseeker »

bad-joke wrote: post #344
pathseeker wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> Labor != Value. I can go dig ditches in a yard for 10 years and not create any value. Well that really depends on a) whether someone (including you) wants or needs ditches (farming irrigation? undertaker? dog hiding bone?) and b) the amount of time required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time. If someone really wan…

>Well that really depends on a) whether someone (including you) wants or needs ditches (farming irrigation? undertaker? dog hiding bone?)

You just proved the point though. It's not about how much labor was expended. If we are irrigating and I spend 20 hours digging a ditch by hand and someone spends 10 minutes using heavy machinery, they both produced the same value. Labor is independent of value.

>If someone really wants a ton of ditches, and you can dig faster and deeper than anyone else, is your labor more valuable?

Only if time and depth are a factor. It's the result that has value to the purchaser, not the labor. If said company could hire someone for half the price that does it in twice the time while still meeting the company's deadline, your labor is definitely not more valuable.

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

#352

Post by Analemma_ »

ithilglin909 wrote: post #318
taurath wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Are you sure it "certainly" doesn't hold for cars? Cars are expensive as hell: after the amortized sticker price, maintenance, gas, parking (I pay $150/month to park near downtown Seattle) and insurance, it takes quite a few Uber rides before choosing the renting economy puts you in the red overall. And by contrast with a house, a car really isn't any household wealth worth speaking of, they depreciate so fast.

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

#353

Post by pathseeker »

lovich wrote: post #207
pathseeker wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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

>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.

Yep, and for you to report them when they scam you on rides and lie about broken credit card machines. But alas, most cab companies don't have this so you turn to the apps that do provide it.

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

#354

Post by dsfyu404ed »

fallingfrog wrote: post #304
_louisr_ wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 .

I'm working quite hard to ensure that my children will have a far greater head start than I did. Why should I not be able to pass on the fruit of my labor?

Yes I know this is going to be a controversial question. I'm genuinely interested in what people's opinions are.

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

#355

Post by ppeetteerr »

_bxg1 wrote: post #332
ppeetteerr wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One can hope. But the U.S. government is so deep in the pockets of corporations - hiding behind America's blind worship of the free market - that I question if we'll ever get back to a place where it's willing to intervene. Europe has been doing a great job of picking up our slack lately, but there's only so much they can do. Most of these companies are based in America, and most of the world's market is in Asia. The…

Cities and states pick up where federal governments do not. Airbnb is being restricted by the cities (not federally) and so is Uber in a lot of places.

> I'm sure those numbers have been crunched and that they're walking that line.

A large company is not going to leave a market because it doesn't want to comply with regulation, esp. one the size of the US, the EU, or China.

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

#356

Post by wott »

hugey010 wrote: post #297
kartan wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “you ought to own the stuff you possess.” That is the base that Richard Stallman created for the open source movement. You should own your own hardware, and the only way of fulfilling that is to own the software that makes it run. And I also thought that this is common sense at least for the past generation of developers. I am not so sure how much the message has been lost, but it is not so strong as it used to be.

I got to see Stallman talk at a large state school a few years back. Almost everyone, including myself, thought the guy meant well but had really lost his mind. It wasn't just the Emacs song, but how he spent so much of his time and energy understanding and maintaining all of his freedoms. Thinking back, it's like we forgot our rights aren't guaranteed and didn't need to be protected or even considered at those level…

Those companies (and capitalism in general) excel at identifying your sloths (as any other vice), encouraging and developing them in order to turn them into money. They thrive on such mechanisms.

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

#357

Post by chillacy »

ithilglin909 wrote: post #318
taurath wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Isn’t it especially true for cars and houses? You need a substantial amount of capital for both of those, especially for a mortgage. And that’s not even getting into whether you actually own something if the bank can take it from you for missed payments.

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

#358

Post by pathseeker »

Kalium wrote: post #345
caust1c wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think the same as you, but I realized that I was putting no effort into my local communities. Once I started to start putting more effort into the local community, I began to appreciate geographic proximity much more. That said, as all things, there's a balance. The Internet is a great tool for bringing people virtually close together and spreading ideas. Sharing those ideas is a great way to enhance your l…

Can we just agree that it's not evil that people get a choice now where they didn't before? You're very right! Sharing ideas to enhance your local community can be incredibly valuable and rewarding! However, some people occasionally find that their local communities do not always uniformly and enthusiastically welcome the ideas they want to share. Some people, faced with such experiences and fears, might consider tha…

> Can we just agree that it's not evil that people get a choice now where they didn't before?

It depends. I find the fact that people can isolate themselves into communities where it's very easy to censor out any possible dissenters and dissenting opinions to be pretty damn damaging to our society.

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

#359

Post by pathseeker »

qubex wrote: post #308
lallysingh wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're brokers.

Market-makers, even.

A market maker provides demand and supply to both sides to smooth out pricing. Airbnb does not do that, they are just the market. An argument could be made that Uber does do that by paying wages to the driver independent of what it charges the rider.

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

#360

Post by VLM »

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…

Something I'd suggest is being a parasite off the commercial businesses and pretend the retail market doesn't exist.

You can't buy a residential clothes washer designed to last longer than five years; laundromats won't tolerate that; solution, pretend Home Depot doesn't exist and buy a Speed Queen that your kids can probably inherit.

An interesting side effect is residential / contractors special type stuff has a very low initial cost of purchase but overall lifetime cost is always lower for commercial grade stuff; this makes sense, if it was cheaper to buy residential garbage the beancounters would force it to officially be commercial...

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