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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

#361

Post by esrauch »

lolsal wrote: post #333
supernovae wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

> I've owned VHS's, they're worthless ... > I've owned DVD's - they're worthless > I've owned Books - they're worthless I honestly find this unbelievable and amazing. You have never rewatched a video, or re-read a book? You've never lent a movie or a book to a friend? You've never used a movie or a book to job your memory and spark a conversation with someone? There is value in all of those things to me, not to menti…

It really is exceptionally rare that I've reread any book or rewatch any movie, and in those cases it wasn't hard to get another copy of the book from the library or find the movie again on Netflix or wherever. Maybe you reuse all of these things, but I think the 99% DVD is watched exactly once.

Having these physical DVDs or whatever really is a very mild burden, but even that mild burden is larger than the mild benefit provided, people just like having their DVDs on their shelf because of the intrinsic value of owning "stuff".

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

#362

Post by _bxg1 »

ppeetteerr wrote: post #355
_bxg1 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They do a little bit, but in some cases the federal government has overruled them.

They would if it became unprofitable, between the fines and the costs of compliance. Google was recently fined $5 billion; that's a significant chunk of their annual revenue, of which Europe is probably a minority. Add onto that the cost of updating for GDPR, and the EU is pushing about as hard as they can afford to.

I'm not saying this is a reason for Europe not to take a strong position. I'm just saying their leverage is finite, and less than that of the U.S. government.

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

#363

Post by Karrot_Kream »

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #286
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #208

This 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/am…

The first point is untrue. The OECD measures hours worked per member nation. You can see the results here [1]. The United States is just about square in the middle. We work 1,789 hours per year. The OECD average is 1,763. That's 26 hours less per year, or 30 minutes a week, or less than 5 minutes a day. These hours are also way down from the past and contributing to income inequality. In the 60s most men, regardless…

The US is one of the hardest working highly-developed countries.

According to [1] for 2015, the US #13/35 (in the top 37%, so not the middle) on the list on the OECD ranking of average hours worked per worker. In 2015, the US had a Human Development Index (HDI) of 0.920 tied for #10/188 in the ranking of HDI [2]. The only 2 countries with a higher HDI than the US that works more hours in 2015 than the US is Ireland and Iceland. Iceland in 2015 had a population of 329,425 [3] and Ireland in 2015 had a population of 4,688,464 [4], while the US had a population of 321,773,631 [5]. Given that Iceland has an extremely low population compared to the US, Ireland is the only country of comparable population and HDI where the workers work _more_ than US workers.

In contrast, Mexico works the longest hours according to the OECD ranking, but is #77/188 on the HDI ranking list [2].

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Average_annual_ho...

[2] - http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/HDI

[3] - https://www.populationpyramid.net/iceland/2015/

[4] - https://www.populationpyramid.net/ireland/2015/

[5] - https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2...

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

#364

Post by jacinabox »

Keynesians want to encourage spending in order to keep wages high. That's because an increase in spending causes an increase in aggregate output. However, it's unlikely that the employee will benefit. In the first place, if the marginal propensity to consume is less than 50%, and therefore the Keynesian multiplier less than two, then an increase in consumer spending will not pay for itself in wage growth. Further, the gap between spending and wage growth is increased because wages form a small component of the unit cost of any good. If spending on a good increases by some amount, then the wages increase derived from that spending will be much less. As usual it might be concluded that people are better off saving their money than spending it on things they don't need or want.

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

#365

Post by supernovae »

ithilglin909 wrote: post #324
supernovae wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not everyones' feelings about their commutes are the same. I've also traded a short commute for a much nicer home and neighborhood. I always listen to audio books and usually look forward to that part of the day. I actually sort of miss it when I'm working from home.

Do you have kids? do you have other hobbies? are you always working? do you have time to read and not passively listen to books or podcasts? do you really enjoy that time or are you just comforted by the notion it's not all for not?

I'm not trying to say how you should or shouldn't feel. I did lots of commuting over the years and I too said the same things you said...

but now that I'm 42, now that my kids are older and now that life seems to be going by faster and faster, I super regret spending years of my life behind the wheel rather than doing what I really wanted to do.

That bigger house wasn't worth it, the bigger tv wasn't worth it, the bigger commute wasn't worth it.

I had no time for my wife, my friends, my kids, my hobbies. I didn't go kayaking, biking or running as much as I wish...

I thought my commute time was my time, but it was "alone time" but not necessarily objectively "me" time - i was still upset at the traffic, delays, weather, people everywhere and no one talking, everyone just mindlessly going places while being jerks and i had to use books/music to escape...

only to go home to pay a big mortgage, stay up late to have that hour of time, get up early to try and have more time. Before long i was spending all my mental energy trying to justify it all and it became overwhelming.

Today, I live 6 miles from work, a 15 minute drive in worst of traffic. I'm home, i'm not mad, i can still listen to music/audio books but more importantly i'm there - i don't mind driving home to pickup kids to take them to scouts or off to music - because i didn't just spend 1.2 hours commuting. my rage is less, i'm there more, i'm more present and i have time for hobbies/friends/family and ME

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

#366

Post by elliottkember »

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.

"home ownership"

Does this take mortgages into consideration?

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

#367

Post by emodendroket »

elliottkember wrote: post #366
emodendroket wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"home ownership" Does this take mortgages into consideration?

Yes. The thirty-year fixed-rate mortgage was kind of the cornerstone of the whole system and arose because of government intervention to assure stability

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

#368

Post by ChristianBundy »

kartan wrote: post #257
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…

> “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.

> That is the base that Richard Stallman created for the open source movement.

I understand what you mean, but RMS is very against "open source": https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....

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

#369

Post by jefe_ »

supernovae wrote: post #311
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 w…

Renting is giving up money for conditional access to an item. Owning is giving up liquidity for unconditional access to an item.

In renting, when you are done with the item, you terminate, yielding access and recouping none of the money. In ownership, when you are done with the item, you sell, yielding access and recouping some money.

High-end hobbyist equipment such as camera lenses and woodworking tools are great things to own; they offer great enjoyment, tend to retain value, and you can typically find a buyer if and when you want to sell.

Things that are difficult to sell and poor at retaining their value are good things to rent.

I've heard compelling arguments for both Renting and Owning of Houses and Cars and it really comes down to circumstances, but it's always good to own something you can use and sell if the need arises.

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

#370

Post by Karrot_Kream »

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…

Unfortunately, by simply existing you have an effect on your local area. Divesting yourself from the local community is limiting your stake in it and can make your action in the local area less accountable. Ownership and community are historically ways to have accountability in a geographical area.
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