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

471–480 of 566 posts

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

#471

Post by chii »

nybble41 wrote: post #431
s73v3r_ wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The network is the only thing making them useful to consumers." No, this statement is entirely and purely false. The reason the network has value is because there are people on the network doing the work. If no one was doing the work, the network would be worthless. Stop falling into the trap of believing that the people actually doing the labor are not contributing, or do not have value.

"Stop falling into the trap of believing that the people actually doing the labor are not contributing, or do not have value." That is not what pathseeker said. You said (and pathseeker agreed) that the network is only valuable because there are people in it to do the labor. Pathseeker also said that having people willing and able to do the work is only valuable with a network to organize them and connect them to the…

> Neither would be valuable on its own.

but often the network gets a disproportionaly large share of the reward (i.e., the extraction of value is higher on the network side vs the labour side). This is the same as the capital vs labour argument - one without the other isn't going to produce value, but the capital side is able to extract a higher value than the labour side.

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

#472

Post by mark_l_watson »

While I get it that some people want to own and control things, I have made peace with the idea of not really ‘owning’ digital media. I protect against account loss and loosing everything my splitting ebook and audible book purchases across Amazon, Google Play, and Apple. This is a little inconvenient if I want to reference my notes in a book and have to remember which digital library to look in.

I also favor getting digital media from my library. It cost $200/year to belong to our local library in Illinois but the number of ebooks and audio books available is fantastic.

I have also started buying my very favorite movies in Google Play. This probably does not make much sense, but I like to ‘own’ my very favorite movies.

The world of digital entertainment is fantastic and the cost is very low compared to other costs of living.

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

#473

Post by redial »

_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…

> The reason we have these big evil hierarchies, where the poor are dispossessed and a small group of tycoons at the top make the decisions, is because they have a track record of good decisions.

Good decisions FOR THEM.

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

#474

Post by iscrewyou »

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…

Anecdotal. I am slowly realizing that not many of the people I know like to rewatch things. For a while I told myself they don’t want to rewatch it so I shouldn’t force them to. But I realized that I was depriving myself from reliving the movies and the great scenes just because no one else rewatches them. It’s great to just put on a old movie and do chores. I recently watched The Dark Knight for like 8th time (last time was a couple of years ago) and I just enjoyed it.

Different strokes I guess?

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

#475

Post by nigelcleland »

jonknee wrote: post #437
nigelcleland wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a huge network cost towards doing this. The centralised platforms by definition will push us closer towards the mean (as the mean is most profitable) at the expense of the outlier. This means that you'll have a higher quality median (note, not mean) experience at the cost of experiencing any true outliers. The best way it's been put to me is the follows: * (AI/ML/Algorithmic Recommendation) = 8/10 products y…

I guess what I'm saying is I am OK with this and vastly prefer it to collecting things in my home. I could put a ton more effort/money in and clutter my house and get some marginal more enjoyment from movies, but for me that is a losing proposition. I'd rather not buy anything or put in the time and enjoy the content less. I can definitely understand if movies are a passion this would be undesirable, but they're not…

That's a very reasonable approach. The issue is that if this is extended to every person in society then the cumulative effect would be worse.

An issue where the incremental benefits to one individual may have negative externalities throughout the society as a whole,

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

#476

Post by [deleted] »

_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…

[deleted]

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

#477

Post by kwk1 »

zrobotics wrote: post #291
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 think the current fad of everything being offered 'as a service' has changed many people's minds. Can't find a link, but I've seen people on this website claim that electron apps that are just a web page (and thus don't work offline) are better for Linux on the desktop than actual native applications. Sure, they do mean that cross-platform is essentially free, but you have to rely on someone else's computer for the…

> Which is one of the big reasons I'm so desperate to move away from fusion360 for personal projects.

I understand the need here and would humbly suggest trying to support development of FreeCAD for this reason. - FreeCAD Dev

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

#478

Post by jpindar »

criddell wrote: post #166
twothamendment wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many things I like about Ebooks, but until I can lend it to a friend or sell it when I'm done with it, I'm done with them. I can buy a used (and sometimes new) paper copy cheaper than an Ebook and when I'm done I can decided if I want to keep it sell it or give it away.

Ebooks have too many advantages that I can't give them up. For example, I can make the text as large as I need and for many of us, that's a killer feature. I am sympathetic to the argument against DRM though. It seems criminal that I can't leave my ebook collection to somebody after I die.

>It seems criminal that I can't leave my ebook collection to somebody after I die.

Technically, you could, but doing that would be.... criminal.

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

#479

Post by SeanBoocock »

angersock wrote: post #459
taurath wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess is the goal for everyone to join in some sort of majoritarian social contract? Being a lgbt person growing up I didn't interact in my local small community at all, because there was a damn good chance the local community would band together and mob me for being what I am. Finding a group of people I can identify with probably saved my life, literally, if not from some band of bigots than depression and suicid…

> I guess is the goal for everyone to join in some sort of majoritarian social contract? Being a lgbt person growing up I didn't interact in my local small community at all, because there was a damn good chance the local community would band together and mob me for being what I am. Alternately, by removing yourself from your community you failed to give them examples that would've broadened their horizons. Like, this…

Are you suggesting that a closeted person has any sort of obligation to come out to (potential) bigots so that said bigots can attain a more enlightened worldview? It is not incumbent on marginalized people to teach their oppressors the errors in their ways, often at great risk to themselves.

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

#480

Post by grogenaut »

Qwertie wrote: post #464
grogenaut wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most fridges are repairable modulo buying one with a complex motherboard. Even then they're still fixable just spendy to do so. Also most aren't complex enough that you couldn't just reverse engineer the Mobo easily. People do this for cars and computers.

They could be much cheaper to repair if they used standard parts so repair places didn't have to order in custom pieces that they only use about 1 per year because every fridge has it's own version.

They might be more expensive to build, esp since customers may be more interested in having a tablet in their fridge than a repairable fridge.
Post reply on HN