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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

#91

Post by manmal »

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…

Another example I‘ve run into yesterday is that HP now sells ink subscriptions, eg €3 per month for max 50 pages (+50 pages rollover to following months). The printer orders new ink automatically when it runs low. I can imagine that those ink cartridges will not be half empty, as usually.

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

#92

Post by matwood »

ddevault wrote: post #78
amelius wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think that Apple will be fined for not making the battery replaceable? I don't see this happen, and certainly not in the US. My guess is that Apple will simply claim that they can't make the phone as small/thin when the battery has to be replaceable.

350,000 phones were being into landfills every day in 2010 . Fuck Apple's "thinnest phone ever", it's not worth the social cost. Dumb consumer vanity isn't the metric for optimization here.

I'm not sure Apple is the one to yell at here. The iPhone is one of the only phones that continues to get updates and is useful beyond 18-24 months. Short of destroying the motherboard, few iPhones are likely sent to landfills until they are many years old. They certainly do not end up in landfills because the lack of a user replaceable battery.

iPhone users either get the battery replaced, sell the phone, or they trade the phone in. The trade in then gets sold again, and likely again after that. The iPhones resale value makes sure it is a long time before any are simply thrown in the trash.

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

#93

Post by jrgaston »

seibelj wrote: post #35
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…

Anecdotal, but every reader I know (including me) flirted with ebooks and then switched back to paper. For me, it’s less strain on my eyes, it always works even without electricity, I can lend it out to friends easily, and I like to expand the aesthetic of my bookshelf. I’m also more likely to reread all or part of a physical book. Ebooks are simply inferior.

I'm of the opposite opinion. While I enjoy the look and feel of a book, I'm tired of carrying them around when I travel and moving them when I, well, move. Best of all I can sit on my couch, wine glass in hand, and seconds after reading a book review in the Times I've got that very book in my hands.

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

#94

Post by wetpaws »

michaelt wrote: post #84
March_f6 wrote: post #47

1.) How does the market (in the most basic sense) make any meaningful distinction between "owning" a rack of DVDs and "owning" a Netflix subscription? Both are transactions where resources are being traded for "goods". 2.)The idea of spending more resources on experiences rather than goods has become more pervasive over the years so the trend of people owning less stuff would make sense. 3.)This is a little more in t…

Both are transactions where resources are being traded for "goods". When people own a rack of DVDs, film industry revenue rises when more good films are released, and falls when fewer good films are released - it's not a fixed-sum competition. When people own a netflix subscription the industry is in a fixed-sum competition. The industry makes $X per subscriber per month, whether the average movie is Citizen Kane or…

I cancelled my Netflix subscription due to the lack of good movies. Pretty sure they track it carefully.

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

#95

Post by gervase »

jerf wrote: post #19
Someguywhatever wrote: post #7

>We used to buy DVDs or video cassettes; now viewers stream movies or TV shows with Netflix This I don't care about really. Although I remember Richard Stallman wrote a satirical article about there being no libraries and having to pay to read anything (as in pay to read per page or something kind of ridiculous) now his article doesn't feel so ridiculous anymore. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html T…

"They'll all be too busy with their bread and circuses and the 2 minutes hate or whatever." Is that really it, though? I mean, that seems really weird on its face... "I'd like to own my own copy of this movie rather than just stream it, but I really have to get back to hating Republicans." That doesn't seem all that plausible. Personally, I am happy streaming things I don't care to own. At this point, most of the thi…

I think the argument would be more along the lines of, "I marginally dislike the concept that I no longer own these products, but I absolutely hate the other team, which therefore deserves my attention to a much greater degree."

They're not necessarily related semantically, but in terms of allocation of attention (a finite resource), they are competitive.

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

#96

Post by throwaway8689 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #40
brightball wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They really just have an incentive to make sure that on average you pay more than enough to make them a profit over the expected lifetime of your fridge. They also have an incentive to get you the least expensive fridge with the longest lifetime, regardless of power consumption or any other factors. You already have something very close to this with home warranties and the providers tend to be awful in my experience.…

> They also have an incentive to get you the least expensive fridge with the longest lifetime, regardless of power consumption or any other factors. Sure, as long as you assume higher power consumption doesn't increase the cost of operating the fridge. If you're not willing to assume that, then "regardless of power consumption" doesn't make a lot of sense.

If the buyer/owner of the of the fridge is the landlord but the user and power bill payer is the renter then the landlord has little incentive to care about power consumption.

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

#97

Post by ryanworl »

ddevault wrote: post #78
amelius wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think that Apple will be fined for not making the battery replaceable? I don't see this happen, and certainly not in the US. My guess is that Apple will simply claim that they can't make the phone as small/thin when the battery has to be replaceable.

350,000 phones were being into landfills every day in 2010 . Fuck Apple's "thinnest phone ever", it's not worth the social cost. Dumb consumer vanity isn't the metric for optimization here.

Apple will recycle any Apple product for free just by handing it to them in any of their stores. An Apple phone ending up in a landfill is the consumer's fault.

These recycled phones either end up as refurbished phones in other markets, or are taken apart by their special robots down to the individual pieces, which are then recycled themselves.

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

#98

Post by wetpaws »

glitchc wrote: post #34
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To help change the system, we could build The Machine: http://tlalexander.com/machine/

The Machine doesn't fix the problem. Just some problems off the top of my head: 1) Some groups will just use the resources of the Machine, while others will work on improving The Machine. Over time, Machines in some areas will be vastly more capable than other areas. This will create haves and have-nots, urge migration and give rise to a system very similar to the current worlds (first-, second-, third-). 2) In your…

>there is a basic human psychological need that is not being acknowledged in this solution

Then I guess we need to change human psychology :)

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

#99

Post by digikata »

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…

It sounds like a nightmare to me.

A fridge service provider might run the hardware longer, but they wouldn't care much about your power bill, nor fridge features - if old phone monopolies, cable boxes and current isp's are any indicator.

And good luck trying to prove to a fridge service provider that their unit has an intermittent thermostat problem...

Recycling might be the responsibility of the company, but they might systematically find the cheapest way to do it without regard to the full externalities of how it's accomplished.

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

#100

Post by tomjakubowski »

ddevault wrote: post #78
amelius wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think that Apple will be fined for not making the battery replaceable? I don't see this happen, and certainly not in the US. My guess is that Apple will simply claim that they can't make the phone as small/thin when the battery has to be replaceable.

350,000 phones were being into landfills every day in 2010 . Fuck Apple's "thinnest phone ever", it's not worth the social cost. Dumb consumer vanity isn't the metric for optimization here.

Apple will pay you to not throw your old iPhone in the trash.
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