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
#2I don't know about you, but one of the reasons I am accumulating less stuff is that I already have plenty of stuff, more than I can comfortably fit in my house. I need to get rid of stuff before I can get more stuff.
Re: Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous
#3I don't know about you, but one of the reasons I am accumulating less stuff is that I already have plenty of stuff, more than I can comfortably fit in my house. I need to get rid of stuff before I can get more stuff.
That has nothing to do with TFA, but good to know.
Re: Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous
#4> The nation was based on the notion that property ownership gives individuals a stake in the system. It set Americans apart from feudal peasants, taught us how property rights and incentives operate, and was a kind of training for future entrepreneurship.
Then rents went up, education became more expensive, wages went stagnant, the rich got richer, and suddenly owning property and buying "stuff" to fuel the insatiable furnace of capitalism doesn't seem like such a great life goal. If that means we're not participating in "the system", well... maybe it's time to change the system.
Also, I think it strange the author questions what the death of property ownership means for capitalism, and then cites various examples of capitalism in action that are working to corrode property ownership -- e.g. Apple, Amazon, etc. The rise of subscription services over shrink wrapped software or hardware to which you own the rights arose directly from capitalism.
Re: Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous
#5Headlines now tell us how to feel, and that’s a bad thing.
Re: Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous
#6It 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 as possible.
EDIT: Besides eliminating planned obsolescence, there are more advantages:
- Increased market transparency. The market is more transparent if I know exactly what a service costs me per month, as opposed to buying a product and not knowing when it will fail. A more transparent market leads to better competition.
- Another advantage is that the whole life-cycle of the product, including recycling it, becomes a natural responsibility of the company.
Re: Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous
#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
The SCARY thing, the thing that he doesn't really predict is that nobody will own anything and nobody will be allowed to read anything but also nobody will care about it either. They'll all be too busy with their bread and circuses and the 2 minutes hate or whatever.
Re: Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous
#8> The nation was based on the notion that property ownership gives individuals a stake in the system. It set Americans apart from feudal peasants, taught us how property rights and incentives operate, and was a kind of training for future entrepreneurship. Then rents went up, education became more expensive, wages went stagnant, the rich got richer, and suddenly owning property and buying "stuff" to fuel the insatiab…
To help change the system, we could build The Machine:
http://tlalexander.com/machine/
Re: Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous
#9> The nation was based on the notion that property ownership gives individuals a stake in the system. It set Americans apart from feudal peasants, taught us how property rights and incentives operate, and was a kind of training for future entrepreneurship. Then rents went up, education became more expensive, wages went stagnant, the rich got richer, and suddenly owning property and buying "stuff" to fuel the insatiab…
But society has willfully embraced living "in the present"...who here would give up their SF rental in exchange for a property in Gilroy they will eventually own? How many here would give up their leased 2018 BMW for a used Toyota Yaris?
Re: Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous
#10Headlines now tell us how to feel, and that’s a bad thing.
Well now I’m feeling doubly bad.