Americans Own Less Stuff, and That's Reason to Be Nervous - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-08-12/american-ownership-society-is-changing-thanks-to-technology <comment><USER4> 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 inherently bad. The problem with our recent trend is that we aren't getting communal ownership in return; we're getting nothing but convenience.

Silicon Valley has morphed and commercialized the term "sharing". You aren't "sharing" when you use Uber or AirBnB; you aren't pooling resources when you use Netflix or Amazon Books. You're renting. You're renting from a centralized company which outsources the generation of actual value to others, and pays them as little as possible. You aren't shifting your dependence from yourself to a community, but from yourself to a company that wants nothing more than to make money.

<comment><USER5> I might add that Silicon Valley _et al_ has not simply cleverly redefined the meaning of 'sharing' to cover their rental practices, but even the meaning of _community_ has been totally warped out of shape. A community used to be a group of geographically proximate people whose collective survival depended on getting over their sometimes conflicting mutual interests and opinions in order to survive; now we use the term 'community' to cover collections of isolated loners who are on average many hundreds of kilometres apart but are united by a common and often generally speaking controversial opinion that puts them at odds with their actual neighbours. The Information Superhighway was meant to usher in the Global Village but instead it begat a landscape of virtual ghettoes.

<comment><USER6> Personally, I view this as a distinct upgrade. Instead of being coerced into lots of interaction with people I may have nothing in common with except vague geographical proximity, I have the option of interacting with people who _actually_ share my interests or concerns or hobbies.

To me, this isn't isolated loners. It's the first _real community_ I've ever known. The first one I've ever actually felt like I was a part of, where I was always welcome and could always rely on finding people like me.

I understand that some people dislike this shift. It's easy to see where it might be inconvenient for local communities that used to depend on coercing membership to exist. It used to be easy to erase those who were alone in the crowd.

You're absolutely right. We didn't get a Global Village. Instead, we have a network of Global Villages. They are many and diverse and offer genuine community to everyone in ways that the old approach no longer did. This is beautiful and terrible - it's a shift from surviving to thriving.

We finally get to see that there's an option other than ghettos run by the tyranny of geography.

<comment><USER7> > _Personally, I view this as a distinct upgrade. Instead of being coerced > into lots of interaction with people I may have nothing in common with > except vague geographical proximity, I have the option of interacting with > people who actually share my interests or concerns or hobbies._

I.e. echo chamber.

<comment><USER6> Every community is an echo chamber, digital and analog alike.

<comment><USER7> Not really. You probably have in mind a "community of interest". But the analog world forces you into many communities of proximity without shared interests as well.

There are communities where you pick the people who are associated with, and communities where you don't get to do that (or do it as much).

The internet gives you huge control over picking communities that think/have interests exactly like yours (and that's exactly what the parent was mentioning to like about the internet communities).

In real life communities that are not e.g. a chess club, but more like neighborhood, school, etc, you are forced to live with, and deal with, all kinds of people, not just the one you chose to. At best, you can move to a different location, but you still don't have the control to pinpoint and seggregate interests the internet gives you.

<comment><USER6> You're completely correct! Real life analog communities, light neighborhoods and schools, can force a person to live alongside and deal with a wonderful diversity of people.

However, is it perhaps possible that I may have explicitly considered this kind of purely physical analog community? Maybe that I could have even been thinking explicitly about such examples when commenting that all kinds of communities are echo chambers?

One of the common characteristics of communities is that they enforce norms on the people who are their members. Physical neighborhoods and cities and schools are not different in this way. They are echo chambers too, generally reinforcing a distilled version of regional thinking, and the main lesson they teach tends to be how to bite your tongue.

The big difference between these analog communities and most digital ones is that in the case of the latter, a person can generally search for communities with amenable norms.

You're completely right! Communities of interest are _very_ different from non-optional analog communities. It's just worth considering that despite this _major difference_ , it may not significantly affect their echo chamber nature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 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 to a place I can afford to own a house, rather than be beholden to some landlord whose interests are not aligned with my own. I've never leased a car because I value the ability to repair and upgrade it myself. I don't rely on streaming services for media, which could one day disappear without replacements. I do my own taxes. I don't even eat at restaurants often. I feel that relying on services is risky coupling, unnecessarily involving another party in my success/outcome/enjoyment of the product. If I have the MP4 on my hard drive, Netflix can't wake up one day and decide I can't watch it anymore. I'll only (grudgingly) subscribe to a service if there is no other realistic option, such as with Internet service.

<comment><USER9> 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 - <USER2> "owning" all this music is worthless... I had a HUGE cd collection growing up but they were all stolen one day. Owning was worthless..

It seems we're substituting "ownership" with control. There are landlords that let you "control" your house - paint it, update it, customize to your liking - without having to own it yourself. This is a win-win since you get the benefit of fix annual costs whereas owning the place you could be liable for so much more.

heck, Everything i "own" actually owns "me" and burdens me with costs... but i can cancel spotify/netflix/hulu and re-sub later. I like the flexibility of our new model. I get the 4k version without having to "Re-own", i get higher bitrate songs without having to re-encode or re-buy, i get more quality content because i'm paying the producer - not a middleman distribution.

<comment><USER10> > 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 mention the value of being able to watch a movie or read a book whenever I want, regardless of my current state of subscription to netflix/hulu/xfinity/cbs/amazon prime/hbonow/etc.

<comment><USER11> That's a fair point but I think they are saying that if they _really_ wanted to re-read a book, they could just rent it again. The other side of the coin is how many of the books or movies that you own have you never rewatched? What happens if you DVD stops reading? I think neither are wrong, just different. It depends on your goals.

<comment><USER12> But the point of the original article is that "just rent it again" is entirely dependent on the renting authority deciding they still want to rent it to you. If Kindle decided (or was pressured) to censor a book for whatever reason, then it has enormous ability to dictate exactly what type of information you're able to consume.

<comment><USER13> That's only true if Kindle has monopoly power over books as a whole, which is obviously not the case.

Now, services like Kindle or Steam deciding to revoke access to prior purchases is a potential Big Problem...but as of yet, it remains just that: potential. And at least in theory, there are government agencies that are charged with protecting against abusive behavior towards consumers (obviously actual results there are somewhat mixed).

<comment><USER14> Well, the whole point of the article is to observe a trend. None of this is a big problem _right now_.

But economic incentives might push the renting model to become the main - <USER3> even only - model to use many goods and services in the future. Similarly, trends about the number of service providers seem to point towards consolidation as well.

So if those trends hold true, we might at some point have Megacorp Inc. offering Living-As-A-Service. And then we _would_ have a problem.

<comment><USER12> [http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-santa-monica- sco...](http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-santa-monica-scooter- suspension-20180814-story.html)

"Bird and Lime deactivate scooter services in Santa Monica for a day in protest"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> 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 ownership gives individuals a stake in the system." 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. People really think like this?

Look, what Americans need is to spend more time with their friends, their children, their spouses, their families. Not to spend time collecting fancy cars or other hollow pursuits. This is a lunatic point of view.

<comment><USER16> 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.

<comment><USER17> "home ownership"

Does this take mortgages into consideration?

<comment><USER16> 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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is beyond ridiculous. The crux of the article is:

> _Each of these changes is beneficial, yet I worry that Americans are, slowly > but surely, losing their connection to the idea of private ownership. 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._

Whether you own music or rent it doesn't give you a stake in the system, nor does owning a car vs using public transport.

What gives you a stake is your _net worth_ \-- whether in a bank account, investments, land, a house, a company, or several.

And being able to rent services instead of buy permanent goods is an economic gain, allowing you to deploy your savings in a more targeted way toward whatever really matters the most to you.

If we want to be nervous, let's investigate inequality of net worth and the policies that lead to that -- and not be distracted by something totally irrelevant like whether I buy or license my books.

<comment><USER19> >If we want to be nervous, let's investigate inequality of net worth

And we should find ourselves completely at ease at the end of our investigation, for in every species success is distributed inequitably. Inequality of net worth is a natural law, and human society is no exception. And we need to keep very hard working people motivated to keep working very hard by ensuring them that they will always keep the lions share of their labour's products.

<comment><USER20> I think this argument would resonate with me if wealth was more meritocratic. My wife is from rural Iowa and I've learned that working hard doesn't guarantee you a living wage (especially if you have medical bills).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> 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 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.

<comment><USER22> I got burned by "buying a product and not knowing when it will fail".

Samsung made the largest fridge available. I got the $2500 model: stainless steel, no IoT but digital, double doors over drawer freezer. It looked really solid and durable. It failed in so many distinct and interesting ways!

The door shelves constantly shattered, at $50 each. The structure had been compromised by artistic design, with two kinds of plastic joined together. The ice maker died. The main shelves broke a couple times. The temperature display (blue 7-segment numbers) became nonsense. The drawer handle had a hinge made from plastic which broke and non-stainless steel which rusted out. The compressor went out, as we determined by diagnostic codes. The tech sent to fix that ignored us, never checked diagnostic codes, didn't look at the compressor, insisted that our problem was the ice maker (which was indeed broken but not our complaint), charged us $75 for nothing, and fought us when we did a credit card charge-back.

I cut that fridge up with a demolition saw to get it out of my house. This was satisfying.

The replacement is a pair of smaller fridges that were about $400 each. One of them even has old-style wire shelves that seem unlikely to shatter. We've only had two broken shelves so far, in the other one.

Famously, there was a "lemons and cherries" paper on the economics of used cars. I think it also somewhat applies to new goods. There is information asymmetry here. I can't know that the hinges are fragile plastic and non- stainless steel. The fridge looks nice, and it says "stainless steel". I've learned my lesson: do not pay more in an attempt to get quality, because you'll just pay more for the same old junk.

<comment><USER23> How do you keep breaking so many refrigerator shelves..? I've never broken one in my entire life..

<comment><USER24> Heat.

If the shelf is glass, and the glass is not resistant against wide temperature variations, the glass weakens and eventually will shatter.

<comment><USER22> I doubt it. I open the door of course, but I don't put hot things into the fridge.

My shelves are generally packed with large jugs. For example, on a main shelf I might have 4 gallons of milk and a half dozen half-gallon containers of juice and then more stuff to fill out the remaining space. Door shelves are similarly packed, with the ones in the Samsung being about 12x8 inches and thus big enough for gallons of milk.

The fridge is constantly used by kids. It needs to be mostly restocked every other day.

Glass shattered in one of the $400 fridges. The other $400 fridge is wire. Glass shelves in the Samsung would break around the edge, leaving me with an intact sheet of glass and some broken plastic. Door shelves are always plastic. Samsung snapped white and clear plastic together to make the shelves, with a fragile zig-zag at the joint. I got to wrapping the shelves with string-embedded packing tape before installing them, which increased the typical life from weeks to months.

Give me forged metal grates please, or at least something like rustproof storm drain covers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> _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 adult titles (self-published ebooks excluded). Total ebook unit sales were 162 million in 2017 from the 450 publishers tracked by NPD, down from 180 million units in 2016.

Source: Publishers Weekly, "Ebook sales fell 10% in 2017" [https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by- topic/digital/content...](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by- topic/digital/content-and-e-books/article/76706-e-book-sales- fell-10-in-2017.html)

<comment><USER26> 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.

<comment><USER27> Opposite for me (for fiction). I started reading ebooks with the original Kindle keyboard and never looked back. I always felt that books were cluttering everything up (I read 20-60 per year), I enjoy not having my arms hurt from holding books in an awkward position and I feel that the eInk display is just as good as books, but it's better for reading in some light conditions.

I still buy books once in a while, but those are either non-fiction or I want them for the pictures (e.g. a book by Brom whom I knew through his art on MtG cards)

<comment><USER28> Same here - I tend toward military sci-fi (most of it is very bad) and so disposability is key to not building up a huge collection of junk. The few physical books I own now are tabletop RPG manuals, because they are needed as reference during games when batteries running down would be inconvenient.

Certain reference manuals (The O'Reilly Zoo, for example) are more useful as physical books, as well.

Besides, if I got hit by a bus tomorrow (not planning on it today), it's not there's anyone to inherit my stuff.

<comment><USER29> > Same here - I tend toward military sci-fi (most of it is very bad)

As a reader of many many Kindle unlimited military sci-fi books I sympathize and recommend the "Nameless War" ( [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12356877-the-nameless- wa...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12356877-the-nameless-war) ) trilogy as the rose in the manure of books I have read of this genre in the last few years.

There are occasional spelling mistakes etc but the story itself is fantastic and the military scenario believable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> First point:

Excerpt: "The great American teenage dream used to be to own your own car. That is dwindling in favor of urban living, greater reliance on mass transit, cycling, walking and, of course, ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft."

The teenage dream is not to own the car but to get to where they want to go, e.g., autonomy to see their friends, go to activities. When the consumer says they want a quarter of an inch drill bit, what they actually want is a quarter of an inch hole in a particular wall. The author doesn't seem to appreciate the difference.

Second point:

The right to repair or alter devices you own, e.g., farmer hacking their own tractors -- that part I agree with.

<comment><USER31> It was the teenage dream not long ago. Getting a cellphone then getting a car were life goals in high school.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> >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](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.

<comment><USER33> "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 things I watch, I want to watch once. The world is so abundantly overflowing with good video content that I have little reason to return back to something. Those few things, I frequently will buy. Some of my "season DVDs" I'm quite glad I hung on to... some of them were on Netflix for a while, but are no longer, and are still fairly expensive to buy.

If the stream services went away, ultimately I'd be slightly inconvenienced.

Music, by contrast, I tend to listen to a given track/album that I like quite a bit, and I take possession of. YMMV. I'm very music oriented compared to most people.

And Stallman's arguments about software are yet again something different; there are reasons for having the source and using open source that have no media equivalent, because software isn't just media, it's a machine.

<comment><USER34> > Is that really it, though?

Largely.

> 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's beause you are assuming that, e.g., political identity fights are an _alternative_ to economic concerns, rather than forces which shape the cogntive filters that determine the perception of the nature, cause, blame, and appropriate response to economic disappointment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I have to laugh a little bit here. Cowen is implying by his tone and his use of "Americans" that people are making this choice willingly.

If you don't have the capital to own, or it becomes too difficult to manage the things you own, it gets harder. I don't think ownership is a problem for people with plenty of capital, it's just a lot more scarce than it used to be for most of the population. Kindle books are cheaper and tinier, therefore I sacrifice a bit of rights for practicality - otherwise Amazon may not put out the books for fear of piracy, or the publisher wouldn't grant the rights. (mix of convenience plus moving / inventory costs / cheaper purchase cost)

Additionally, companies that provide these services have no incentive to give consumers additional rights to these devices and happily remove these rights - sometimes without a reason at the time - and fight them in court.

I totally agree with him that a consumer rights movement needs to gain steam ASAP to counter potentially misinformed abdication of consumer rights, and to establish solid baselines that is better for consumers. This needs to happen at a grass roots level and then wallets need to fix the behavior.

As for the lack of capital / buying things - much bigger question but I wish Mr. Cowen would at least acknowledge it.

</comment><comment><USER36> Oh goody, another article telling me why everything I do as a Millennial is wrong.

Here's what we were told as children: "My gosh, you always want _more_ toys, _more_ comics, _more_ videogames. Don't you ever get enough? What's wrong with you!"

As teenagers/young adults: "Look at all this crap you've collected over the years, taking up all this room, and you're barely an adult! You'll never have space for all this when you move out into a tiny apartment. What's wrong with you!"

As adults: "Why aren't you buying physical things and hoarding crap anymore? What's wrong with you!"

<comment><USER37> While I don't know that I agree with Tyler Cowen's original article, I don't think this is a particularly fair reading of it. Should we _never_ question whether a societal trend is good or bad, because doing so can never come from any place other than "let's wave our canes at the younger generation?"

<comment><USER36> The point is certainly worth considering. I would personally consider myself more interested in truly _owning_ the things I buy more than the average person, insofar as I regularly purchase and rip my own CD's so that I control the format, strip all of my Kindle books of DRM using Calibre, and contribute to the development of free software and free/libre operating systems so that I can be in _complete control_ of my PC's hardware.

With that said, this article does a number of things that I find obnoxious. Namely:

1) The article gives Amazon a pass for implementing DRM into their books, and instead blames the people who buy Amazon ebooks. I consider that victim blaming. Amazon more or less has a monopoly on the ebook market, meaning if you buy an ebook, you're likely buying from Amazon. If you own a Kindle (which is, bar none, the best ebook reader on the market), you're buying from Amazon. And if you buy from Amazon, your books don't truly belong to you.

2) The article seems very much targeted at the younger generation. Buying digital books, digital music, and smartphones is a thing _everyone_ does, but again, the older generation seems to get a pass on it. They own houses, after all, so from the author's perspective they surely won't "los[e] their connection to private ownership". But those poor naive youths simply can't buy an album off iTunes without giving up their stake in the system.

3) Many of the author's (valid) concerns have _actionable_ ways to resist, which the article fails to mention. You can strip the DRM off ebooks. You can rip your own music and movies. You can load an after-market OS onto your Android phone when the carrier decides to stop supporting it. Some of these can be difficult and time-consuming, but that's the tradeoff for getting both the digital convenience _and_ the freedom of true ownership.

To be clear, I very much dislike this trend of "licensing" everything for the sake of having it streamed to you. But I would argue that this is a _business_ trend rather than a societal trend, as it has been implemented top-down by the nation's most powerful tech companies. The vast majority of people simply picked what was most easily available to them.

Put another way, I think it would be shameful to yell at a poor college student about contributing to the elimination of individual property for choosing to rent his college textbooks for the semester at 1/3rd of the price it would've cost to buy them. And that's largely what this article does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'd agree young Americans are less interested in owning their media and there does seem to be a general trend away from materialism and towards spending any extra income on experiences over objects. However, I reject the notion that the younger generations are less interested in owning property. Young people do want to have a stake in the system, but most places young people are living (especially where they're moving to) it's nearly impossible for most of them to get into the property/housing ownership game to begin with due to housing price inflation and stagnant wages.

If you took millenials and plopped them in the economic context that the young generations of the 50s (or even 70s/80s) had I think this would be a very different story.

<comment><USER39> Yeah, this is a "blame the millenials" article in disguise. The problem is that we're pretty broke compared to our parents, because the big purchases (housing, education, cars) cost way more relative to our incomes. The elder dev sitting across from me bought his house for 10k around 1989. Now every house in that neighborhood costs ~350-400k (and it's one of the bigger and better ones).

<comment><USER40> The average price of a house sold in the US in 1989 was around $145,000.

The average price of a house sold in the US in 2018 is around $375,000.

If we adjust the 1989 dollars for inflation, that $145,000 becomes about $295,000.

That means, in 2018 dollars, the average house price has gone up around $80,000 or 27% over the past 29 years.

That's a significant increase and we should be concerned about whether or not Americans can afford to purchase houses, but framing the problem as "houses are now 35-40 times as expensive as they were in the late 80's" is terribly inaccurate as a general metric.

house price data: [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ASPUS](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ASPUS)

inflation calculator: [https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/](https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> It's simple. Less stuff equals more freedom.

Freedom to move. Freedom from debt. Freedom from "keeping up with the Joneses". Freedom from soul-crushing jobs.

<comment><USER42> I think it's more subtle than that. _Needing_ less stuff gives freedom. _Renting_ stuff instead gives less freedom... you have many of the same expenses as ownership, but if you ever stop paying your useful stuff disappears. Owned objects of utility provide insurance to ride out times with limited income.

<comment><USER43> Agreed. As least there's an asset with owned items.

<comment><USER44> But you had to buy them! It's not a fair comparison.

<comment><USER43> You're paying for them none-the-less.

In nearly every case over time, you'll pay more to rent it than own it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The issue is that ownership used to constitute a form of wealth, but now it constitutes a relentless financial drain.

When I got stationed in Northern Virginia, I thought about buying a condo. But almost everywhere I looked, there were absurd HOA fees, some as much as $400/mo. Considering I could rent a room for $750/mo, it didn't make sense to buy. If RENT < HOAFEES + MTGINTEREST, you're better off investing the money instead of pouring it into equity.

As for physical possessions, they all cost money (in rent!). Sure, I _could_ own my own kayak and ATV. But it'll cost me $150/mo for a storage unit to keep them in. So until such time as I spend $1800/year on quad and kayak rentals (not even counting the amortized purchase prices), its more financially sound for me to rent them.

There are exceptions. I own my truck, which I bought used, and I know I'll drive it for years and years until it's beyond fixing. In the long run, it's cheaper than renting.

<comment><USER46> If how+mortgage is even slightly more than rent you still end up doing well as soon as you are able to clear the agent and closing costs in recouping. Renting is easier to move for sure. But stay there 3 years and the story may be different. Stay there 8 years and you're making out well over rent. But being statitioned I can see why you might not. Then again I have friends with rentals in 5 cities for the same reason.

Still not as easy as a truck. I drive mine into the ground too. Not just to figure out if selling a used one or getting the trade-in is the most effective use. Buying new car way less effective than buying a good in shape 16 year old accurately for $1700 currently. I value more varied vehicles over one nice one. it's also nice to say well this one didn't start today oh well how bout this one.

<comment><USER47> A 16-year-old car will kill you in a crash that a new one will let you walk away from. That's one big, important factor in the new vs. used debate.

There's also the factor of how it's going to affect your job and life if your car breaks down. A 2-decade-old car is going to break down at some inopportune time, like it or not, even with the best maintenance.

<comment><USER48> Fear monger. A 2002 car still has safety features such as airbags, seatbelts, anti-lock brakes that a 2018 will also have.

<comment><USER49> This is not fear mongering, it is actually true. NHTSA reports have shown repeatedly that newer cars have fewer fatalities. Perhaps there is some other reason for this correlation, e.g. maintenance. [https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...](https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812528)

<comment><USER48> There's so many confounding variables that will affect fatality rate such as age (in the link but not corrected for) income, education, etc.

<comment><USER49> The age referred to in the link is the age of the vehicle, not the age of the occupant(s).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> There's a strange conflation in the article between "owning things" and "owning land." I think there is something fundamentally different about the two, in that having a patch of ground for which you are responsible for can help build a sense of self-reliance, investment in the future, skin in the game. Accumulating a wall-full of VHS tapes doesn't do that.

I don't much mourn the lack of ownership of a lot of worthless junk that doesn't bring fulfillment or human flourishing. The late 20th century West let itself fill garages and storage units with consumerist nonsense.

But it's important to recognize that the corporate consumerist system is all too willing to mutate, to adapt to people's changing tastes and to offer them a product they feel is liberation. If you've heard "Don't buy things, buy experiences," then you've heard this new advertising. Companies are all too willing to make you think that an "authentic" vacation around the world will bring happiness and meaning in the form of selfies. Restaurants play up the 'foodie' advertising to make consumption of their product seem like a life- altering experience. The companies realize they can sell the same thing again and again digitally to customers who binge-watch Netflix and pride themselves on cutting the cord and not vegging in front of the TV like their parents did. And at the end of the month you find yourself subscribed to so many services, so many pseudo-addictions, you wonder where your money is going.

Rather than buying things or buying experiences, consider what you can make yourself or find for free. There is already more than enough media content out there to last many lifetimes; why not look for old material that has stood the test of time? Why not build a skill and learn the value of becoming self- reliant in some small way?

</comment><comment><USER51> 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/americans-work-harder-than- any...](https://nypost.com/2017/09/03/americans-work-harder-than-any-other- countrys-citizens-study/)

[2] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/02/22/the-a...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/02/22/the- american-commute-is-worse-today-than-its-ever-been/)

<comment><USER52> 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 of education, worked about 50 hours a week [2]. The article shows an informative graph on hours worked by income quintile. The bottom 20% of society works, by far, the fewest hours in all of society. The 20-40% quintile works substantially more than the bottom, but less still than the rest of society.

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

[2] - [https://qz.com/574693/americans-working-less-than-ever- befor...](https://qz.com/574693/americans-working-less-than-ever-before/) (media article, but based on study which is cited with relevant numbers and figures shown)

<comment><USER51> 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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Average_annual_hours_actually_worked_per_worker)

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

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

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

[5] - [https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of- america/2...](https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of- america/2015/)

<comment><USER40> > the US #13/35 (in the top 37%, so not the middle)

At the very tail end of the top 37%, which makes it part of the middle third and part of the middle two quarters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> The classical notion that property is a kind of independence, which this article implicitly draws on, has always felt wrong to me. Rather, property feels to me like vulnerability. When you own things, they can be stolen, they can be destroyed by extreme weather (a real consideration living in the Midwest---for folks in CA, think of the fires), they can randomly stop working, they can be devalued by market crashes. If you rent, all those risks are someone else's problem, and the price premium is really just a form of insurance against that.

<comment><USER54> The other side of this is when you rent, you're beholden to the company you're renting from. If the car-as-a-service company says "Car service is now $10 more per month" you have to pay that. If the company says "We are no longer offering $your_favorite_car as a renting option", you no longer have access to your preferred vehicle. Given the overhead involved in setting up a car-as-a- service company, I'm willing to bet that competition will be low, and company leverage to hike prices will be high.

<comment><USER8> Also, if the car service says, "Our opaque machine learning algorithm determined that you violated our terms of service. We cannot tell me ou how, and your account is closed. You cannot appeal and this conversation is over." Well you're out of luck. Hopefully it's not the only car-as-a-service company out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I sometimes worry about how many Kindle books I own. eBooks are extremely convienent (except maybe the need to consume power to view them), but as this article points out, the ownership problem is concerning. All it takes is my Amazon account getting stolen, or Amazon exercising some right they've given themselves to take the book away.

What I'd really like to see is a push for "drm-less" books, so you wouldn't be tied to Amazon's systems in order to read something you've bought rights to access.

<comment><USER56> FWIW it's fairly simple to make your own DRM-less version of Kindle books you have purchased.

<comment><USER55> I was avoiding mentioning this, not just because of the questionable legality in some counties, but rather because it's more of a workaround. All Amazon has to do is sufficiently alter the encryption mechanisms for new books.

Same thing goes with Spotify. Tools exist to strip the encryption from the offline cache (they are either encrypted mp3 or vorbis, don't remember), but it's a workaround. I suspect it's why they killed off libspotify, which sucked because I used that to make a hackjob spotify client for RPi...

<comment><USER56> Well my point is you can make that backup now for any books you already purchased and if they change it in the future you can decide to not buy any more books. Spotify doesn't let you buy any music so I have never wanted to strip its DRM and haven't even looked into how to do it.

<comment><USER57> Removing DRM from any kind of audio you can play on a PC is trivial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I share the observation that we are living in a "rent economy" of the things we pay for, especially intellectual property or creative works.

I've noticed it happening slowly over time, but there are dangers[0] even if you believe you "own" your media.

There are no good solutions, people are willing to trade ownership for convenience because /mostly/ you're getting the same value- why do you care if you can't access that song you liked in 30 years?

Personally; I fight this notion as much as possible; if I buy digital media- it's backed up. I do not give my custom to anyone who wishes to own my digital rights (thus, I avoid DRM) and, where possible, I buy physical copies of goods.

However, I work in an industry which is moving towards providing "service", namely; I work in video games. And we have a new concept: "Game as a service", the idea being that the game lives and grows and dies, rather than being a static art which is subject to the non-decay or altering hand of time immemorial. Thus, the games we played in 1995 can be played to day, but the games we played in 2010 are much less possible, and the games we play in 2018 will be impossible to play 10 years on.

I don't have a particular point, I'm more frustrated with the state of affairs. Also: Apple Music can sincerely fuck off.

[0]: [https://blog.dijit.sh/importance-of-self-hosted- backups](https://blog.dijit.sh/importance-of-self-hosted-backups)

<comment><USER59> I'm exactly the opposite. I'm happy that all my media is digital. If it's gone one day, I'll find new media to love and enjoy. If it's something I can't live without, I might hang on to it for a while, but I've been around long enough now that I know something I "can't live without" today is just another thing that will be forgotten and replaced eventually.

I've found that every physical thing I own has an ongoing cost. Firs there is the obvious cost of physically storing the thing. Then there is the labor cost of cleaning it and keeping it nice. Then there is the mental cost of remembering where it is. And finally there is a cost of worrying about it. What if the house burns down? You spend a lot of time and money and effort preventing and planning for such an event that may never occur at all. And for those of us who _have_ lost everything that way, coming to the realization that it's all just stuff feels like anti-gravity. It's like living on Jupiter your entire life and then moving to the Moon.

<comment><USER58> You misunderstood my comment; I don't mind if it's Digital, but I want to -own- the digital copy.

then, yes, there's the ongoing cost of storing it and backing up, but not cleaning it, and most digital media is easy to sort and find..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I think there is a difference between "owning stuff" and "owning assets" that this post is clouding. It is the owning of assets - that are worth more than what you paid for them - that seems to form the backbone of American entrepreneurship in the way that the author wants the owning of "stuff" to do in his setup.

There is of course value (to me) in owning a library of books - but for different reasons than, say, owning intellectual property or real estate.

<comment><USER61> Owning a library is a fun example, since some books are assets by your definition. I have several in my library that cost multiples of what I paid for them. One was recently destroyed in a move and that was quite the bummer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> As someone who has given away a couple thousand dollars worth of crappy music from the 80s and 90s, I can say for certain that I am glad I don't own it anymore.

A Spotify subscription that allows me to listen to practically any song that was ever recorded is of far more utility than a pathetically limited personal music collection.

<comment><USER47> Why on earth would you pay $ per month to have access to music you like, when you can just have it in MP3/Ogg form, stored on multiple devices (PC, phone, backup HD) and be able to listen to it at any time you want for free?

<comment><USER56> From my point of view, why on Earth would you bother to have music in MP3/Ogg form where you have to manage it and plan what you want to listen to? Spotify is a paradigm shift for music consumption and I would never want to go back to collecting manually.

<comment><USER47> I guess if you have unlimited money and don't mind having an expensive unlimited-bandwidth cellular plan, that'll work for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I 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.

<comment><USER64> We are starting to recognize that we don't need alf the things we buy. We are getting to the point that we don't own things, things own us. A sugestion, if you want to get rid of stuff, do it because you don't need the oject, not to get more stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> I own very few _things_. No house. No Car. But I own a lot of equities. As to why the author thinks I have no "stake in the system" because I don't own shit is beyond me.

<comment><USER35> This is an excellent point.

The only reason I could think of was a potential implied subtitle: "the reason to be nervous is that if we stop buying things then those equity values go down" (which is honestly what I first thought when reading the headline)

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> What this is about is the increasing financialisation of the world's economy, in other worsds, consumers don't buy a "fridge" and own a fridge and have dominion over it (classical unfinancialised markets), they instead subscribe to a service that cools their food. This on HN and in other wealthy techno- cratic circles is more-often known as "$something-as-a-service" (or just "XaaS").

It's a trend that is in my honest opinion one of the more increasingly troublesome and negative aspects of modern human civilisation. Xaas has a nasty side-effect of concentrating wealth and power to fewer and fewer individuals, it creates a much deeper power structure, since one finances another who finances another who...and so on, and the more you financialise the more you can financialise - an unstable equilibrium, or "positive feedback loop". With classical unfinancialised markets, it is a more Slack(the app)-like _flat_ structure, where products are _exchanged_ and _ownership_ is transfered. Everyone becomes an owner. Power, wealth, and resources diffuse similar to that of the heat equation.

We can see this nasty effect in the housing markets, for example. The current situation where the law and society in general allows a growing number of ownership-hoarders who buy up many houses in an area and lets them out to their fellow underlings is a rather dangerous and volatile setup, and historically does not end well for anyone, but especially those up top.

</comment><comment><USER67> He makes a lot of generalizing, and his track record is pretty poor. He said many years ago America is in a stagnation. hardly. The stagnation is in countries such as Turkey. not America. The S&P 500 is at record highs, Tesla and Facebook and AI technology..all sorts of cool stuff and innovation..quite the opposite of stagnation. Consumer spending at record highs too, so evidently people are still buying. Maybe instead of buying knick-knacks and do-dads they are buying services and subscriptions instead.

</comment><comment><USER68> It seems to me the author does a lot of hand-wringing over the loss of ownership of things I didn't particularly care if I own or not. I think back to Thoreau's "don't own anything that eats or needs painting". I had DVDs because I might want to watch the movie again. But if I were to never see _Caddyshack_ ever again, I could live with that, so now I might just buy it on iTunes. Apple has shown themselves worthy enough in my eyes to trust that I will always have access to _Caddyshack_. But here's the kicker before some of you get your dander up: if Apple were to somehow screw me Microsoft-style and my movie just disappears, for the pittance I paid _I don 't care_. Because it beats boxes of DVDs taking up space in the attic.

 _We'll have ovens and thermostats that you set with your voice, and a toilet and bathroom that periodically give you the equivalent of a medical check-up._

Until we are _required_ to have such things, I do not care that I have the _option_. I have a Nest, I have Hue lights, I've gone to the trouble of hacking together a HomeKit server that can talk to the cameras. You know what? All of that shit could disappear tomorrow and I wouldn't care much. Oh, I was all excited when I got the gear, it's handy, and I would be inconvenienced by the disappearance. But the novelty of that stuff wore off _fast_ for me, and I don't consider it a requirement in my life.

And I think that's key: as long as we can do without your subscription whatever, the author's hand-wringing is a bit overdone.

</comment><comment><USER69> > The nation was based on the notion that property ownership gives individuals > a stake in the system.

Why is the fact that people without property were not given the right to vote because they "didn't have a stake" as our nation was founded being lifted up as a good thing? It's such a bizarre thing to say that this ideology was a good one. The author can't really believe that renters have less a stake in the system as property owners?

<comment><USER70> The author isn't talking about voting rights, they are talking about incentives.

When you own property, you care more about the place where that property exists because what affects the surroundings directly affects the value of your possession. That incentivizes you to care about and invest in your neighborhood, community, state, and country.

If you aren't tied to the place, it's easier to just jump ship and say "not my problem" when something goes awry. You have fewer incentives to put effort into long-term projects that improve the community since you're less likely to be there to reap the benefits.

In other words, renters are less likely to plant trees, but a neighborhood with trees is better for us all over the long term.

<comment><USER69> > The author isn't talking about voting rights, they are talking about > incentives.

They're talking about the ways in which non-property-owners were viewed at this country's founding, as not having a stake in the system. That argument was absolutely made in regards to voting rights and is the reason so many were denied this basic right. It's a very dangerous idea.

But let's explore it.

Renters have just as much a stake in the system as property-owners. They just have DIFFERENT stakes and incentives. Let's use your tree example. Maybe you are correct that renters are less likely to plant trees. That's not because they have less a stake in a system, but because the stakes for renters is different. For example, they may have to pay for the local government to plant the tree as taxpayers. Or maybe they don't like the way the tree looks. Or maybe they're worried wind will blow it over and onto their car. Or it obstructs a view. There's absolutely a stake in the system. True, they might oppose it because they may not get to ever enjoy the shade as it grows, if they move. Or maybe they want the rent to stay as low as possible. But that's still not an argument they have less of an interest -- just the opposite, it shows they have DIFFERENT interests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I'll chime in with anecdata of 1: for our family it is purely about convenience and the lack of space (due to increasing real estate costs.)

Books for us are about space. Growing up, having a full-wall bookshelf was one of my favorite things. It had sentimental value, it was a family gathering place, each ripped page or blemished cover had a story. We now dont have space for a second full-wall bookshelf. We've completely stopped purchasing books and just use Kindle or the library. It works, it just doesnt have the love of a physical books. But we also dont have the space for physical books.

Living in Brooklyn, going from a 2BR to 3BR meant another $500,000 in cost. We now living outside DC, which is less expensive, but still not enough to have room.

So we rent.

Music and movies are for convenience. For me, most music and movie CDs/DVDs never carried as much sentimental value. It is great not having to carry around disks and having temporary access to a much larger library. We subscribe to Apple Music and have never looked back.

</comment><comment><USER72> 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.

</comment><comment><USER73> There's no mention of FLOSS philosophy. Those are philosophies that emphasize control of the software and data on those devices by the users of the devices.

Even a cursory understanding of licensing of Wikipedia content is an anti-dote to the loss of ownership the author describes. If you download the current state of Wikipedia that data is yours under a very liberal license. No one can call foul and remove it from your machine.

By ignoring these important concepts the author's piece makes it sound as if digitization itself is somehow making people forget the importance of ownership.

Anyone else find this odd and disappointing?

</comment><comment><USER74> America is becoming poorer. It used to be that Beijing had bicycles and motorbikes clogging the streets, and few cars. Now it's all late-model cars, while the US moves to bicycles, motorbikes, and mini-apartments.

</comment><comment><USER75> 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 the weeds but it's funny to think about how a society's definition of wealth changes over time and how that might affect consumer behavior.

<comment><USER76>
      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 The Emoji Movie.

<comment><USER77> Treating "the industry" as a single entity doesn't make sense.

Netflix takes that $X per subscriber per month and splits it up between all its different licensing contracts with different publishers. From the publishers' POV it's not all that different. In the past if they released good movies more people would buy more tickets, tapes, DVDs, etc. to view them; today, Netflix is willing to pay more to host better movies. I don't think that Netflix would pay the same for Citizen Kane and The Emoji Movie (now, which one they would pay more for I can't answer, but their analytics probably can make a guess :)).

</comment></comment></comment><comment> temp-dude-87844 It's amusing and/or alarming, depending on your mood, that someone like Cowen, a believer in the market's solutions, can sound so similar to Stallman on this issue. Stallman pounds the same talking points over and over, but he founded a movement and released products that espoused the change he wanted to see in this world. Yet despite the tangibility of his works, the market and field is flooded with clickwraps, SaaS, and mandatory arbitration. And this extends beyond infotech, where as the article notes, rentier things are proliferating.

In many cases in the real world, the economics of the rent-based solutions are the only ones that make sense for the consumer, because alternatives require steep barriers to entry that are hard to surmount. This is the case when prices on land and houses require loans and money down, or when comparable services don't exist due to requirements in capital, expertise, and IP. Sometimes this price is artificially low (Google, Facebook, Uber) or artificially high (mobile data), but it's hard to compete with free, and hard to start a cellphone network. In one case, giant corporations are dumping at a fictitious price to encourage an ecosystem, while in the other, giant corporations are buying into a moat of intellectual property while paying large bills on the immense infrastructure that enables their service model.

When fewer people can afford to become meaningful shareholders, or band together to start alternatives, the more likely they are to be on the passive end of this transition. This is what we're seeing now.

</comment><comment><USER78> It's only a single example but vinyl record ownership has continuously increased dramatically over the last few years and continues to do so. Maybe if you make an object worth possessing against the digital version, they'll be an audience for it?

The important discussion should be not about American's losing their idea of private ownership but about American's learning the idea of owning their information and data about them. I don't care that I stream media, use SaaS for email or don't own a car but rather rely on ride share and public transit. But what I do care about is the companies that provide these services are brokerages for data about me.

I'm not aware of a single American politician who has as a prime issue the idea of private data ownership. That we can make laws that ensure that any data gathered about you belong to you and that companies are privileged to use it and do not get to dictate terms around it. That if you want to do business in a way that includes personal data of any kind then there are laws you have to follow that greatly restrict what you can do with that data. That upon request every single data point about a person can be disclosed to that person and how you've used that data and an audit trail with regards to that information.

Civil Rights for private data could be a thing.

</comment><comment><USER79> _The nation was based on the notion that property ownership gives individuals a stake in the system._

The conclusion that you have a "stake in the system" if you are a property owner is 180 degrees backward and that is apparent in his own logic.

If you don't physically own something you are using, like in his examples of music, or books, then you are relying on "the system" to ensure it will be there and are heavily bought in. Such a reliance is not necessary if you own it outright.

Consider that, if you want to ensure without question that you won't lose access to something, then you buy it outright. How this contradiction isn't clear is baffling.

Owning something removes you from the group/system that could support it. For example, shared real estate vs owned real estate. If I own a piece of land that I live on, I can do whatever I want on it and there is nobody to tell me I can't and I don't have to consider anyone else. If I instead share ownership of the land I live on, then I have to take consideration for the others on the property.

I think if there is a complaint here, it should be that there is a power imbalance between leasees and owners in today's world. As a user of spotify, uber etc... you're beholden to the owners of the content and platform to allow your paid access to it, which they can revoke at any time for any reason, with little recourse from the user.

That is actually what America was built on and is simply an extension of hundreds of years of rent seeking. We should be moving to more intentional distributed ownership (I'm not invoking blockchain here) of capital and property. Not, simply becoming renters to the capital class.

</comment><comment><USER80> This seems to be the antithesis of the lesson taught in Rich Dad Poor Dad. Stuff is a liability. Even in "owning" it you're still beholden to it. You have to maintain it, store it, protect it, make sure nobody injures themselves with it and sues you. You don't own it, it owns you. Rental, in many areas, is an improvement. Own the couple things that matter to you, rent the rest.

Perhaps it's not so much that Americans own less stuff, but rather the supply of stuff has grown so much that we became overwhelmed with too much ownership and have resorted to rents on more and more of those items by percentage.

Cellphones are an interesting side point, as they don't fully fit into either classification (own or rent). They kind of take on the worst of both. In fact, perhaps there's a market for a phone that's more purely "rent". Given the state of technology and the speed of change, I don't know if there's any real market for a purely "own" phone, unless it's like an ultra-secure dumb phone, in which case yeah there's probably a market for that too.

<comment><USER57> I own the hardware of my phone, and it would still be useful to me if I decided not to pay for cell service. I suppose Google could force push an Android update that would brick it, but is it likely that they'd do that? And would that keep me from flashing new firmware?

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> Well, it's trivial to strip the DRM from Kindle books and and back them up.

<comment><USER16> So what? How many people know that, and of the people who do, how many bother to do it? Even among those who do, the legality of what they're doing is unclear. I don't see how it changes anything the article says.

<comment><USER81> The point is you don't have to leave it up to Amazon whether or not you own something.

<comment><USER16> The author is talking about a societal shift whose consequences are difficult to foresee; one person electing to only use CDs, DVDs, flip-phones, and the like makes little difference to the broader trend.

<comment><USER81> I didn't say anything about exclusively using CDs, DVDs, etc. I'm talking about removing DRM. Amazon et al do not get to unilaterally enforce their notions of ownership. Consumers can take control of the things they buy if they choose to.

<comment><USER16> The author is talking about a societal shift whose consequences are difficult to foresee; one person electing to [strip DRM from media they purchase in violation of US law] makes little difference to the broader trend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> This article makes a lot of unsubstantiated claims and is very light on actual data. For example a blatant assertion like "Amazon's Kindle and other methods of online reading have revolutionized how Americans consume text." has no support in the article itself. For what it's worth I know only a few people that use e-books; the majority purchases and reads plain old paper books. Likewise, "...now viewers stream movies or TV shows with Netflix...now Spotify and YouTube are more commonly used to hear our favorite tunes....". This is unsubstantiated. Nearly all of the video content I want to watch is not available on Netflix; and anything that is is liable to disappear at any time. Just last month I purchased VHS tapes, DVDs, and Blu-rays to get content I wanted, so if the writer isn't going to go to the effort of researching and presenting information, then my anecdotal experience completely contradicts this thinkpiece.

</comment><comment><USER59> > 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.

<comment><USER83> 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?

<comment><USER84> I mean this is all what I'm considering. I hate working day in and day out in the Bay Area. I grew up in the Santa Cruz mountains in the forest and now I commute through an asphalt jungle to a concrete building where I'm pampered every day like a fragile snowflake. I'm constantly working to figure out how I could afford a home in the outskirts of this region. I've already moved from an Audi to a Honda although it's kind of an expensive Honda, so I'm considering switching to something cheaper. And I'm dreaming of finding land in pescadero.

So to answer your question... some of us?

<comment><USER59> I did _exactly_ this. I gave up my $3500 apartment in SF and moved to the central valley. People in SF and the Bay shit all over the central valley, but I've never been happier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> This article confuses the issue of preferring walking, biking, and mass transit to owning a car with the issue of software freedom. The former is still based on ownership of sneakers and bikes. More importantly, it's not the same issue as proprietary software licenses that prevent users from running software as they see fit. I think RMS would be happy to see such a piece about the importance of software freedom in such a mainstream publication. It's too bad that they didn't fully research it and tie these issues back to the disappearance of general computing from our lives, but it's great to see this issue getting wider exposure in the mainstream media even if it is slightly dumbed down for the masses. RMS has been writing about this issue for decades (1) and it most certainly is one of the biggest issues of our time.

(1) [https://www.fsf.org/](https://www.fsf.org/)

</comment><comment><USER86> I see tge point here. When I was renting apartment, I was not really involved with what was happening in the area or local housing community but now that i own a house, I regularly take part in local development meetings. We all have say in what gets build and what does not. Same can be applied to car rental vs owning a car.

</comment><comment><USER87> I wanted to watch Fellowship of the Ring recently. Would've been happy renting it, but the cheapest streaming option available to me was to "buy" it from Amazon for $10. This infuriated me so much that it almost drove me back to piracy, but I eventually caved and paid the $10. It's LOTR, of course I'll want to watch it again.

I immediately felt a deep shame, like I was the biggest sucker on the planet. But I thought to myself, what was the alternative? Buy the friggin BluRay? I don't want a pile of plastic boxes like it's the 00s and I don't have a player anyway. I just want THE FILE . IN FULL HD. Not the right to stream the file from Amazon's servers when I happen to have a good connection and a device with their App. Just the video file please. This article is spot on.

</comment><comment><USER88> 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.

</comment><comment><USER89> A lot of this "stuff" are one-time-use items for the majority of people. I very rarely read a book for a second time nor do I rewatch television shows. When I do, reread a book or rewatch a movie, I usually end up paying for it again because I lost the original or I saw the movie in a theater.

The good thing about the digitization of this content is the fact that it will be more likely to be preserved in the long term. There are tons of books that are out of print and movies that were produced before DVDs that will never be released. This is going to be much less of an issue going forward. So, while you may need to pay for access again if you haven't watched a movie in 20 years, at least you'll be able to obtain it like you would any other movie.

<comment><USER90> I fear it will be the complete opposite. Once Netflix decides something is no longer worth streaming to your country there is no way to get at it again. Compared to the possibility of going to a second hand market looking for a dvd-set I'd say the situation will be worse for old movies.

<comment><USER89> Your fears are completely unfounded. Digital content is so much easier to maintain than older methods of archiving.

The stuff you "buy" from services like Amazon or Steam is going to be around for a very long time. I have digital content that's almost 20 years old now and I still have access to all of it.

<comment><USER90> I was thinking more of the content you don't "buy". Have had plenty of experience with things being gone when I wanted to see it. I also don't "buy" things from these vendors because they keep popping up and going away, being bought and closed or merged. Have no interest having my "owned" stuff being tied to a particular company keeping in existence.

I actually ended my Apple Music subscription thinking I would be better if buying things from iTunes I listen to over and over. But they tried their very best to make that a non-option and now I actually don't know what to do. At this point Murfie Music seems like the only option that makes sense, but I'm assuming the music industry will manage to make them illegal sooner or later so not to keen on that either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> I've been nervous about "owning" cloud-based media since Amazon deleted Kindle-purchased copies of 1984 [0].

Even today, media you "own" on services like Amazon can disappear when the cloud provider's license for this content expires. In my opinion, it is far better to purchase a Blu-Ray or CD copy of media titles you wish to retain, rip them to disk, and stream them to the device of your choice via Plex or Kodi.

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18am...](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html)

</comment><comment><USER92> This is insightful. I want to also mention that it's not just ownership of property that's disappearing, though: the concept of owning _wealth_ also seems to be disappearing. So much -- including the nation's foundation now -- is based on loans, credit, and in general paying with money that you don't actually have. It seems like an entirely different financial/economic model from the one we mentally have in mind, and that seems like another reason to be nervous -- I don't know enough to know if it can be sustainable.

</comment><comment><USER93> Before Amazon Kindle, Netflix, Spotify, etc; I always was puzzled by people's need to own things. Why? I used, and still do, this thing called... The Library! Why pile up stacks of books requiring many bookshelves when you can borrow anything your heart desires. Libraries are better than Amazon or Netflix actually. There have been several instances when I've borrowed European TV series which are not easily available on any streaming service. Seriously, how many of your DVDs have you watched more than twice? You can always borrow it again anyway.

<comment><USER94> I too adore libraries, but not everyone has access to one, much less a library with a large collection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> Stuff is cheap. Attention is dear. This trend will continue for a long time.

</comment><comment><USER96> Extreme consumerism trends downwards in a few obscure commodities and someone proclaims the end of private property.

Give me break, collections of books, DVDs and CDs have always been largely worthless. Cars was never an investment tool.

Real estate, stocks, bonds is property with at least some value. Put stats on that before arguing that private ownership is in decline. (I'm not saying it isn't)

I'm merely saying consumerism was never about private ownership, or am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER97> This 30-something year old couldn't be happier owning little. I sold my house and nearly everything I own with the exception of clothes, car and a few other miscellaneous items. That stuff is just weight. I rent furnished rooms now, pay less, and can move around easier. Sure I sacrificed some, but I'm debt free and can always buy again.

This author sounds reactionary. The sky isn't failing, its just a different hue of blue today.

</comment><comment><USER98> > The nation was based on the notion that property ownership gives individuals > a stake in the system.

That notion presumably had something to do with why, in a nation with a population of well over 5 million, fewer than 40,000 people participated in the first US Presidential election.

 _Everyone_ who lives in the country has a stake in the system, by virtue of the fact that they are subject to its laws and their lives are impacted by its policies.

</comment><comment><USER99> There is an overlap between ownership and access.

Reduced access is bad.

Reduced ownership is bad only if it leads to reduced access.

-

I have a lot of books here at home that I haven't read in a long time. If I didn't own them that would not affect me in any way, since their resell value is very low. My exclusive ownership of these books makes them highly inefficient.

Same goes for a lot of stuff that people own but hardly ever use. Owning fewer things is not necessarily bad.

</comment><comment><USER100> > Perhaps we are becoming more communal and caring in positive ways

I think I this is a big one. There's a very degree of trust that public services and even private ones will be there whenever we need. Not just things like reliable hospitals and electrical grid, but also one-day shipping on whatever we need. There is no longer a need to keep things on hand.

</comment><comment><USER101> Back in the 90s, I used to spend a sizable chunk of my high school and college income on physical media - music CDs in particular. And I couldn't even return them if they sucked.

I'm now able to own more other, actually useful stuff because I pay just a couple dollars a month to stream literally everything ever recorded. This is so much better.

</comment><comment><USER102> If true, this is great news, for americans and for the environment.

Life is easier when you don't have too many things. Now people go to extremes, like they always will, but overall, this is very good trend. I think people will lead healthier lives when they are not oppresed with owning stuff and paying credit cards.

</comment><comment><USER103> IMHO, the smart phone has a lot to do with this.

The phone acts as a communication device, a GPS, a flashlight, a camera, a music player, a library, etc. etc. It's also the end-all entertainment device.

It's natural to own less stuff. There's too much interesting stuff right there in your palm.

</comment><comment><USER104> Recently I gave away my linux compute machine and use AWS instead. I can dial up to 400GB of RAM/100 cores when I need to run a major compute job, and dial down to a machine which is 10 cents an hour for 99.0% of my compute time. I get the benefit of owning a 10,000$ machine for a fraction of the cost, approx 80$ a month.

"The erosion of personal ownership and what that will mean for our loyalties to traditional American concepts of capitalism and private property"

If the lament here is for the mountain of garbage that each individual generates in the name of private property, color me not-amused. Think of those broken old DVDs that were used at most once or twice. Think of those cars that sit on parking lots and garages 99% of their lives. Wounding the earth to extract all that resource and burying our future in a carbon cloud. And for what! To hold on to some vague notion of private property like a comfort blanket.

The future is one we have not seen before, of all powerful trillion dollar companies. But the recent past is a hell scape which led to global warming and other atrocities. We should be willing to walk boldly into this unknown future if only for the promise of reducing waste and possibly a better climate future.

</comment><comment><USER105> It's because the value of intellectual property and financial assets has displaced direct physical ownership of assets like farmland and livestock. We own S&P500 tracker ETFs instead and spend our dividends at Whole Foods or Amazon Fresh etc.

</comment><comment><USER106> The 'idea of private property' is about private ownership of means of production, which is what definition of capitalism is. Basically it is about idea of owning capital privately and start your own business employing that capital, with a goal to increase that capital. It is not about owning 'stuff'. And in that sense, it is not going anywhere. So i think it is an empty reason to worry.

</comment><comment><USER105> The value of intellectual property and financial assets has replaced more physical ownership of assets like farmland and livestock. We invest in the S&P500 and spend our dividends at the supermarket instead.

</comment><comment><USER107> Ironic that Tyler Cowan's book The Great Stagnation was the first book I read on Kindle.

</comment><comment><USER108> Nervous because we might wreck the planet with overconsumptiona little later than thought?

</comment><comment><USER109> "The main culprits for the change are software and the internet"

Stopped reading after that. This guy has a very loose understanding of what real people's lives are like. Throw Occam's razor out the window - the reason people own less stuff is not because they might have less money - no its because "society" has changed its "values" or some other air-headed notion ppl who live in airconditioned offices dream up.

The reason Americans own less stuff is because for 80%+ of the population wages haven't seen an increase in 3 decades and are up to their eyeballs in debt. "But GDP is so high!" \- but nothing. What matters is the money that average people take home and for that they havent seen their income rise but they have seen the cost of education and healthcare go through the roof. If you're the kind of person who thinks like this guy you're probably in the camp who thinks Trump got elected because "Far-Right Racists/Russian Hacking /The Patriarchy"

Sorry for the rant. I get an Inspector Dreyfus twitch when I read this sort of stuff by supposed 'smart' people

</comment><comment><USER110> This piece failed to provide the conclusion that was promised in the title.

</comment><comment><USER7> > _Some social problems are blatantly obvious in daily life, while others are > longer-term, more corrosive and perhaps mostly invisible. Lately I've been > worrying about a problem of the latter kind: the erosion of personal > ownership and what that will mean for our loyalties to traditional American > concepts of capitalism and private property._

The "traditional American concepts" where the pioneering spirit and individualism (and of course various forms of protestantism and religious nuttery and so on).

Not consumer capitalism. It took a lot of advertising and nudging to turn the more independent 1920s and 30s American into a consumer, and even more to turn him into a consumer of today's proportions.

</comment><comment><USER111> >the erosion of personal ownership and what that will mean for our loyalties to traditional American concepts of capitalism and private property.

I don't understand the author's premise. The author is largely lamenting that people are buying services over goods, but that doesn't show a dwindling loyalty towards capitalism in the slightest. I might think it strengthens loyalty to capitalism, as many of these services require an ongoing relationship with the market.

I'm also unsure about how "private property" is a traditional American concept and the author does a poor job explaining why changing loyality to it is a reason to be nervous...

</comment><comment><USER112> Here is a non-computational paywall (ie, you run untrusted code on your computer or you don't get to see) mirror of the article text: [https://via.hypothes.is/https://www.bloomberg.com/view/artic...](https://via.hypothes.is/https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-08-12/american- ownership-society-is-changing-thanks-to-technology)

And here's a mirror of just the article raw text: [https://pastebin.com/bqBWgDPk](https://pastebin.com/bqBWgDPk)

</comment><comment><USER113> I love how this blatant neoliberal propaganda piece attempts to brand the gig economy and perpetual licensing of streaming content in lieu of CDs and other physical media ownership as "communal" (certainly they didn't mean anything by that wording?) when it's clearly a natural progression of the rent-seeking motive that capitalism is literally based on. "All the bad parts of %ideology% aren't _real_ %ideology%!" Gee, where have we heard that before.

Also great to see them deliberately misuse "private property" when discussing ownership of personal property.

</comment><comment><USER114> Serfing the internet.

</comment><comment><USER115> Headlines now tell us how to feel, and that's a bad thing.

<comment><USER116> Well now I'm feeling doubly bad.

<comment><USER115> Well you should, mr McPhage; you're a virus after all.

<comment><USER116> Just a virus of the mind</comment></comment></comment></comment>