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There's nothing insightful in the quote from John Zimmer or this article. Not owning what you use has been possible for centuries and technology hasn't suddenly

There's nothing insightful in the quote from John Zimmer or this article. Not owning what you use has been possible for centuries and technology hasn't suddenly enabled it. Renting houses has been done for millenia, Libraries has been around for centuries, Radio has been around for a century and TV has allowed you to watch films and videos for decades. Renting a car as you need it has been possible for decades too. It's just inconvenient and expensive at the moment. Why do people still buy houses? Why did they buy records? Why did they buy books? People like owning things, having control over them. Owning a car grants you independence, a mobile base, that a self-drive rental can't grant. Are all rented cars going to come with pre-setup kiddy seats? What about the dog cage in the back? I can see families using a self-drive rental for a secondary car, but not their primary car. And sharing has negatives, especially if automated. How long before shared cars stink of McDonalds as the previous rider just bought one? Or skunk because the last occupant was on a munchie run? Cars aren't prohibitively expensive, owning one is a status statement, the future of cars isn't going to be like Spotify without heavy penalties happening for owning a car.

ghthor 10y ago
I personally enjoy owning and taking care of things because it only takes one lazy person to break something or one person that doesn't wash properly to make something gross. I'd see myself as a caretaker of equipment and belongings using my own judgement to loan the right tool to the right person. Someone that shows care and returns items in the condition they were given vs. someone who returns items broken with excuses, consistently, over and over. Yeah, that second person, they're getting the shit end of the share stick at my shop. It's sort of terrifying this idea, that we'll share more, is breaching now. I feel(anecdotal) that individuals in this society are becoming LESS responsible and and giving less care to the items they are responsible for which is a bad combination with a sharing model. Here is where I'd adopt a shared ownership of large items with perhaps a web of trust(ala kernal development style) to manage high quality time sharing of tools. But maybe this concern is moot once recycling, manufacturing, and cleaning become sufficiently automated that people can be lazy gross slobs that can't be bothered to clean and take care of shared space. Disclaimer, I'm incredibly cynical after watching the newly cleaned NYC subway tunnels and tracks accumulate litter within hours. Also having troublesome roommates that live like slobs, are having trouble with infections but don't seem to understand that their living space needs to be cleaned...
- donw 10y ago
  I feel much the same way, and will admit to finding myself... well, frustrated isn't quite the right word, but it will have to do, with what feels like an increasingly large number of people that treat the world as if everything in it is disposable. There's a certain joy in caring for things, and the added satisfaction of knowing that well-maintained tools are something you can rely on. And it's not like this really costs you extra time. Sure, it takes a small degree of incremental effort to keep my kitchen organized and clean. But when I cook, I don't need to spend time creating space to work or hunting down ingredients, because everything is where it belongs. This is maybe one of the things that I love about Japan, and also about Germany. In both cultures, people seem to be somehow overall rather thorough about caring for things. Sure, it's not universal, but it's utterly wonderful to be around people that, through habit, make the world around them a little bit better at a time.
- VLM 10y ago
  Its possible to twist that around and look at a very large scale rather than very small scale observation. An example of real world responsible sharing by normies (not rich young urbanites, but normal folks) can be seen in how we responsibly, wisely, generously share resources to raise the next generation of children, socialized medicine, and urban zoning laws aka hyper-NIMBY. Clearly a business model that is a mixture of K12 public schools crossed with the health care system and overseen by the equivalent of the local property zoning commission is not quite the ideal model to run an entire economy. Abstracted away from "tech" and "cars" this is how similar "responsible sharing of universally demanded services" business models work in the wider general population. Yet it is not all bad news, it is comforting that those cultural beliefs are at least somewhat controversial.
- Heliosmaster 10y ago
  Basically, a closed community with a high barrier of entry (maybe you need to be referred by somebody already inside) ?
VLM 10y ago
Extending the argument, why do I own underwear? Surely it would be cheaper to share. If you assume I'm asleep half the time, we could burn millions of gallons of jet fuel to ship my underwear to the eastern hemisphere where someone else could wear it while I'm sleeping and vice versa. This is not a new business concept, in Japan there are vending machines for somewhat used womens underwear so not to be sexist my socks and briefs should be quite profitable when rented in Bulgaria while I am asleep. This is a billion dollar idea, underwear is a billion dollar business and depending on sleep cycles we could easily bite a 1/3 to 1/4 chunk out of the worlds underwear budget, perhaps more. Another good argument is I only use my snow shovel a couple times per year. Why just yesterday I shoveled my front walk way. This is good whole body exercise for healthy people under age 80 or so. Obviously, because there are 8760 hours in a year and I only hold in my hands, my snow shovel, perhaps 5 hours per year total, 8760/5=1752 a shared snow shovel should be able to service 1752 households per year at 5 hours per house-year. I live in a burb with perhaps 175k households, so our entire burb "obviously" only needs to own about 100 snow shovels. After all snow shovels are expensive to buy, annoying to store, tiresome to maintain by spraying with silicone, and technology means all we need is an app and a future middleman feeling entitled to become a billionaire. A final argument is the dreaded turkey pan. Once a year I use this giant turkey pan to roast a turkey. In theory 364 people should be able to share my turkey pan with me. Yet... And how about Christmas decorations, I only have mine up for a month or so out of the year, surely there would be no problem sharing my christmas decorations with 12 other families, think of the cost and space savings! If I were going for comedy I would point out my wife and I only have sex a couple minutes per day so there's an obvious theoretical savings there, and there's already popular phone apps such as tindr and grindr to coordinate such activities. Finally any genealogist knows that in the old days a womans uterus was in full operation like 10-15 times per lifetime but under current medical conditions and dismal economic conditions, "two or so children per woman, plus or minus one" is about average. Surely some sort of sharing economy could cut down on the biological costs of maintaining all those mostly inoperative uteruseses, or uterii or whatever. Can't get uterine cancer if you get rid of your personal uterus and join the uterine sharing economy via the "utr" phone app. Hmm that one looks roomy, swipe right swipe right! "Timeshares" have a certain reputation, a taint to them, which the "sharing economy" soon will have.
frandroid 10y ago
I think the point Zimmer makes is that centrally-owned monopolies could ban you. How many car-sharing companies are there in your city? Lyft withdrew from mine, leaving only Uber. I mean there are still a few car2go's, cabs and stuff, but you don't have this kind of widespread ownership with housing.

ghthor 10y ago

I personally enjoy owning and taking care of things because it only takes one lazy person to break something or one person that doesn't wash properly to make something gross. I'd see myself as a caretaker of equipment and belongings using my own judgement to loan the right tool to the right person. Someone that shows care and returns items in the condition they were given vs. someone who returns items broken with excuses, consistently, over and over. Yeah, that second person, they're getting the shit end of the share stick at my shop. It's sort of terrifying this idea, that we'll share more, is breaching now. I feel(anecdotal) that individuals in this society are becoming LESS responsible and and giving less care to the items they are responsible for which is a bad combination with a sharing model. Here is where I'd adopt a shared ownership of large items with perhaps a web of trust(ala kernal development style) to manage high quality time sharing of tools. But maybe this concern is moot once recycling, manufacturing, and cleaning become sufficiently automated that people can be lazy gross slobs that can't be bothered to clean and take care of shared space. Disclaimer, I'm incredibly cynical after watching the newly cleaned NYC subway tunnels and tracks accumulate litter within hours. Also having troublesome roommates that live like slobs, are having trouble with infections but don't seem to understand that their living space needs to be cleaned...

donw 10y ago
I feel much the same way, and will admit to finding myself... well, frustrated isn't quite the right word, but it will have to do, with what feels like an increasingly large number of people that treat the world as if everything in it is disposable. There's a certain joy in caring for things, and the added satisfaction of knowing that well-maintained tools are something you can rely on. And it's not like this really costs you extra time. Sure, it takes a small degree of incremental effort to keep my kitchen organized and clean. But when I cook, I don't need to spend time creating space to work or hunting down ingredients, because everything is where it belongs. This is maybe one of the things that I love about Japan, and also about Germany. In both cultures, people seem to be somehow overall rather thorough about caring for things. Sure, it's not universal, but it's utterly wonderful to be around people that, through habit, make the world around them a little bit better at a time.
VLM 10y ago
Its possible to twist that around and look at a very large scale rather than very small scale observation. An example of real world responsible sharing by normies (not rich young urbanites, but normal folks) can be seen in how we responsibly, wisely, generously share resources to raise the next generation of children, socialized medicine, and urban zoning laws aka hyper-NIMBY. Clearly a business model that is a mixture of K12 public schools crossed with the health care system and overseen by the equivalent of the local property zoning commission is not quite the ideal model to run an entire economy. Abstracted away from "tech" and "cars" this is how similar "responsible sharing of universally demanded services" business models work in the wider general population. Yet it is not all bad news, it is comforting that those cultural beliefs are at least somewhat controversial.
Heliosmaster 10y ago
Basically, a closed community with a high barrier of entry (maybe you need to be referred by somebody already inside) ?

VLM 10y ago

Extending the argument, why do I own underwear? Surely it would be cheaper to share. If you assume I'm asleep half the time, we could burn millions of gallons of jet fuel to ship my underwear to the eastern hemisphere where someone else could wear it while I'm sleeping and vice versa. This is not a new business concept, in Japan there are vending machines for somewhat used womens underwear so not to be sexist my socks and briefs should be quite profitable when rented in Bulgaria while I am asleep. This is a billion dollar idea, underwear is a billion dollar business and depending on sleep cycles we could easily bite a 1/3 to 1/4 chunk out of the worlds underwear budget, perhaps more. Another good argument is I only use my snow shovel a couple times per year. Why just yesterday I shoveled my front walk way. This is good whole body exercise for healthy people under age 80 or so. Obviously, because there are 8760 hours in a year and I only hold in my hands, my snow shovel, perhaps 5 hours per year total, 8760/5=1752 a shared snow shovel should be able to service 1752 households per year at 5 hours per house-year. I live in a burb with perhaps 175k households, so our entire burb "obviously" only needs to own about 100 snow shovels. After all snow shovels are expensive to buy, annoying to store, tiresome to maintain by spraying with silicone, and technology means all we need is an app and a future middleman feeling entitled to become a billionaire. A final argument is the dreaded turkey pan. Once a year I use this giant turkey pan to roast a turkey. In theory 364 people should be able to share my turkey pan with me. Yet... And how about Christmas decorations, I only have mine up for a month or so out of the year, surely there would be no problem sharing my christmas decorations with 12 other families, think of the cost and space savings! If I were going for comedy I would point out my wife and I only have sex a couple minutes per day so there's an obvious theoretical savings there, and there's already popular phone apps such as tindr and grindr to coordinate such activities. Finally any genealogist knows that in the old days a womans uterus was in full operation like 10-15 times per lifetime but under current medical conditions and dismal economic conditions, "two or so children per woman, plus or minus one" is about average. Surely some sort of sharing economy could cut down on the biological costs of maintaining all those mostly inoperative uteruseses, or uterii or whatever. Can't get uterine cancer if you get rid of your personal uterus and join the uterine sharing economy via the "utr" phone app. Hmm that one looks roomy, swipe right swipe right! "Timeshares" have a certain reputation, a taint to them, which the "sharing economy" soon will have.

frandroid 10y ago

I think the point Zimmer makes is that centrally-owned monopolies could ban you. How many car-sharing companies are there in your city? Lyft withdrew from mine, leaving only Uber. I mean there are still a few car2go's, cabs and stuff, but you don't have this kind of widespread ownership with housing.