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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

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.

nepeckman 8y ago
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.
- ryandrake 8y ago
  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.
burlesona 8y ago
I think this is key. Property ownership comes with both opportunity costs and liability. When people have choices, sometimes they prefer to avoid those downsides to ownership for economically rational reasons. I think a lot of older generation Americans grew up obsessed with ownership, particular of cars and houses, as crucial symbols of status and success. In my conversations with them I often hear them portray these as indicators rather than just symbols. So it’s not just that owning a home impresses your parents, it’s that you’re not an adult until you own your own home. At the end of the day I think it’s hard for each generation to understand how much the world has changed and how much the culture of next generation has changed as a result. And they’re uncomfortable with this change, maybe understandably. Therefore it’s understandable, though IMO misguided, for them to point at changing preferences and behaviors and mistake these as causes of the negative societal shifts they see, rather than understand them as being effects of the societal changes that have happened already. Easiest case in point, the first generation of car-using adults suddenly experienced a massive glut of “useful” land and housing, and then a subsequent era of high inflation, thus it was very easy for them to buy a home and those who did prosepered at the expense of the banks as their mortgages hedged a bunch of value against inflation. The second generation (the boomers) didn’t get quite as good of a deal, but it was still pretty easy for them to own a comfortable home with a reasonable commute, and they experienced long runs of appreciation, so their belief that this was the “best way to live” was validated. But for the kids of the boomers (millennial), urban sprawl had already consumed most of the best near-city land, while the rural economy has been stagnant. Thus the trade-off to follow the old recipe is a brutal commute or else house prices that are out of reach for most of us. Many also came of age in the recession. Therefore it should not be surprising that the Millenials did not find it viable to be obsessed with ownership, and that they would have backlashed against it in some ways including this preference for finding ways to enjoy things without incurring capital costs, as the so-called “sharing economy” has emerged to offer. It may be that the Millenial generation is much less wealthy in the end. But that seems to me mostly the fault of the Builders and the Boomers and the result of the choices they made, and that the “renter” mindset is more a result of their lower wealth and harder economic prospects rather than the cause.

nepeckman 8y ago

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.

ryandrake 8y ago
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.

burlesona 8y ago

I think this is key. Property ownership comes with both opportunity costs and liability. When people have choices, sometimes they prefer to avoid those downsides to ownership for economically rational reasons. I think a lot of older generation Americans grew up obsessed with ownership, particular of cars and houses, as crucial symbols of status and success. In my conversations with them I often hear them portray these as indicators rather than just symbols. So it’s not just that owning a home impresses your parents, it’s that you’re not an adult until you own your own home. At the end of the day I think it’s hard for each generation to understand how much the world has changed and how much the culture of next generation has changed as a result. And they’re uncomfortable with this change, maybe understandably. Therefore it’s understandable, though IMO misguided, for them to point at changing preferences and behaviors and mistake these as causes of the negative societal shifts they see, rather than understand them as being effects of the societal changes that have happened already. Easiest case in point, the first generation of car-using adults suddenly experienced a massive glut of “useful” land and housing, and then a subsequent era of high inflation, thus it was very easy for them to buy a home and those who did prosepered at the expense of the banks as their mortgages hedged a bunch of value against inflation. The second generation (the boomers) didn’t get quite as good of a deal, but it was still pretty easy for them to own a comfortable home with a reasonable commute, and they experienced long runs of appreciation, so their belief that this was the “best way to live” was validated. But for the kids of the boomers (millennial), urban sprawl had already consumed most of the best near-city land, while the rural economy has been stagnant. Thus the trade-off to follow the old recipe is a brutal commute or else house prices that are out of reach for most of us. Many also came of age in the recession. Therefore it should not be surprising that the Millenials did not find it viable to be obsessed with ownership, and that they would have backlashed against it in some ways including this preference for finding ways to enjoy things without incurring capital costs, as the so-called “sharing economy” has emerged to offer. It may be that the Millenial generation is much less wealthy in the end. But that seems to me mostly the fault of the Builders and the Boomers and the result of the choices they made, and that the “renter” mindset is more a result of their lower wealth and harder economic prospects rather than the cause.