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It always baffles me how the proponents of the share economy do not see its downside: If you do not own what you use, you don't control it. Individual, motorize

It always baffles me how the proponents of the share economy do not see its downside: If you do not own what you use, you don't control it. Individual, motorized, traffic has a huge negative impact, that's clear. But how about it enables you to travel whereever you want whenever you want? Owning a house or an apartment might seem unnecessary in our modern society, until the next rent increase or some disturbance in your financial situation (assuming you're not sitting on a huge mortgage). And why does nobody talk about how we have to pay every fucking minute, regardless what we do, in the share economy? Maybe you spend less money for each activity, compared to owning, but maybe you are just paying more often? And finally, what about responsibility? If I own nothing, do I ever care about something? Who cares about the gearbox of a rented car? Just have a look at the interior of your average subway train. When the street I live in gets to dirty, why not simply move away? While I love to be able to rent things that I cannot or don't want to own, I have the impression that this "share everything" paradigm is actually just a toxic mixture of permanent monetarization and centralised control.

0xB31B1B 8y ago
Owning things also brings liabilities. Hit a pothole and pop a car tire -> 250 dollars down the drain. Own a house and roof starts leaking? -> 10k dollars down the drain. There are certainly a huge class of people for which owning a car or a house makes sense, but there are also a lot of people who might be able to afford a car, but when compared to the total costs of maintenance + depreciation + unexpected repairs + parking + insurance + time spent keeping it running (getting gas, finding parking, taking it to the shop), going Car less and using uber + transit + bike + rentals on weekends makes much more sense
- aetherson 8y ago
  I mean, these things are all priced into renting. There's some virtue in paying them in a predictable, steady rate instead of getting spikes of bad luck, but it's not like you pay less for car tires on an Uber, or for roofs in a rental unit, than you do as a car owner or a home owner. And if you want predictability, you should be able to get insurance, or just reserve a chunk of your income for a "home maintenance fund." (EDIT: I guess that to the extent that you live in a multi-story rental building, you and other renters above and below you share the costs of the single roof above you. But that's, first, not the major cost of home ownership, second, not applicable to all renting, and third, probably a small enough savings that it's eaten up by profits to your landlord and the costs of maintaining a super.)
  - zacherates 8y ago
    That's true, but it's much easier to pay for the 20% of a car that you actually use when you're renting it as needed. While it's less obvious with housing the same applies: People buy houses that are bigger than they need at any given moment so that they have the space they need to entertain guests, or house prospective (or past) children, etc. It's much cheaper for me to put my parents up in a hotel when they come to town, than to keep a guest room idle for the next 20 years of my mortgage.
    - aetherson 8y ago
      The utilization argument about rental cars is valid when and if we get driverless cars. Until then, the amount that you pay the driver completely destroys that savings. (And in fact you pay for more wear on tires, gas/electricity, and other per-mile costs with rideshare, because the car travels more on your behalf than would a car you own.) How much house you want/need is a valid concern, but not one that really cuts towards the question of renting or owning your primary residence. You can buy a house without a guest room. I did!
  - conjectures 8y ago
    Yes and no. Yes: rented stuff is generally more expensive in expectation - you're paying for LandLord2.0's marketing department. No: you own a home and the roof leaks - good luck getting the insurance to see to it promptly, even after half a dozen phone calls. If you are truly time poor and cash rich I suppose it could make sense to rent most things.
    - aetherson 8y ago
      Lots of people also have difficulty getting their landlord to fix maintenance problems promptly. I think this is an orthogonal issue. There's definitely a case for "paying money to make other people handle shit instead of you." There are lots and lots and lots and lots of opportunities to do this. You can go to a restaurant instead of cooking. You can have food delivered instead of going to a restaurant! You can hire a driver, whether it's through an Uber or through paying the salary of a personal chauffeur. You can hire maids, whether directly or by staying at a hotel. But, again, I don't think this really is that closely related to renting versus buying.
- rootusrootus 8y ago
  It's not like the pothole ceased to exist, or the need for a new tire, or house, or roof, etc. Someone will still own those things, still be responsible for fixing them. And they will pass those costs on to the renter. So are you really saving money? It's like buying everything at a convenience store. That convenience has value, and an associated cost. I guess for people who are comfortable forever being tenants, it could work pretty well. Certainly there is a class of people who are comfortable being the landlord.
  - wvenable 8y ago
    It's not about saving money; it's about not having the savings and resources to deal with unpredictable costs. That's the situation for a lot of people.
    - rootusrootus 8y ago
      Sorta like the allegory of the boot, I imagine. To be fair, though, you can buy insurance for those unpredictable costs.
      - wvenable 8y ago
        But that increases the cost of owning to the point where the difference in 'renting' might not be significant.
will_brown 8y ago
>It always baffles me how the proponents of the share economy do not see its downside: They do, that’s why they are behind all these PR/fluff pieces like this one that promotes the “affluent homeless” life style. You to can live the homeless dream and own two pairs of clothes...working when you want and where you want. Best part is you won’t get any benefits, like health insurance. It used to be any riff-raff could achieve the homeless lifestyle without even a job, but big tech is classing up the streets. Now everyone thank big tech making homelessness great again...just don’t shit on the sidewalks.
- ForHackernews 8y ago
  You thought this article was promoting this sad life living in a flophouse?
  - will_brown 8y ago
    Yes, after all the article is promoting rental services WeWork (you to can pretend to be an employed tech worker while homeless) and REI rentals (for the millennial homeless who no longer own their own tents but rent them)...both of which are financial sponsors of the publisher. And just in case you weren’t convinced how great the life is, they throw in a PhD quote promoting these “choices”, odds are the PhD will be homeless soon too and hoping their qoute will get them a job. Curious how you read anything but promotion into this article?
    - ForHackernews 8y ago
      > Curious how you read anything but promotion into this article? So for starters, it's clearly a "straight news" piece, so the overall tone is neutral (not promotional), but the subtext is pretty obviously negative: 1) The tragic photo at the top of the piece. 2) Highlights the role of adverse circumstances: "There are two big reasons for this shift: the price of housing and student loan debt." / "But a lot rent and share because they're broke and they need to save money." 3) Ends with this quote focusing on how unsustainable it is: "It's not something that you can do forever, because you do need to have a place that you can genuinely point to and say, this is my home," he says.
lazyasciiart 8y ago
> When the street I live in gets to dirty, why not simply move away? This is what's toxic, the idea that people who don't have the capital to buy an enormous asset must not care about where they live.
- paganel 8y ago
  Every other interaction with one of my apartment’s neighbors (I rent, he’s an owner) involves him telling me “I know that you guys are only renters and don’t care that much about the state of our building, but here’s what’s wrong with it [and then proceeds to list the stuff our building needs improving]”. It’s mildly infuriating, it’s not like I don’t care about the state the building is in, why wouldn’t I? I live in it!
  - whenchamenia 8y ago
    But thats the crux. As an owner, you might be empiwered to directly address your buildings issues. As a tennant, both you, and even your neighbors seem somewhat helpless when the property becomes run down, excwpt to leave. That becomes a net negative to the community at large. 'Rent-seeking' is disparaged for a reason, when re-investment for the benefit of the renter, rentee, and community falter and fail.
    - paganel 8y ago
      There’s a common “building repairs” fund which gets replinished monthly by both owners and renters, so I certainly do financially invest in the building’s maintenance. And not directly mentioned but that’s also this idea that renters tend to suddenly urinate in the elevator or do similar stuff only because they do not own the place. I find that’s a crazy idea to have, like I said, we also live in the same place as the owners and “packing your stuff and move” it’s not a thing that we do lighthly, on a hunch, at least not after a certain age (I’m approaching 40, for example).
seem_2211 8y ago
It also compounds your risk - if you only own two days of clothing as opposed to ten days of clothing, you have much less margin in doing laundry before you start to smell. If you rely on ridesharing you are dependent on having a cellphone, an internet connection etc. Owning things hedges your risk / increases your runway (in terms of time) before things are catastrophically bad. Bad things often compound. Outsourcing all of the risk seems like a bad idea to me.
helen___keller 8y ago
I agree with your sentiment but I have doubts about your actual analysis: >Owning a house or an apartment might seem unnecessary in our modern society, until the next rent increase or some disturbance in your financial situation (assuming you're not sitting on a huge mortgage). There's a large number of people (myself included) who are affluent but not affluent enough to own property without sacrificing standard of living. In a "steady state", you would expect the cost of renting and owning to be comparable, but in a bubble context owning is incredibly more expensive for the same unit because future rent increases are already priced in to the asset. That is the case for all of the top cities in the country. Indeed, from my understanding many young people want to own property but have doubts they will ever be able to > And why does nobody talk about how we have to pay every fucking minute, regardless what we do, in the share economy? This is just an economic fact of life for everybody under capitalism, no matter how you slice it. If you invest capital to own something instead of renting it, you're constantly paying on the opportunity costs of another investments' dividends. This is in addition to the cost of maintenance and real estate taxes (for property), or the cost of maintenance, depreciation of asset, and cost of insurance (for cars), etc > Who cares about the gearbox of a rented car? Just have a look at the interior of your average subway train. When the street I live in gets to dirty, why not simply move away? I agree but these are collective costs, not individual costs (unlike the other points you made). Capitalism rarely factors in collective costs unless it gets to a certain breaking point for congress to act, like rivers catching on fire. > While I love to be able to rent things that I cannot or don't want to own, I have the impression that this "share everything" paradigm is actually just a toxic mixture of permanent monetarization and centralised control. "permanent monetarization" - that's just capitalism 101. Labor exists in a state of permanent monetarization because they don't have capital. If you have capital, see my above comment for evaluating whether you buy or rent+invest with said capital. I don't agree with "centralised" - the long-term rental market is decentralized but should fall into the same bucket. There's no real reason you couldn't have a decentralized uber or airbnb, except that these services rely on technology for convenience, and there's all manner of problems with decentralized internet technology that makes it unlikely to succeed (I'd bet 10 bucks theres been an ICO for an uber-on-the-blockchain startup already).
scarface74 8y ago
If you do not own what you use, you don't control it And you don’t have to fix it or maintain it. But how about it enables you to travel whereever you want whenever you want? And you’re spending money on car notes, car insurance, and in major cities, parking, not to mention maintenance and repairs. Owning a house or an apartment might seem unnecessary in our modern society, until the next rent increase or some disturbance in your financial situation Most people have a mortgage who do have house. But if you have a financial situation, it’s much easier to relocate to find another job when you rent than when you own. While I love to be able to rent things that I cannot or don't want to own, I have the impression that this "share everything" paradigm is actually just a toxic mixture of permanent monetarization and centralised control. And owning everything is more to stuff to maintain and makes it harder to downsize when needed.
P_I_Staker 8y ago
This is a big concern of mine with driverless cars. Cars have been a means of freedom. I feel this had been eroded to some extent, but I can still take my car and drive it anywhere, free from government intervention, and tracking my whereabouts. In the near future, they'll just be able to pull up your ride share account.

0xB31B1B 8y ago

Owning things also brings liabilities. Hit a pothole and pop a car tire -> 250 dollars down the drain. Own a house and roof starts leaking? -> 10k dollars down the drain. There are certainly a huge class of people for which owning a car or a house makes sense, but there are also a lot of people who might be able to afford a car, but when compared to the total costs of maintenance + depreciation + unexpected repairs + parking + insurance + time spent keeping it running (getting gas, finding parking, taking it to the shop), going Car less and using uber + transit + bike + rentals on weekends makes much more sense

aetherson 8y ago
I mean, these things are all priced into renting. There's some virtue in paying them in a predictable, steady rate instead of getting spikes of bad luck, but it's not like you pay less for car tires on an Uber, or for roofs in a rental unit, than you do as a car owner or a home owner. And if you want predictability, you should be able to get insurance, or just reserve a chunk of your income for a "home maintenance fund." (EDIT: I guess that to the extent that you live in a multi-story rental building, you and other renters above and below you share the costs of the single roof above you. But that's, first, not the major cost of home ownership, second, not applicable to all renting, and third, probably a small enough savings that it's eaten up by profits to your landlord and the costs of maintaining a super.)
- zacherates 8y ago
  That's true, but it's much easier to pay for the 20% of a car that you actually use when you're renting it as needed. While it's less obvious with housing the same applies: People buy houses that are bigger than they need at any given moment so that they have the space they need to entertain guests, or house prospective (or past) children, etc. It's much cheaper for me to put my parents up in a hotel when they come to town, than to keep a guest room idle for the next 20 years of my mortgage.
  - aetherson 8y ago
    The utilization argument about rental cars is valid when and if we get driverless cars. Until then, the amount that you pay the driver completely destroys that savings. (And in fact you pay for more wear on tires, gas/electricity, and other per-mile costs with rideshare, because the car travels more on your behalf than would a car you own.) How much house you want/need is a valid concern, but not one that really cuts towards the question of renting or owning your primary residence. You can buy a house without a guest room. I did!
- conjectures 8y ago
  Yes and no. Yes: rented stuff is generally more expensive in expectation - you're paying for LandLord2.0's marketing department. No: you own a home and the roof leaks - good luck getting the insurance to see to it promptly, even after half a dozen phone calls. If you are truly time poor and cash rich I suppose it could make sense to rent most things.
  - aetherson 8y ago
    Lots of people also have difficulty getting their landlord to fix maintenance problems promptly. I think this is an orthogonal issue. There's definitely a case for "paying money to make other people handle shit instead of you." There are lots and lots and lots and lots of opportunities to do this. You can go to a restaurant instead of cooking. You can have food delivered instead of going to a restaurant! You can hire a driver, whether it's through an Uber or through paying the salary of a personal chauffeur. You can hire maids, whether directly or by staying at a hotel. But, again, I don't think this really is that closely related to renting versus buying.
rootusrootus 8y ago
It's not like the pothole ceased to exist, or the need for a new tire, or house, or roof, etc. Someone will still own those things, still be responsible for fixing them. And they will pass those costs on to the renter. So are you really saving money? It's like buying everything at a convenience store. That convenience has value, and an associated cost. I guess for people who are comfortable forever being tenants, it could work pretty well. Certainly there is a class of people who are comfortable being the landlord.
- wvenable 8y ago
  It's not about saving money; it's about not having the savings and resources to deal with unpredictable costs. That's the situation for a lot of people.
  - rootusrootus 8y ago
    Sorta like the allegory of the boot, I imagine. To be fair, though, you can buy insurance for those unpredictable costs.
    - wvenable 8y ago
      But that increases the cost of owning to the point where the difference in 'renting' might not be significant.

will_brown 8y ago

>It always baffles me how the proponents of the share economy do not see its downside: They do, that’s why they are behind all these PR/fluff pieces like this one that promotes the “affluent homeless” life style. You to can live the homeless dream and own two pairs of clothes...working when you want and where you want. Best part is you won’t get any benefits, like health insurance. It used to be any riff-raff could achieve the homeless lifestyle without even a job, but big tech is classing up the streets. Now everyone thank big tech making homelessness great again...just don’t shit on the sidewalks.

ForHackernews 8y ago
You thought this article was promoting this sad life living in a flophouse?
- will_brown 8y ago
  Yes, after all the article is promoting rental services WeWork (you to can pretend to be an employed tech worker while homeless) and REI rentals (for the millennial homeless who no longer own their own tents but rent them)...both of which are financial sponsors of the publisher. And just in case you weren’t convinced how great the life is, they throw in a PhD quote promoting these “choices”, odds are the PhD will be homeless soon too and hoping their qoute will get them a job. Curious how you read anything but promotion into this article?
  - ForHackernews 8y ago
    > Curious how you read anything but promotion into this article? So for starters, it's clearly a "straight news" piece, so the overall tone is neutral (not promotional), but the subtext is pretty obviously negative: 1) The tragic photo at the top of the piece. 2) Highlights the role of adverse circumstances: "There are two big reasons for this shift: the price of housing and student loan debt." / "But a lot rent and share because they're broke and they need to save money." 3) Ends with this quote focusing on how unsustainable it is: "It's not something that you can do forever, because you do need to have a place that you can genuinely point to and say, this is my home," he says.

lazyasciiart 8y ago

> When the street I live in gets to dirty, why not simply move away? This is what's toxic, the idea that people who don't have the capital to buy an enormous asset must not care about where they live.

paganel 8y ago
Every other interaction with one of my apartment’s neighbors (I rent, he’s an owner) involves him telling me “I know that you guys are only renters and don’t care that much about the state of our building, but here’s what’s wrong with it [and then proceeds to list the stuff our building needs improving]”. It’s mildly infuriating, it’s not like I don’t care about the state the building is in, why wouldn’t I? I live in it!
- whenchamenia 8y ago
  But thats the crux. As an owner, you might be empiwered to directly address your buildings issues. As a tennant, both you, and even your neighbors seem somewhat helpless when the property becomes run down, excwpt to leave. That becomes a net negative to the community at large. 'Rent-seeking' is disparaged for a reason, when re-investment for the benefit of the renter, rentee, and community falter and fail.
  - paganel 8y ago
    There’s a common “building repairs” fund which gets replinished monthly by both owners and renters, so I certainly do financially invest in the building’s maintenance. And not directly mentioned but that’s also this idea that renters tend to suddenly urinate in the elevator or do similar stuff only because they do not own the place. I find that’s a crazy idea to have, like I said, we also live in the same place as the owners and “packing your stuff and move” it’s not a thing that we do lighthly, on a hunch, at least not after a certain age (I’m approaching 40, for example).

seem_2211 8y ago

It also compounds your risk - if you only own two days of clothing as opposed to ten days of clothing, you have much less margin in doing laundry before you start to smell. If you rely on ridesharing you are dependent on having a cellphone, an internet connection etc. Owning things hedges your risk / increases your runway (in terms of time) before things are catastrophically bad. Bad things often compound. Outsourcing all of the risk seems like a bad idea to me.

helen___keller 8y ago

I agree with your sentiment but I have doubts about your actual analysis: >Owning a house or an apartment might seem unnecessary in our modern society, until the next rent increase or some disturbance in your financial situation (assuming you're not sitting on a huge mortgage). There's a large number of people (myself included) who are affluent but not affluent enough to own property without sacrificing standard of living. In a "steady state", you would expect the cost of renting and owning to be comparable, but in a bubble context owning is incredibly more expensive for the same unit because future rent increases are already priced in to the asset. That is the case for all of the top cities in the country. Indeed, from my understanding many young people want to own property but have doubts they will ever be able to > And why does nobody talk about how we have to pay every fucking minute, regardless what we do, in the share economy? This is just an economic fact of life for everybody under capitalism, no matter how you slice it. If you invest capital to own something instead of renting it, you're constantly paying on the opportunity costs of another investments' dividends. This is in addition to the cost of maintenance and real estate taxes (for property), or the cost of maintenance, depreciation of asset, and cost of insurance (for cars), etc > Who cares about the gearbox of a rented car? Just have a look at the interior of your average subway train. When the street I live in gets to dirty, why not simply move away? I agree but these are collective costs, not individual costs (unlike the other points you made). Capitalism rarely factors in collective costs unless it gets to a certain breaking point for congress to act, like rivers catching on fire. > While I love to be able to rent things that I cannot or don't want to own, I have the impression that this "share everything" paradigm is actually just a toxic mixture of permanent monetarization and centralised control. "permanent monetarization" - that's just capitalism 101. Labor exists in a state of permanent monetarization because they don't have capital. If you have capital, see my above comment for evaluating whether you buy or rent+invest with said capital. I don't agree with "centralised" - the long-term rental market is decentralized but should fall into the same bucket. There's no real reason you couldn't have a decentralized uber or airbnb, except that these services rely on technology for convenience, and there's all manner of problems with decentralized internet technology that makes it unlikely to succeed (I'd bet 10 bucks theres been an ICO for an uber-on-the-blockchain startup already).

scarface74 8y ago

If you do not own what you use, you don't control it And you don’t have to fix it or maintain it. But how about it enables you to travel whereever you want whenever you want? And you’re spending money on car notes, car insurance, and in major cities, parking, not to mention maintenance and repairs. Owning a house or an apartment might seem unnecessary in our modern society, until the next rent increase or some disturbance in your financial situation Most people have a mortgage who do have house. But if you have a financial situation, it’s much easier to relocate to find another job when you rent than when you own. While I love to be able to rent things that I cannot or don't want to own, I have the impression that this "share everything" paradigm is actually just a toxic mixture of permanent monetarization and centralised control. And owning everything is more to stuff to maintain and makes it harder to downsize when needed.

P_I_Staker 8y ago

This is a big concern of mine with driverless cars. Cars have been a means of freedom. I feel this had been eroded to some extent, but I can still take my car and drive it anywhere, free from government intervention, and tracking my whereabouts. In the near future, they'll just be able to pull up your ride share account.