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>Why keep a pasta-maker and a crepe cooker crammed into our cupboards? We can just order them when we need them. The main point of owning things is that you ge
by lbrito 6y ago
>Why keep a pasta-maker and a crepe cooker crammed into our cupboards? We can just order them when we need them.
The main point of owning things is that you get to use them when you want to use them.
People keep those things in cupboards because when they decide on a whim to make pasta they do just that. The same goes for all the rest - having cars, houses and so on.
Unless there's some kind of Philip K Dick-style machine that near-instantly delivers good X to your apartment through a vacuum tube or something, that as-a-service bs won't fly. No one wants to wait hours (on the best case given our current logistics network) after deciding to make pasta to actually get the pasta machine.
- cnity 6y agoFor the most part, I agree. Some things really do work better in a "borrow" type system. For instance, I'm fixing up my old bike and the sheer number of tools necessary for basic tasks is astounding. I wish there were some local "bike maintenance tools" library where like-minded folks could go to fix up their bikes and use tools. You could probably serve an entire city with a handful of chain tools, and yet it's interesting to consider how many millions of them must be manufactured so that everyone has one for the one time a year they need to replace a bike chain.
- Invictus0 6y agoI used to be a member at a community makerspace in Nashua, NH which had stuff like that. Lasercutters, woodworking area, auto bay, machine shop, 3d printing, etc. It was awesome, and sustainably non-profit! http://www.makeitlabs.com/ http://www.makeitlabs.com/
- collyw 6y agoAlso you can take pride in things, keep them maintained and tuned to your preferences. Or the opposite. In the case of my car I don't need to take care of the cosmetics. I can load a muddy mountain bike into it and scratch it without needing to pay through the nose as I would wit a rental car. In my case it would be cheaper to rent a car than own one as I use it relatively infrequently, but every time I rent I need to wait in the queue picking it up and dropping it off. It probably uses two or three hours of my life every time I rented.
- batushka3 6y agoI think this essay lost a lot of appeal with the China virus pandemic (especialy start of it in spring). This "own nothing, order everything" lifestyle is very fragile.