7 ms·

We are rapidly moving towards Feudalism. If someone can charge you for using things you already bought and 'own', then average man has no property rights. The

We are rapidly moving towards Feudalism. If someone can charge you for using things you already bought and 'own', then average man has no property rights. The fee could be increased at any time, or new fees could be introduced. As the housing crysis deepens, average person will never own a home either. So average person will be in the same position as a medieval serf, conpletely dependand on the whims of the lord, probably living in debt starting from the student loan and dying in debt.

andrekandre 4y ago
> If someone can charge you for using things you already bought and 'own', then average man has no property rights. it seems a natural progression once you've saturated the market and new avenues are closed to further growth; you find a way to add subscriptions and "value adds"...
alexpotato 4y ago
We've all ready reached that for lots of other parts of the consumer spectrum. e.g. you used to own your music and movie collection but now you rent access to it via Spotify, Amazon Music, Netflix etc Even games: it used to be it was YOUR game but now you pay a subscription.
- ausbah 4y ago
  I think the value proposition with stuff like Spotify is different. a.) there are still services where you can own your copy of the music, there is still - at least some semblance of - consumer choice. b.) the amount and variety of music I listen to on Spotify and pay per month is WAY more than paying for individual songs (at least personally)
  - prawn 4y ago
    And I think there's some value in not actually having the music in physical form, at least as we knew it. I have fond memories of the music I discovered and enjoyed on tape and CD (only owned 2-3 records), but I don't miss the CD towers and shelves of video tapes. Even if you cart around audio files on 5TB portable drives, or have a drive per key location (home, office, etc) there are advantages to streaming. One less drive I need to maintain. Losing everything when you unsubscribe is shitty though. I guess that's the choice made.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      >Losing everything when you unsubscribe is shitty though. I guess that's the choice made. Yes. There's nothing keeping anyone from buying the music they like even if it's just digital. Music is probably the thing that there's there's the greatest choice between renting and very reasonably buying. I have a big library which I got in order a couple years ago. But I made the decision that there was no need--at this point--to buy any gaps. I'd just stream and could always buy pretty much anything I wanted at some point if I wanted to. (My interests are mostly very mainstream.)
      - ben-schaaf 4y ago
        > There's nothing keeping anyone from buying the music they like even if it's just digital. Unfortunately this isn't true anymore. If you want to buy a song there's beatport and bandcamp but they're missing a ton of music, Amazon Music is only available in a few countries and Google Music doesn't exist anymore. That leaves just iTunes which is a terrible experience and only available on macOS and Windows.
        ghaff 4y ago
        There are also CDs although that probably doesn't apply to niche artists.
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    This exactly. I am constantly exploring and consuming new music, many of which I wouldn't buy the CD of, but I will listen to for a while before moving onto something new. Nothing really beats being able to go through an artists entire discography over a few days. I've started buying the CD's of the stuff I really love again, but the price would be astronomical compared to my streaming service if I did that for everyone I listened to.
- tayo42 4y ago
  I think of Spotify as an evolution of radio. You can even just pay with your attention by listening to ads instead of money. You can still purchase all of that media if you want
- jcpst 4y ago
  What’s funny is how ethics around this get compartmentalized. I still refuse to use spotify because it’s only a viable model for the biggest artists (I buy digital albums mostly). But then I don’t seem to stop myself from using Netflix.
bleuchase 4y ago
You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy.
farisjarrah 4y ago
Conversely, I been seeing more people then ever riding, building and modifying electric and motorized bicycles. You can modify a regular $200 mountain bike with a $200 motor kit from amazon and have a $400 motorcycle that you don’t need a motorcycle license for. If you really don’t want to burn fossil fuels, a $1000 bafang mid drive ebike kit can turn a regular bicycle into a hill crushing monster and can be installed with almost no specialized tools. The housing crisis is definitely a tougher nut to crack, but I don’t believe the auto manufacturers have quite the same leverage over the American population long term, especially if gas prices and electric vehicle prices keep skyrocketing significantly faster then inflation.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > If you really don’t want to burn fossil fuels, a $1000 bafang mid drive ebike kit can turn a regular bicycle into a hill crushing monster and can be installed with almost no specialized tools. I love electric bikes and want to install the bafang kit myself, but lets keep things in perspective - it's not gonna get my pregnant wife to the hospital.
  - PaywallBuster 4y ago
    you keep a car for something that will happen once per ~ 4 years?
    - lghh 4y ago
      Well, there's also the baby after that happens.
      - stephencanon 4y ago
        Baby on a bike is easy (well, once they're big enough to hold their heads up). Ours (one and five) pretty much want me to take them on the bike everywhere, unless the weather is brutally wet or cold (< 25˚F for me, though a friend here takes his kid on the bike down to about 15˚). When the weather's sufficiently bad, we take the BMW with heated seats instead =)
foobarian 4y ago
At least it will not be illegal to move.
DontchaKnowit 4y ago
See : The Great Reset by Klaus Schwab
winternett 4y ago
I was ranting about this 2 years ago and a lot of people laughed it off... I cited an auto start feature o VOLVO cars that required a siriusXM membership. It's unfathomable that we reached this point of monthly subscriptions being implemented on things that we've already paid for. It's the first sign that we're in for a wave of not feudalism, but outright economic slavery. There is no rational consumer protection against many predatory business practices, and many are eager to be a part of monthly subscriptions for useless services for lord knows what motivational reason. Mike Judge was a genius for making the movie Idiocracy, it's our future. No way around it now. :[
- nathanaldensr 4y ago
  There is a way, but you're not going to like it, and we can't discuss it on HN.
  - mmmpop 4y ago
    Sweet, can you send me an invite to that Discord server??
  - packetpocketsoc 4y ago
    where to?
  - f6v 4y ago
    Does it start with “re” and and with “volution”?
  - Bancakes 4y ago
    Something about the government, in minecraft.
  - cbozeman 4y ago
    Why can't we? The American Founders literally wanted us to take up arms and kill people who violated our essential liberties. You can read this in their own books and papers. They were extremely clear about this... it isn't even up for debate, unless of course you're talking to a moron that's never actually read Jefferson, Washington, Madison, etc. If we reach a point where we can't even restate what our Founders said, we're already in our twilight as any kind of civilized liberal society. Now we can argue about what constitutes an "essential liberty". I'm not sure I'd put, "Heated seats in my BMW" in that category.
duxup 4y ago
I certainly don't like it for cars and etc. But I don't mind it for some things. I have no interest in owning a pile of movies, music and etc.
jollybean 4y ago
No, this is not what feudalism is. Consumer finance is a real thing. Before these financial innovations - people could not by homes, or ironically cars. They could not 'insure' themselves against fire etc.. Being able to 'buy a feature' on a monthly basis, instead of paying up front for it, actually may have some benefits. That said, obviously if people just want to buy it they can/should do that.
tomohawk 4y ago
That's the plan (at least according to the World Economic Forum) "Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better" https://twitter.com/wef/status/813869325635424256 https://twitter.com/wef/status/813869325635424256
bko 4y ago
Relax, it's just heated seats. It's user hostile and I imagine they'll drop it because it'll be seen as annoying. There are real problems with housing affordability but a subscription to heated seats in a luxury car is not indicative of a bigger issue.
- ChrisRR 4y ago
  People relaxing on shitty behaviour is how you end up with a subscription for heated seats in the first place
  - bko 4y ago
    No, people having a meltdown about some luxury car brand charging a subscription for heated seats is how regular people dismiss real concerns about privacy and ownership rights. Wait until you hear about how Sirius is disabled without a monthly fee.
avidphantasm 4y ago
No, they will be worse off than serfs. Serfs could still grow their own food (though of course they had to pay tribute to the landlord) and they had way more festivals and days off.
bbertelsen 4y ago
I was reviewing my Steam library recently and thought to myself. How would I access these games without Steam? What happens when I die? Can I sell my Steam library? I realized I don't own anything other than a temporary license to use the software.
- mmmpop 4y ago
  > What happens when I die? Can I sell my Steam library? HN frowns upon trolling.
  - coffeeblack 4y ago
    Why is that “trolling”? Seems like a fair question.
    - mmmpop 4y ago
      A quick check with Uncle Google tells me that games are non-transferable as they are bound to your account. So I suppose if in your legal will you wanted to designate someone as a benefactor (lol) then that's your prerogative. That said, if you're asking that kind of question, I just assume you're trolling but then I thought about it and realized it was an earnest inquiry.
aeyes 4y ago
Do those that 'own' a home today in the US really own it? You still have to pay property tax against the "property value" which is a completely arbitrary number set by an outsider. If you don't pay, you lose your home - that is not my definition of ownership.
- coffeeblack 4y ago
  Good point, don’t understand why it’s downvoted. Could people who downvote leave a comment with their reason?
  - nemo44x 4y ago
    Because it's a very misinformed opinion. For 1 it isn't arbitrary and it isn't a random person. It is elected officials that set the tax and the price is based on the community budget. Where I live we have high property taxes but we don't complain because we vote for this. We want nice schools, clean parks that are manicured, frequent refuse and recycling service, clean streets, a well staffed police force and fire departments, a fancy 4th of July parade, etc. This stuff isn't free and we choose to fund it with property taxes instead of income taxes, etc. If you won't or can't pay your tax then you have to sell your property to someone who can. This is what the community that lives in an area agreed on. You can take your house with you though. It's totally up to you to lift it, put it on a truck and put it on a different piece of land, considering the bank doesn't own it. Feel free to find land with no taxes and put your home there.
- Jaepa 4y ago
  It's kind of a false equivalence to compare taxes, to something like rent. If you wanted an argument for not owning housing, a better argument would be something like zoning restrictions.
- abeppu 4y ago
  But where did you get your definition of ownership? Property taxes in the US predate the US as an independent country. Do you think the owner should be able to set the value? Should anyone be able to declare that their property is worth $0 and therefore no tax is owed? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_tax_in_the_United_States#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_tax_in_the_United_Sta...
coffeeblack 4y ago
I read somewhere that, in the future, “you will own nothing and you will be happy”.
_fat_santa 4y ago
I have to disagree because at the end of the day, the consumer has a choice. BMW, Stellantis and other car makers are charging subscriptions for features. I see an immediate solution: buy another car. I see this argument a ton, people complain that new cars are too expensive, super high monthly payments and subscription features. Yes these are all problems but they are only problems if you choose to buy a new car. Seems that folks forget in these arguments that there is a sea of affordable, reliable used cars without any of the bullshit they add to new cars these days, at a fraction of the cost of a new car.
- ghostpepper 4y ago
  Buying an old car doesn’t really solve the problem in general, it just solves it for you, temporarily.
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    The auto sector is one of the most competitive in the world. There are tons of automakers that don’t have subscription services.
    - anonymousab 4y ago
      For now. The problem is that anticonsumer grift will eventually pervade the entire space. If not prevented legally then it will just be a matter of time, because incidental cooperation between all competitors is just so much better for them than trying to compete on this point. And this is an industry where starting a competitor is simply not feasible without incomprehensible amounts of capital.
      - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
        > The problem is that anticonsumer grift will eventually pervade the entire space. If not prevented legally then it will just be a matter of time This isn't a guaranteed thing. Toyota makes money hand over fist selling decade behind the competition vehicles for high prices based on a premise of reliability that the overwhelming majority of buyers will not keep the car long enough to take advantage of and HN never misses an opportunity to praise them for it. I feel very confident saying that the market for cars that don't include SAAS-esque BS subscriptions will be large enough to sustain a decent number of offerings in the same way that the sedan market is still healthy despite the crossover-ification of everything and the hatch market is stronger than it's been since the 90s.
panick21_ 4y ago
> We are rapidly moving towards Feudalism. I hate when people say that. This has literally nothing to do with the historic institution of feudalism. Its is the opposite of actually educating people on actual feudalism. Its just using historical terms that people call not to be 'bad' so you don't actually have to explain the problem. We are literally talking about people who can buy a BMW. Did BMW promise them heated seats when they sold it to you? Would you feel better if the service worker at the dealer would rip out 5mm of tubes to 'break' the heated seat? Would that make it Ok? Also, this is the extreme, extreme minority of features from an extreme minority of cars, by the extreme of car manufactures. Calling this 'rapidly moving to Feudalism' is way overly dramatic. > As the housing crysis deepens, average person will never own a home either. High amount of home ownership is not the same as having a high quality of live. And its also not really accurate. > So average person will be in the same position as a medieval serf, conpletely dependand on the whims of the lord, The lord who sold the serf a BMW? > probably living in debt starting from the student loan and dying in debt. Many people manage to pay of their student loans and don't have to live in debt if they don't want to. Many people want to take on debt in order to consume now rather then later, being in debt is not actually necessary bad.
- bsedlm 4y ago
  > Many people manage to pay of their student loans and don't have to live in debt if they don't want to. yikes... this strikes me as quite similar to this line of reasoning: "poor people are poor because they just don't want to work"
  - llllllllllllk 4y ago
    This is a weird take to read when you're someone who dropped out of college when the debt load got too scary and had learned enough to gain a marketable skill and enter industry. Paid my debt off in a couple years. This was less than a decade ago, too, I'm not that old. Tuition has been frozen at my university since I left so the kids there now have the same exact choices I had The big difference between me and my peers was that I did poorly academically my first year and it forced me to enter the work force and learn the value of the money I was borrowing, and after that I borrowed the minimum I could to remain in school, for the minimum time, as it was so expensive. I'm supposed to believe that it's impossible to avoid... When I avoided it? I even got screwed by federal assistance because my parents seemed financially healthier than they were. I paid for 90% of my own educational costs, by working part time. And like I said this was the late 00s, early 10s, I'm not telling a tale from the 70s My wife has a similar story, but started out much poorer. Now we're both professionals sans degrees making over six figures, no debt. But that's impossible. I get it, these are anecdotes. But student loan debt is a choice, and it's one we both avoided, so it's definitely possible to do.
phasersout 4y ago
the same thing with games and that you only own a license of a game and not the game itself. Started with WoW and getting kicked for "using" exploits which are ultimately just faults in a product that I purchased - why should I as a customer know and care for what an exploit is and what not?
blown_gasket 4y ago
The goods that are sold are available to be sold based-off what people have chosen to buy or what is seen as a solution to a problem. Example: Manual transmissions available for sale in the United States vs Europe. Europe has many more available to be sold new than the United States at maybe 3% and dwindling. I see the only reason that smart-TVs are some prominent now is that the market for those eclipsed the market for dumb-TVs. While there are individuals that would like a dumb-TV, I've seen them post on HN, outliers don't make a sustainable market for revenue. If individuals don't purchase the subscription, it won't be a revenue stream and then decision-making individuals should make decisions to change it. The housing market is another conversation altogether.
nimbius 4y ago
its lately been coined "technocratic neofeudalism"
vasco 4y ago
If you want to know more about the history of IP laws and how it relates to this concept of modern age feudalism where someone owns all the rights on anything of value, this is an excellent book: https://thenewpress.com/books/information-feudalism https://thenewpress.com/books/information-feudalism
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

andrekandre 4y ago

> If someone can charge you for using things you already bought and 'own', then average man has no property rights. it seems a natural progression once you've saturated the market and new avenues are closed to further growth; you find a way to add subscriptions and "value adds"...

alexpotato 4y ago

We've all ready reached that for lots of other parts of the consumer spectrum. e.g. you used to own your music and movie collection but now you rent access to it via Spotify, Amazon Music, Netflix etc Even games: it used to be it was YOUR game but now you pay a subscription.

ausbah 4y ago
I think the value proposition with stuff like Spotify is different. a.) there are still services where you can own your copy of the music, there is still - at least some semblance of - consumer choice. b.) the amount and variety of music I listen to on Spotify and pay per month is WAY more than paying for individual songs (at least personally)
- prawn 4y ago
  And I think there's some value in not actually having the music in physical form, at least as we knew it. I have fond memories of the music I discovered and enjoyed on tape and CD (only owned 2-3 records), but I don't miss the CD towers and shelves of video tapes. Even if you cart around audio files on 5TB portable drives, or have a drive per key location (home, office, etc) there are advantages to streaming. One less drive I need to maintain. Losing everything when you unsubscribe is shitty though. I guess that's the choice made.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    >Losing everything when you unsubscribe is shitty though. I guess that's the choice made. Yes. There's nothing keeping anyone from buying the music they like even if it's just digital. Music is probably the thing that there's there's the greatest choice between renting and very reasonably buying. I have a big library which I got in order a couple years ago. But I made the decision that there was no need--at this point--to buy any gaps. I'd just stream and could always buy pretty much anything I wanted at some point if I wanted to. (My interests are mostly very mainstream.)
    - ben-schaaf 4y ago
      > There's nothing keeping anyone from buying the music they like even if it's just digital. Unfortunately this isn't true anymore. If you want to buy a song there's beatport and bandcamp but they're missing a ton of music, Amazon Music is only available in a few countries and Google Music doesn't exist anymore. That leaves just iTunes which is a terrible experience and only available on macOS and Windows.
      - ghaff 4y ago
        There are also CDs although that probably doesn't apply to niche artists.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  This exactly. I am constantly exploring and consuming new music, many of which I wouldn't buy the CD of, but I will listen to for a while before moving onto something new. Nothing really beats being able to go through an artists entire discography over a few days. I've started buying the CD's of the stuff I really love again, but the price would be astronomical compared to my streaming service if I did that for everyone I listened to.
tayo42 4y ago
I think of Spotify as an evolution of radio. You can even just pay with your attention by listening to ads instead of money. You can still purchase all of that media if you want
jcpst 4y ago
What’s funny is how ethics around this get compartmentalized. I still refuse to use spotify because it’s only a viable model for the biggest artists (I buy digital albums mostly). But then I don’t seem to stop myself from using Netflix.

bleuchase 4y ago

You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy.

farisjarrah 4y ago

Conversely, I been seeing more people then ever riding, building and modifying electric and motorized bicycles. You can modify a regular $200 mountain bike with a $200 motor kit from amazon and have a $400 motorcycle that you don’t need a motorcycle license for. If you really don’t want to burn fossil fuels, a $1000 bafang mid drive ebike kit can turn a regular bicycle into a hill crushing monster and can be installed with almost no specialized tools. The housing crisis is definitely a tougher nut to crack, but I don’t believe the auto manufacturers have quite the same leverage over the American population long term, especially if gas prices and electric vehicle prices keep skyrocketing significantly faster then inflation.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> If you really don’t want to burn fossil fuels, a $1000 bafang mid drive ebike kit can turn a regular bicycle into a hill crushing monster and can be installed with almost no specialized tools. I love electric bikes and want to install the bafang kit myself, but lets keep things in perspective - it's not gonna get my pregnant wife to the hospital.
- PaywallBuster 4y ago
  you keep a car for something that will happen once per ~ 4 years?
  - lghh 4y ago
    Well, there's also the baby after that happens.
    - stephencanon 4y ago
      Baby on a bike is easy (well, once they're big enough to hold their heads up). Ours (one and five) pretty much want me to take them on the bike everywhere, unless the weather is brutally wet or cold (< 25˚F for me, though a friend here takes his kid on the bike down to about 15˚). When the weather's sufficiently bad, we take the BMW with heated seats instead =)

foobarian 4y ago

At least it will not be illegal to move.

DontchaKnowit 4y ago

See : The Great Reset by Klaus Schwab

winternett 4y ago

I was ranting about this 2 years ago and a lot of people laughed it off... I cited an auto start feature o VOLVO cars that required a siriusXM membership. It's unfathomable that we reached this point of monthly subscriptions being implemented on things that we've already paid for. It's the first sign that we're in for a wave of not feudalism, but outright economic slavery. There is no rational consumer protection against many predatory business practices, and many are eager to be a part of monthly subscriptions for useless services for lord knows what motivational reason. Mike Judge was a genius for making the movie Idiocracy, it's our future. No way around it now. :[

nathanaldensr 4y ago
There is a way, but you're not going to like it, and we can't discuss it on HN.
- mmmpop 4y ago
  Sweet, can you send me an invite to that Discord server??
- packetpocketsoc 4y ago
  where to?
- f6v 4y ago
  Does it start with “re” and and with “volution”?
- Bancakes 4y ago
  Something about the government, in minecraft.
- cbozeman 4y ago
  Why can't we? The American Founders literally wanted us to take up arms and kill people who violated our essential liberties. You can read this in their own books and papers. They were extremely clear about this... it isn't even up for debate, unless of course you're talking to a moron that's never actually read Jefferson, Washington, Madison, etc. If we reach a point where we can't even restate what our Founders said, we're already in our twilight as any kind of civilized liberal society. Now we can argue about what constitutes an "essential liberty". I'm not sure I'd put, "Heated seats in my BMW" in that category.

duxup 4y ago

I certainly don't like it for cars and etc. But I don't mind it for some things. I have no interest in owning a pile of movies, music and etc.

jollybean 4y ago

No, this is not what feudalism is. Consumer finance is a real thing. Before these financial innovations - people could not by homes, or ironically cars. They could not 'insure' themselves against fire etc.. Being able to 'buy a feature' on a monthly basis, instead of paying up front for it, actually may have some benefits. That said, obviously if people just want to buy it they can/should do that.

tomohawk 4y ago

That's the plan (at least according to the World Economic Forum) "Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better" https://twitter.com/wef/status/813869325635424256 https://twitter.com/wef/status/813869325635424256

bko 4y ago

Relax, it's just heated seats. It's user hostile and I imagine they'll drop it because it'll be seen as annoying. There are real problems with housing affordability but a subscription to heated seats in a luxury car is not indicative of a bigger issue.

ChrisRR 4y ago
People relaxing on shitty behaviour is how you end up with a subscription for heated seats in the first place
- bko 4y ago
  No, people having a meltdown about some luxury car brand charging a subscription for heated seats is how regular people dismiss real concerns about privacy and ownership rights. Wait until you hear about how Sirius is disabled without a monthly fee.

avidphantasm 4y ago

No, they will be worse off than serfs. Serfs could still grow their own food (though of course they had to pay tribute to the landlord) and they had way more festivals and days off.

bbertelsen 4y ago

I was reviewing my Steam library recently and thought to myself. How would I access these games without Steam? What happens when I die? Can I sell my Steam library? I realized I don't own anything other than a temporary license to use the software.

mmmpop 4y ago
> What happens when I die? Can I sell my Steam library? HN frowns upon trolling.
- coffeeblack 4y ago
  Why is that “trolling”? Seems like a fair question.
  - mmmpop 4y ago
    A quick check with Uncle Google tells me that games are non-transferable as they are bound to your account. So I suppose if in your legal will you wanted to designate someone as a benefactor (lol) then that's your prerogative. That said, if you're asking that kind of question, I just assume you're trolling but then I thought about it and realized it was an earnest inquiry.

aeyes 4y ago

Do those that 'own' a home today in the US really own it? You still have to pay property tax against the "property value" which is a completely arbitrary number set by an outsider. If you don't pay, you lose your home - that is not my definition of ownership.

coffeeblack 4y ago
Good point, don’t understand why it’s downvoted. Could people who downvote leave a comment with their reason?
- nemo44x 4y ago
  Because it's a very misinformed opinion. For 1 it isn't arbitrary and it isn't a random person. It is elected officials that set the tax and the price is based on the community budget. Where I live we have high property taxes but we don't complain because we vote for this. We want nice schools, clean parks that are manicured, frequent refuse and recycling service, clean streets, a well staffed police force and fire departments, a fancy 4th of July parade, etc. This stuff isn't free and we choose to fund it with property taxes instead of income taxes, etc. If you won't or can't pay your tax then you have to sell your property to someone who can. This is what the community that lives in an area agreed on. You can take your house with you though. It's totally up to you to lift it, put it on a truck and put it on a different piece of land, considering the bank doesn't own it. Feel free to find land with no taxes and put your home there.
Jaepa 4y ago
It's kind of a false equivalence to compare taxes, to something like rent. If you wanted an argument for not owning housing, a better argument would be something like zoning restrictions.
abeppu 4y ago
But where did you get your definition of ownership? Property taxes in the US predate the US as an independent country. Do you think the owner should be able to set the value? Should anyone be able to declare that their property is worth $0 and therefore no tax is owed? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_tax_in_the_United_States#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_tax_in_the_United_Sta...

coffeeblack 4y ago

I read somewhere that, in the future, “you will own nothing and you will be happy”.

_fat_santa 4y ago

I have to disagree because at the end of the day, the consumer has a choice. BMW, Stellantis and other car makers are charging subscriptions for features. I see an immediate solution: buy another car. I see this argument a ton, people complain that new cars are too expensive, super high monthly payments and subscription features. Yes these are all problems but they are only problems if you choose to buy a new car. Seems that folks forget in these arguments that there is a sea of affordable, reliable used cars without any of the bullshit they add to new cars these days, at a fraction of the cost of a new car.

ghostpepper 4y ago
Buying an old car doesn’t really solve the problem in general, it just solves it for you, temporarily.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  The auto sector is one of the most competitive in the world. There are tons of automakers that don’t have subscription services.
  - anonymousab 4y ago
    For now. The problem is that anticonsumer grift will eventually pervade the entire space. If not prevented legally then it will just be a matter of time, because incidental cooperation between all competitors is just so much better for them than trying to compete on this point. And this is an industry where starting a competitor is simply not feasible without incomprehensible amounts of capital.
    - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
      > The problem is that anticonsumer grift will eventually pervade the entire space. If not prevented legally then it will just be a matter of time This isn't a guaranteed thing. Toyota makes money hand over fist selling decade behind the competition vehicles for high prices based on a premise of reliability that the overwhelming majority of buyers will not keep the car long enough to take advantage of and HN never misses an opportunity to praise them for it. I feel very confident saying that the market for cars that don't include SAAS-esque BS subscriptions will be large enough to sustain a decent number of offerings in the same way that the sedan market is still healthy despite the crossover-ification of everything and the hatch market is stronger than it's been since the 90s.

panick21_ 4y ago

> We are rapidly moving towards Feudalism. I hate when people say that. This has literally nothing to do with the historic institution of feudalism. Its is the opposite of actually educating people on actual feudalism. Its just using historical terms that people call not to be 'bad' so you don't actually have to explain the problem. We are literally talking about people who can buy a BMW. Did BMW promise them heated seats when they sold it to you? Would you feel better if the service worker at the dealer would rip out 5mm of tubes to 'break' the heated seat? Would that make it Ok? Also, this is the extreme, extreme minority of features from an extreme minority of cars, by the extreme of car manufactures. Calling this 'rapidly moving to Feudalism' is way overly dramatic. > As the housing crysis deepens, average person will never own a home either. High amount of home ownership is not the same as having a high quality of live. And its also not really accurate. > So average person will be in the same position as a medieval serf, conpletely dependand on the whims of the lord, The lord who sold the serf a BMW? > probably living in debt starting from the student loan and dying in debt. Many people manage to pay of their student loans and don't have to live in debt if they don't want to. Many people want to take on debt in order to consume now rather then later, being in debt is not actually necessary bad.

bsedlm 4y ago
> Many people manage to pay of their student loans and don't have to live in debt if they don't want to. yikes... this strikes me as quite similar to this line of reasoning: "poor people are poor because they just don't want to work"
- llllllllllllk 4y ago
  This is a weird take to read when you're someone who dropped out of college when the debt load got too scary and had learned enough to gain a marketable skill and enter industry. Paid my debt off in a couple years. This was less than a decade ago, too, I'm not that old. Tuition has been frozen at my university since I left so the kids there now have the same exact choices I had The big difference between me and my peers was that I did poorly academically my first year and it forced me to enter the work force and learn the value of the money I was borrowing, and after that I borrowed the minimum I could to remain in school, for the minimum time, as it was so expensive. I'm supposed to believe that it's impossible to avoid... When I avoided it? I even got screwed by federal assistance because my parents seemed financially healthier than they were. I paid for 90% of my own educational costs, by working part time. And like I said this was the late 00s, early 10s, I'm not telling a tale from the 70s My wife has a similar story, but started out much poorer. Now we're both professionals sans degrees making over six figures, no debt. But that's impossible. I get it, these are anecdotes. But student loan debt is a choice, and it's one we both avoided, so it's definitely possible to do.

phasersout 4y ago

the same thing with games and that you only own a license of a game and not the game itself. Started with WoW and getting kicked for "using" exploits which are ultimately just faults in a product that I purchased - why should I as a customer know and care for what an exploit is and what not?

blown_gasket 4y ago

The goods that are sold are available to be sold based-off what people have chosen to buy or what is seen as a solution to a problem. Example: Manual transmissions available for sale in the United States vs Europe. Europe has many more available to be sold new than the United States at maybe 3% and dwindling. I see the only reason that smart-TVs are some prominent now is that the market for those eclipsed the market for dumb-TVs. While there are individuals that would like a dumb-TV, I've seen them post on HN, outliers don't make a sustainable market for revenue. If individuals don't purchase the subscription, it won't be a revenue stream and then decision-making individuals should make decisions to change it. The housing market is another conversation altogether.

nimbius 4y ago

its lately been coined "technocratic neofeudalism"

vasco 4y ago

If you want to know more about the history of IP laws and how it relates to this concept of modern age feudalism where someone owns all the rights on anything of value, this is an excellent book: https://thenewpress.com/books/information-feudalism https://thenewpress.com/books/information-feudalism

deleted 4y ago

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