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In Capitalism, you are always encouraged to own instead of rent. The benefits of private ownership are extolled. Capitalists are shocked by “in 2030, you’ll own

by EGreg 4y ago

In Capitalism, you are always encouraged to own instead of rent. The benefits of private ownership are extolled. Capitalists are shocked by “in 2030, you’ll own nothing and be happy.” Ownership is an idea that allows companies that build things to sell excess capacity and luxury stuff. Like real estate in growing economies (China, or the American Dream in past decades of USA). Or like carmakers in the USA until recently. Own that car! Then look how much unused metal is parked on the street most of the day, so carmakers can create more. When self-driving cars come along, our cities will become more beautiful again, with less parking lots and lanes. It’s also inefficient in more ways than one — a study in San Francisco found that 30% of all traffic is just circling looking for parking: https://www.reinventingparking.org/2013/10/is-30-of-traffic-actually-searching-for.html?m=1 https://www.reinventingparking.org/2013/10/is-30-of-traffic-... Ownership is right to exclude all others from using a resource, even if you are not using it. So if I own a bike, no one else who needs it can use it, it just sits in the closet, thus more bikes are required to be sold to society. With CitiBike, or other bike sharing programs, bikes are rented on demand. So one of the benefits is that you can project wealth and excess, and invite your friends to use the thing that no one could be using anyway. The millennials and later generations are fine to rent on demand, even including clothes (“rent the runway”). They join clubs like SoHo club that let them use facilities on demand when they travel. It’s a different approach. And there, since it’s on-demand, there is less waste but also it becomes clear when someone is subsidizing someone else. That said … now that there is so much capacity built (eg commercial and residential real estate) that SOMEONE has to own it, we may as well own it collectively (housing cooperatives) and schedule use of it (eg cooperative time shares) than the exploitative landlord model and airbnb model that raises rents sky-high. Housing cooperatives. Taxi cooperatives. Credit unions. Eliminate the shareholder class, and let everyone own the network. Socialism online, without violence of the State. Someone should build that ;-) PS: It just requires software to self-organize. And it is far better for the environment. Producing one electric car takes a lot of fossil fuels, and if they were shared we’d cut down on production and have more efficient consumption to recoup the costs after 70,000 miles. PPS: Cooking at home is different from the above, because people typically buy food and consume food before it spoils. In fact, the post is wrong — going out to a restaurant is far more expensive than the supermarket food. Most societies until the 1990s did not afford to eat out all the time but they certainly invited people over quite often! House parties also gives a great reason to visit each other.

hnbad 4y ago
You're spot-on about the cost of the restaurant vs the dinner but I think it's also worth pointing out that being invited to be wined and dined at home still feels awkward because it's usually expected that you bring in something (a gift if it's a special occasion or food if it's a potluck). Additionally staying with them at their vacation home might feel less awkard than staying at their home because at their home you know they'll have to clean up after you whereas at the vacation home there's usually a cleaning fee included in what they already paid for. I guess having a maid might cancel that out but at least where I live "I have a maid on call" money is more than "I can afford sometimes renting a vacation home with a spare bedroom for a trip".
nibbleshifter 4y ago
The only people who join Soho House are absolutely insufferable tryhards. Also, virtually nobody I know from the millennial or zoomer generation actually enjoy renting - ownership is simply out of reach.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Renting things is fine depending upon the circumstances. It depends if you can rent the thing you want, how inconvenient the rental transactions are, how frequently you'll use thing or for how long, how the economics pencil out, etc. There are a ton of things I have to or prefer to own. And other things I prefer to rent when I need them and/or can't economically own.
nashashmi 4y ago
So you have traded capitalism for socialism. Except it's not really social if they're is a price attached to it. What the article says is the price of being hospitable without being awkward carries a high price of ownership, or high capitalistic cost. And socialistic systems do not allow for normal hospitality initiatives.
mindslight 4y ago
You're basically describing the exact opposite of my paradigm. To me, individual ownership of assets is required for power to remain distributed throughout society. Specifically, individuals retaining a surplus that can be used on a whim, without coordination, is required for personal freedom. The backlash to "you'll own nothing and be happy" is not because people are lamenting that (distributed) capitalism is fading away across the board. Rather it's because the quip describes the dynamic that is being pushed onto the masses, as ownership/control of assets is concentrated into fewer hands (late stage centralized capitalism). > Ownership is right to exclude all others from using a resource, even if you are not using it. So if I own a bike, no one else who needs it can use it, it just sits in the closet, thus more bikes are required to be sold to society. With CitiBike, or other bike sharing programs, bikes are rented on demand. This exclusivity is exactly what allows one to take the availability of the bike for granted without wondering if it will be available. To use the bike for frivolous reasons for a tiny incremental cost. To have the bike customized for your own needs, comfort, and performance. To buy in at a lower price (a solid used non-electric bike) and then upgrade capabilities (ebike) down the line. To be able to continue using it (while even reducing its carrying costs by say doing maintenance yourself) if you lose your source of income and need to save money. To loan to a friend ride while you ride your other bike, encouraging them to try biking without the hurdle of them needing to spend money (per the article). To know that the price of using the bike isn't going to gradually creep up because someone else wants higher margins, or that you might be outright banned due to an unaccountable fickle "algorithm". Financially - lets say an ebike is $1500 and lasts two years. If I'm reading the Citibike prices correctly, a yearly membership is $205 and then it's still $0.17/minute to ride? So breakeven is around 54 hours a year, which is only one to three trips per week?! And in actuality, at the end of two years the maintenance on the self owned bike will likely cost less than another yearly membership fee. I'm certainly not disputing that there are advantages to the rental model for many types of use (which is why they're popular in cities to begin with). But you are ignoring all of the benefits of asset ownership. > The millennials and later generations are fine to rent on demand, even including clothes (“rent the runway”). Is this state of affairs preferred, or is it due to them being much poorer while making poor long-term financial decisions that have been advertised to them (lucrative for the counterparty) ? > They join clubs like SoHo club that let them use facilities on demand when they travel. Routine travel is the domain of the young and rich, spending extra resources. The longstanding name for shared temporary housing is "hotels". Most everyone still aims to have a primary residence - being short on housing a terrible long-term idea as government policy has guaranteed it inflates. > Eliminate the shareholder class, and let everyone own the network. Socialism online, without violence of the State You're ignoring that there is still necessarily a controlling class - eliminating management/agency is impossible. In any social structure, regardless of how you try to mitigate it, some people will be more powerful than others. For the most part people want to extract themselves from dealing with bureaucracy, not sign up for more. So sure, advocate for replacing shareholders with cooperatives! But stop thinking it's a good idea to introduce the centralized ownership dynamic where it's not needed in the first place.

by EGreg 4y ago

hnbad 4y ago

You're spot-on about the cost of the restaurant vs the dinner but I think it's also worth pointing out that being invited to be wined and dined at home still feels awkward because it's usually expected that you bring in something (a gift if it's a special occasion or food if it's a potluck). Additionally staying with them at their vacation home might feel less awkard than staying at their home because at their home you know they'll have to clean up after you whereas at the vacation home there's usually a cleaning fee included in what they already paid for. I guess having a maid might cancel that out but at least where I live "I have a maid on call" money is more than "I can afford sometimes renting a vacation home with a spare bedroom for a trip".

nibbleshifter 4y ago

The only people who join Soho House are absolutely insufferable tryhards. Also, virtually nobody I know from the millennial or zoomer generation actually enjoy renting - ownership is simply out of reach.

ghaff 4y ago
Renting things is fine depending upon the circumstances. It depends if you can rent the thing you want, how inconvenient the rental transactions are, how frequently you'll use thing or for how long, how the economics pencil out, etc. There are a ton of things I have to or prefer to own. And other things I prefer to rent when I need them and/or can't economically own.

nashashmi 4y ago

So you have traded capitalism for socialism. Except it's not really social if they're is a price attached to it. What the article says is the price of being hospitable without being awkward carries a high price of ownership, or high capitalistic cost. And socialistic systems do not allow for normal hospitality initiatives.

mindslight 4y ago

You're basically describing the exact opposite of my paradigm. To me, individual ownership of assets is required for power to remain distributed throughout society. Specifically, individuals retaining a surplus that can be used on a whim, without coordination, is required for personal freedom. The backlash to "you'll own nothing and be happy" is not because people are lamenting that (distributed) capitalism is fading away across the board. Rather it's because the quip describes the dynamic that is being pushed onto the masses, as ownership/control of assets is concentrated into fewer hands (late stage centralized capitalism). > Ownership is right to exclude all others from using a resource, even if you are not using it. So if I own a bike, no one else who needs it can use it, it just sits in the closet, thus more bikes are required to be sold to society. With CitiBike, or other bike sharing programs, bikes are rented on demand. This exclusivity is exactly what allows one to take the availability of the bike for granted without wondering if it will be available. To use the bike for frivolous reasons for a tiny incremental cost. To have the bike customized for your own needs, comfort, and performance. To buy in at a lower price (a solid used non-electric bike) and then upgrade capabilities (ebike) down the line. To be able to continue using it (while even reducing its carrying costs by say doing maintenance yourself) if you lose your source of income and need to save money. To loan to a friend ride while you ride your other bike, encouraging them to try biking without the hurdle of them needing to spend money (per the article). To know that the price of using the bike isn't going to gradually creep up because someone else wants higher margins, or that you might be outright banned due to an unaccountable fickle "algorithm". Financially - lets say an ebike is $1500 and lasts two years. If I'm reading the Citibike prices correctly, a yearly membership is $205 and then it's still $0.17/minute to ride? So breakeven is around 54 hours a year, which is only one to three trips per week?! And in actuality, at the end of two years the maintenance on the self owned bike will likely cost less than another yearly membership fee. I'm certainly not disputing that there are advantages to the rental model for many types of use (which is why they're popular in cities to begin with). But you are ignoring all of the benefits of asset ownership. > The millennials and later generations are fine to rent on demand, even including clothes (“rent the runway”). Is this state of affairs preferred, or is it due to them being much poorer while making poor long-term financial decisions that have been advertised to them (lucrative for the counterparty) ? > They join clubs like SoHo club that let them use facilities on demand when they travel. Routine travel is the domain of the young and rich, spending extra resources. The longstanding name for shared temporary housing is "hotels". Most everyone still aims to have a primary residence - being short on housing a terrible long-term idea as government policy has guaranteed it inflates. > Eliminate the shareholder class, and let everyone own the network. Socialism online, without violence of the State You're ignoring that there is still necessarily a controlling class - eliminating management/agency is impossible. In any social structure, regardless of how you try to mitigate it, some people will be more powerful than others. For the most part people want to extract themselves from dealing with bureaucracy, not sign up for more. So sure, advocate for replacing shareholders with cooperatives! But stop thinking it's a good idea to introduce the centralized ownership dynamic where it's not needed in the first place.