7 ms·

I don't know how everyone arrives at that conclusion when the cost of the subscription services is also going up (as evidenced by the very article we're talking

by muvlon 9mo ago

I don't know how everyone arrives at that conclusion when the cost of the subscription services is also going up (as evidenced by the very article we're talking about). People who are renting are feeling this immediately, whereas people who bought their computers can wait the price hikes out for a couple years before they really need an upgrade.

Waterluvian 9mo ago
People rent things they can’t afford to own.
- nasmorn 9mo ago
  You could never afford a hyperscaler size data center. You could always just buy a server and stick it into Colo. it’s just not totally the same thing
  - 9rx 9mo ago
    I also couldn't afford to rent one. I can afford to rent fractional use of one, but by that token I could also afford to buy a very small fraction of one too.
  - olyjohn 9mo ago
    I can't afford the ram and storage in the server anymore though. So it kinda is the same thing.
    - conductr 9mo ago
      Rent vs own isn’t the issue then. It’s the cost of the underlying asset.
- ffsm8 9mo ago
  That's one common reason for renting, not the only one. I've rented trailers and various tools before too, not because I couldn't afford to buy them, but because I knew I wouldn't need them after the fact and wouldn't know what to do with them after.
- CivBase 9mo ago
  Is this true? I'm trying to think of a solid example and I'm drawing blanks. Apartments aren't really comparable to houses. They're relatively small units which are part of a larger building. The better comparison would be to condominiums, but good luck even finding a reasonably priced condo in most parts of the US. I'd guess supply is low because there's a housing shortage and it's more profitable to rent out a unit as an apartment than to sell it as a condo. It seems to me that most people rent because 1) they only need the thing temporarily or 2) there are no reasonable alternatives for sale.
  - rootusrootus 9mo ago
    Lots of people rent houses, it’s not just apartments.
    - 9rx 9mo ago
      And even ~40% of so-called homeowners rent money in order to be there.
  - Waterluvian 9mo ago
    Check out the furniture rental industry. Car rental (lease) industry. Electronics rental industry.
- tuananh 9mo ago
  or just not ready for commitment (try first, buy later, etc...)
TrackerFF 9mo ago
Difference is that if subscription goes up from $10 to $15, that doesn't seem to bad. But if you want to purchase a new computer, and the price goes from $1000 to $1500, then that's a pretty big deal. (Though in reality, the price of said computer would probably go up even more, minimum double. RAM prices are already up 6-8 fold from summer)
- dangus 9mo ago
  But if you finance the computer (not hard to get 0% financing on consumer electronics), the price goes from $41 a month to $62 a month. It’s the same difference.
  - TrackerFF 9mo ago
    For whatever reason, people are just more into paying for $10 / subscription fees, than they into financing stuff. To such a degree that they able to pay for a bunch of subscriptions they completely forget about.
    - SketchySeaBeast 9mo ago
      The mental model of subscriptions and financing are totally different. If I'm paying a subscription I might cancel next month, and that's a sort of freedom. If I'm financing a piece of hardware I don't want to stop paying, I want that hardware, so that's a commitment.
    - vel0city 9mo ago
      > people are just more into paying for $10 / subscription fees, than they into financing stuff I'm not so sure, seeing the explosion of Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) platforms.
      - jacobr1 9mo ago
        The common thread is that people are bad and saving and delayed gratification. The easiest path to instant gratification wins more often than not.
jrjeksjd8d 9mo ago
Subscriptions have a "boiling frog" phenomenon where a marginal price increase isn't noticable to most people. Our payment rails are so effective many people don't even read their credit card statements, they just have vampires draining their accounts monthly. Starting with a low subscription price also has the effect of atrophying people's ability to self-serve. The alternative to a subscription is usually capital-intensive - if you want to cancel Netflix you need to have a DVD collection. If you want to cancel your thin client you have to build a PC. Most modern consumers live on a knife edge where $20/month isn't perceptible but $1000 is a major expense. The classic VC-backed model is to subsidize the subscription until people become complacent, and then increase the price once they're dependent. People who self-host are nutjobs because the cloud alternative is "cheaper and better" until it stops being cheaper.
- Y_Y 9mo ago
  My bank has an option to send me a notification every time I'm charged for something. I've noticed several bills that were higher than they should have been "due to a technical error". I'm certain some companies rely on people not checking and randomly add "errors". Notably there's no way (known to me) that you can have direct debits sent as requests that aren't automatically paid. I think that would put consumers on an equal footing with businesses though, which is obviously bad for the economy.
  - esafak 9mo ago
    If it's random surely you'd get a discount sometimes!
  - speff 9mo ago
    Wasn’t aware about charge notifications. Looks like my bank supports that - thanks for the info!
  - usernameak 9mo ago
    > My bank has an option to send me a notification every time I'm charged for something. Wait, your bank doesn't do that by default? I've always assumed it's default behavior of most banks.
Bombthecat 9mo ago
Netflix says hello lol Every increasing prices Password sharing forbidden Etc etc And still making more and more money. People are willing to take a beating if they are entertained and pay a lot more
- port11 9mo ago
  There must be a breaking point. We’ve reached ours last year, when price went up again and my grandfathered plan wasn’t accepted anymore. So I talked to the missus and we cancelled our Netflix. It had been my account for, what, a decade? A decade of not owning anything because it was affordable and convenient. Then shows started disappearing, prices went up, we could no longer use the account at her place (when we lived separately), etc. And, sadly, I’m done with them. I think most people will eventually reach a breaking point. My sister also cancelled, which I always assumed would never happen.
davisr 9mo ago
Because the World Economic Forum, where our political and corporate leaders meet and groom each other, point-blank advertised "you will own nothing and be happy."
- pyuser583 9mo ago
  We’ve been raised to believe “experiences make you happy, not things.” Everything as a service is the modern marketing ideal.
corranh 9mo ago
Exactly, if you can’t afford the high upfront cost that you can stretch out over a longer period of time, you’re stuck paying more over the long term as the subscriptions get more expensive.
SoftTalker 9mo ago
> wait the price hikes out for a couple years Or much longer. The computers I use most on a daily basis are over 10 years old, and still perfectly adequate for what I do. Put a non-bloated OS on them and many older computers are more than powerful enough.
- GreenWatermelon 9mo ago
  And Linux being good for gaming now (thanks Valve!) makes this option more attractive than ever. And the inability to run rootkits is a bonus, not a drawback.
bigbadfeline 9mo ago
> I don't know how everyone arrives at that conclusion when the cost of the subscription services is also going up Of course they will go up, that's the whole idea. The big providers stock on hardware, front-run the hardware market, starve it for products while causing the prices to rise sharply and at that point their services are cheaper because they are selling you the hardware they bought at low prices, the one they bought in bulk, under cheap long term contracts and, in many cases, kept dark for some time. Result - at the time of high hardware prices in retail, the cloud prices are lower, the latter increase later to make more profits, and the game can continue with the cloud providers always one step ahead of retail in a game of hoarding and scalping. Most recently, scalping was big during the GPU shortages caused by crypto-mining. Scalpers would buy GPUs in bulk then sell them back to the starved market for a hefty margin. Cloud providers buying up hardware at scale is basically the same, the only difference is they sell you back the services provided by the hardware, not the actual gear.

by muvlon 9mo ago

Waterluvian 9mo ago

People rent things they can’t afford to own.

nasmorn 9mo ago
You could never afford a hyperscaler size data center. You could always just buy a server and stick it into Colo. it’s just not totally the same thing
- 9rx 9mo ago
  I also couldn't afford to rent one. I can afford to rent fractional use of one, but by that token I could also afford to buy a very small fraction of one too.
- olyjohn 9mo ago
  I can't afford the ram and storage in the server anymore though. So it kinda is the same thing.
  - conductr 9mo ago
    Rent vs own isn’t the issue then. It’s the cost of the underlying asset.
ffsm8 9mo ago
That's one common reason for renting, not the only one. I've rented trailers and various tools before too, not because I couldn't afford to buy them, but because I knew I wouldn't need them after the fact and wouldn't know what to do with them after.
CivBase 9mo ago
Is this true? I'm trying to think of a solid example and I'm drawing blanks. Apartments aren't really comparable to houses. They're relatively small units which are part of a larger building. The better comparison would be to condominiums, but good luck even finding a reasonably priced condo in most parts of the US. I'd guess supply is low because there's a housing shortage and it's more profitable to rent out a unit as an apartment than to sell it as a condo. It seems to me that most people rent because 1) they only need the thing temporarily or 2) there are no reasonable alternatives for sale.
- rootusrootus 9mo ago
  Lots of people rent houses, it’s not just apartments.
  - 9rx 9mo ago
    And even ~40% of so-called homeowners rent money in order to be there.
- Waterluvian 9mo ago
  Check out the furniture rental industry. Car rental (lease) industry. Electronics rental industry.
tuananh 9mo ago
or just not ready for commitment (try first, buy later, etc...)

TrackerFF 9mo ago

Difference is that if subscription goes up from $10 to $15, that doesn't seem to bad. But if you want to purchase a new computer, and the price goes from $1000 to $1500, then that's a pretty big deal. (Though in reality, the price of said computer would probably go up even more, minimum double. RAM prices are already up 6-8 fold from summer)

dangus 9mo ago
But if you finance the computer (not hard to get 0% financing on consumer electronics), the price goes from $41 a month to $62 a month. It’s the same difference.
- TrackerFF 9mo ago
  For whatever reason, people are just more into paying for $10 / subscription fees, than they into financing stuff. To such a degree that they able to pay for a bunch of subscriptions they completely forget about.
  - SketchySeaBeast 9mo ago
    The mental model of subscriptions and financing are totally different. If I'm paying a subscription I might cancel next month, and that's a sort of freedom. If I'm financing a piece of hardware I don't want to stop paying, I want that hardware, so that's a commitment.
  - vel0city 9mo ago
    > people are just more into paying for $10 / subscription fees, than they into financing stuff I'm not so sure, seeing the explosion of Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) platforms.
    - jacobr1 9mo ago
      The common thread is that people are bad and saving and delayed gratification. The easiest path to instant gratification wins more often than not.

jrjeksjd8d 9mo ago

Subscriptions have a "boiling frog" phenomenon where a marginal price increase isn't noticable to most people. Our payment rails are so effective many people don't even read their credit card statements, they just have vampires draining their accounts monthly. Starting with a low subscription price also has the effect of atrophying people's ability to self-serve. The alternative to a subscription is usually capital-intensive - if you want to cancel Netflix you need to have a DVD collection. If you want to cancel your thin client you have to build a PC. Most modern consumers live on a knife edge where $20/month isn't perceptible but $1000 is a major expense. The classic VC-backed model is to subsidize the subscription until people become complacent, and then increase the price once they're dependent. People who self-host are nutjobs because the cloud alternative is "cheaper and better" until it stops being cheaper.

Y_Y 9mo ago
My bank has an option to send me a notification every time I'm charged for something. I've noticed several bills that were higher than they should have been "due to a technical error". I'm certain some companies rely on people not checking and randomly add "errors". Notably there's no way (known to me) that you can have direct debits sent as requests that aren't automatically paid. I think that would put consumers on an equal footing with businesses though, which is obviously bad for the economy.
- esafak 9mo ago
  If it's random surely you'd get a discount sometimes!
- speff 9mo ago
  Wasn’t aware about charge notifications. Looks like my bank supports that - thanks for the info!
- usernameak 9mo ago
  > My bank has an option to send me a notification every time I'm charged for something. Wait, your bank doesn't do that by default? I've always assumed it's default behavior of most banks.

Bombthecat 9mo ago

Netflix says hello lol Every increasing prices Password sharing forbidden Etc etc And still making more and more money. People are willing to take a beating if they are entertained and pay a lot more

port11 9mo ago
There must be a breaking point. We’ve reached ours last year, when price went up again and my grandfathered plan wasn’t accepted anymore. So I talked to the missus and we cancelled our Netflix. It had been my account for, what, a decade? A decade of not owning anything because it was affordable and convenient. Then shows started disappearing, prices went up, we could no longer use the account at her place (when we lived separately), etc. And, sadly, I’m done with them. I think most people will eventually reach a breaking point. My sister also cancelled, which I always assumed would never happen.

davisr 9mo ago

Because the World Economic Forum, where our political and corporate leaders meet and groom each other, point-blank advertised "you will own nothing and be happy."

pyuser583 9mo ago
We’ve been raised to believe “experiences make you happy, not things.” Everything as a service is the modern marketing ideal.

corranh 9mo ago

Exactly, if you can’t afford the high upfront cost that you can stretch out over a longer period of time, you’re stuck paying more over the long term as the subscriptions get more expensive.

SoftTalker 9mo ago

> wait the price hikes out for a couple years Or much longer. The computers I use most on a daily basis are over 10 years old, and still perfectly adequate for what I do. Put a non-bloated OS on them and many older computers are more than powerful enough.

GreenWatermelon 9mo ago
And Linux being good for gaming now (thanks Valve!) makes this option more attractive than ever. And the inability to run rootkits is a bonus, not a drawback.

bigbadfeline 9mo ago

> I don't know how everyone arrives at that conclusion when the cost of the subscription services is also going up Of course they will go up, that's the whole idea. The big providers stock on hardware, front-run the hardware market, starve it for products while causing the prices to rise sharply and at that point their services are cheaper because they are selling you the hardware they bought at low prices, the one they bought in bulk, under cheap long term contracts and, in many cases, kept dark for some time. Result - at the time of high hardware prices in retail, the cloud prices are lower, the latter increase later to make more profits, and the game can continue with the cloud providers always one step ahead of retail in a game of hoarding and scalping. Most recently, scalping was big during the GPU shortages caused by crypto-mining. Scalpers would buy GPUs in bulk then sell them back to the starved market for a hefty margin. Cloud providers buying up hardware at scale is basically the same, the only difference is they sell you back the services provided by the hardware, not the actual gear.