
Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous - dustinupdyke
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-08-12/american-ownership-society-is-changing-thanks-to-technology
======
_bxg1
The article identifies some problems but totally misses their actual source.
The problem isn't that we own less stuff, it's that the ownership is replaced
by a dependency on a handful of corporations which we have no ability to
influence or appeal to.

The substitution of individual ownership for a communal one in which
individuals retain a stake - a real community, or at a larger scale, a
democracy - is not inherently bad. The problem with our recent trend is that
we aren't getting communal ownership in return; we're getting nothing but
convenience.

Silicon Valley has morphed and commercialized the term "sharing". You aren't
"sharing" when you use Uber or AirBnB; you aren't pooling resources when you
use Netflix or Amazon Books. You're renting. You're renting from a centralized
company which outsources the generation of actual value to others, and pays
them as little as possible. You aren't shifting your dependence from yourself
to a community, but from yourself to a company that wants nothing more than to
make money.

~~~
qubex
I might add that Silicon Valley _et al_ has not simply cleverly redefined the
meaning of ’sharing’ to cover their rental practices, but even the meaning of
_community_ has been totally warped out of shape. A community used to be a
group of geographically proximate people whose collective survival depended on
getting over their sometimes conflicting mutual interests and opinions in
order to survive; now we use the term ’community’ to cover collections of
isolated loners who are on average many hundreds of kilometres apart but are
united by a common and often generally speaking controversial opinion that
puts them at odds with their actual neighbours. The Information Superhighway
was meant to usher in the Global Village but instead it begat a landscape of
virtual ghettoes.

~~~
Kalium
Personally, I view this as a distinct upgrade. Instead of being coerced into
lots of interaction with people I may have nothing in common with except vague
geographical proximity, I have the option of interacting with people who
_actually_ share my interests or concerns or hobbies.

To me, this isn't isolated loners. It's the first _real community_ I've ever
known. The first one I've ever actually felt like I was a part of, where I was
always welcome and could always rely on finding people like me.

I understand that some people dislike this shift. It's easy to see where it
might be inconvenient for local communities that used to depend on coercing
membership to exist. It used to be easy to erase those who were alone in the
crowd.

You're absolutely right. We didn't get a Global Village. Instead, we have a
network of Global Villages. They are many and diverse and offer genuine
community to everyone in ways that the old approach no longer did. This is
beautiful and terrible - it's a shift from surviving to thriving.

We finally get to see that there's an option other than ghettos run by the
tyranny of geography.

~~~
coldtea
> _Personally, I view this as a distinct upgrade. Instead of being coerced
> into lots of interaction with people I may have nothing in common with
> except vague geographical proximity, I have the option of interacting with
> people who actually share my interests or concerns or hobbies._

I.e. echo chamber.

~~~
Kalium
Every community is an echo chamber, digital and analog alike.

~~~
coldtea
Not really. You probably have in mind a "community of interest". But the
analog world forces you into many communities of proximity without shared
interests as well.

There are communities where you pick the people who are associated with, and
communities where you don't get to do that (or do it as much).

The internet gives you huge control over picking communities that think/have
interests exactly like yours (and that's exactly what the parent was
mentioning to like about the internet communities).

In real life communities that are not e.g. a chess club, but more like
neighborhood, school, etc, you are forced to live with, and deal with, all
kinds of people, not just the one you chose to. At best, you can move to a
different location, but you still don't have the control to pinpoint and
seggregate interests the internet gives you.

~~~
Kalium
You're completely correct! Real life analog communities, light neighborhoods
and schools, can force a person to live alongside and deal with a wonderful
diversity of people.

However, is it perhaps possible that I may have explicitly considered this
kind of purely physical analog community? Maybe that I could have even been
thinking explicitly about such examples when commenting that all kinds of
communities are echo chambers?

One of the common characteristics of communities is that they enforce norms on
the people who are their members. Physical neighborhoods and cities and
schools are not different in this way. They are echo chambers too, generally
reinforcing a distilled version of regional thinking, and the main lesson they
teach tends to be how to bite your tongue.

The big difference between these analog communities and most digital ones is
that in the case of the latter, a person can generally search for communities
with amenable norms.

You're completely right! Communities of interest are _very_ different from
non-optional analog communities. It's just worth considering that despite this
_major difference_ , it may not significantly affect their echo chamber
nature.

------
ryandrake
I’m surprised at the criticism here and I think the critics are missing the
author’s point. He’s not saying, “buy more stuff you don’t need” or even,
“possess more stuff.” He’s saying, “you ought to _own_ the stuff you possess.”
Which I didn’t think was a controversial opinion but I guess I stand
corrected.

I might be an outlier. I make a deliberate effort to own instead of rent. My
commute is enormous because I moved to a place I can afford to own a house,
rather than be beholden to some landlord whose interests are not aligned with
my own. I’ve never leased a car because I value the ability to repair and
upgrade it myself. I don’t rely on streaming services for media, which could
one day disappear without replacements. I do my own taxes. I don’t even eat at
restaurants often. I feel that relying on services is risky coupling,
unnecessarily involving another party in my success/outcome/enjoyment of the
product. If I have the MP4 on my hard drive, Netflix can’t wake up one day and
decide I can’t watch it anymore. I’ll only (grudgingly) subscribe to a service
if there is no other realistic option, such as with Internet service.

~~~
supernovae
What is the value of "owning" something?

I've owned VHS's, they're worthless I've owned houses - that I had to short
sell I've owned DVD's - they're worthless I've owned Books - they're worthless

What is the value of owning over just paying to enjoy access?

I like spotify because i can sync music to my phone to play offline - but
"owning" all this music is worthless... I had a HUGE cd collection growing up
but they were all stolen one day. Owning was worthless..

It seems we're substituting "ownership" with control. There are landlords that
let you "control" your house - paint it, update it, customize to your liking -
without having to own it yourself. This is a win-win since you get the benefit
of fix annual costs whereas owning the place you could be liable for so much
more.

heck, Everything i "own" actually owns "me" and burdens me with costs... but i
can cancel spotify/netflix/hulu and re-sub later. I like the flexibility of
our new model. I get the 4k version without having to "Re-own", i get higher
bitrate songs without having to re-encode or re-buy, i get more quality
content because i'm paying the producer - not a middleman distribution.

~~~
lolsal
> I've owned VHS's, they're worthless ... > I've owned DVD's - they're
> worthless > I've owned Books - they're worthless

I honestly find this unbelievable and amazing. You have never rewatched a
video, or re-read a book? You've never lent a movie or a book to a friend?
You've never used a movie or a book to job your memory and spark a
conversation with someone?

There is value in all of those things to me, not to mention the value of being
able to watch a movie or read a book whenever I want, regardless of my current
state of subscription to netflix/hulu/xfinity/cbs/amazon prime/hbonow/etc.

~~~
snarf21
That's a fair point but I think they are saying that if they _really_ wanted
to re-read a book, they could just rent it again. The other side of the coin
is how many of the books or movies that you own have you never rewatched? What
happens if you DVD stops reading? I think neither are wrong, just different.
It depends on your goals.

~~~
wristmittens
But the point of the original article is that "just rent it again" is entirely
dependent on the renting authority deciding they still want to rent it to you.
If Kindle decided (or was pressured) to censor a book for whatever reason,
then it has enormous ability to dictate exactly what type of information
you're able to consume.

~~~
TulliusCicero
That's only true if Kindle has monopoly power over books as a whole, which is
obviously not the case.

Now, services like Kindle or Steam deciding to revoke access to prior
purchases is a potential Big Problem...but as of yet, it remains just that:
potential. And at least in theory, there are government agencies that are
charged with protecting against abusive behavior towards consumers (obviously
actual results there are somewhat mixed).

~~~
xg15
Well, the whole point of the article is to observe a trend. None of this is a
big problem _right now_.

But economic incentives might push the renting model to become the main - or
even only - model to use many goods and services in the future. Similarly,
trends about the number of service providers seem to point towards
consolidation as well.

So if those trends hold true, we might at some point have Megacorp Inc.
offering Living-As-A-Service. And then we _would_ have a problem.

~~~
wristmittens
[http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-santa-monica-
sco...](http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-santa-monica-scooter-
suspension-20180814-story.html)

"Bird and Lime deactivate scooter services in Santa Monica for a day in
protest"

------
fallingfrog
Everything this guy illustrates in this article as frightening and subversive,
I see as positive. Americans confuse control with love; that's why we say
things like "you belong to me" and "I only hurt you because I love you".
That's why we substitute possessions for relationships. It's a thoroughly
poisonous attitude.

The most bizarre statement is when he says "The nation was based on the notion
that property ownership gives individuals a stake in the system." It's pretty
obvious to me that a deliberate and intentional effort has been made to ensure
that only people who own a lot of property have any voice in the system; to
flip that relationship around and make it a _moral_ statement is frankly a
little scary. People really think like this?

Look, what Americans need is to spend more time with their friends, their
children, their spouses, their families. Not to spend time collecting fancy
cars or other hollow pursuits. This is a lunatic point of view.

~~~
emodendroket
I don't think you've really taken in the article if you think what it says is
we need to buy more cars. The point here is that we use things we don't really
own, and in fact ownership (particularly home ownership) _has_ traditionally
been one of the things that's ensured the stability of the country. People who
feel they've got something to lose don't generally seek to burn down the whole
system.

~~~
elliottkember
"home ownership"

Does this take mortgages into consideration?

~~~
emodendroket
Yes. The thirty-year fixed-rate mortgage was kind of the cornerstone of the
whole system and arose because of government intervention to assure stability

------
crazygringo
This is beyond ridiculous. The crux of the article is:

> _Each of these changes is beneficial, yet I worry that Americans are, slowly
> but surely, losing their connection to the idea of private ownership. The
> nation was based on the notion that property ownership gives individuals a
> stake in the system. It set Americans apart from feudal peasants, taught us
> how property rights and incentives operate, and was a kind of training for
> future entrepreneurship._

Whether you own music or rent it doesn't give you a stake in the system, nor
does owning a car vs using public transport.

What gives you a stake is your _net worth_ \-- whether in a bank account,
investments, land, a house, a company, or several.

And being able to rent services instead of buy permanent goods is an economic
gain, allowing you to deploy your savings in a more targeted way toward
whatever really matters the most to you.

If we want to be nervous, let's investigate inequality of net worth and the
policies that lead to that -- and not be distracted by something totally
irrelevant like whether I buy or license my books.

~~~
_louisr_
>If we want to be nervous, let's investigate inequality of net worth

And we should find ourselves completely at ease at the end of our
investigation, for in every species success is distributed inequitably.
Inequality of net worth is a natural law, and human society is no exception.
And we need to keep very hard working people motivated to keep working very
hard by ensuring them that they will always keep the lions share of their
labour's products.

~~~
tdb7893
I think this argument would resonate with me if wealth was more meritocratic.
My wife is from rural Iowa and I've learned that working hard doesn't
guarantee you a living wage (especially if you have medical bills).

------
amelius
It may be better for the environment to not own stuff, but instead use
services.

For example, take a fridge. If I buy a fridge, the company I buy it from has
an incentive to make it break in N years, so they can sell me a new one, i.e.
"planned obsolescence".

However, if I subscribe to a service to keep my food and beverages at a
certain temperature, then the company has the incentive to make the fridge
last as long as possible.

EDIT: Besides eliminating planned obsolescence, there are more advantages:

\- Increased market transparency. The market is more transparent if I know
exactly what a service costs me per month, as opposed to buying a product and
not knowing when it will fail. A more transparent market leads to better
competition.

\- Another advantage is that the whole life-cycle of the product, including
_recycling it_ , becomes a natural responsibility of the company.

~~~
burfog
I got burned by "buying a product and not knowing when it will fail".

Samsung made the largest fridge available. I got the $2500 model: stainless
steel, no IoT but digital, double doors over drawer freezer. It looked really
solid and durable. It failed in so many distinct and interesting ways!

The door shelves constantly shattered, at $50 each. The structure had been
compromised by artistic design, with two kinds of plastic joined together. The
ice maker died. The main shelves broke a couple times. The temperature display
(blue 7-segment numbers) became nonsense. The drawer handle had a hinge made
from plastic which broke and non-stainless steel which rusted out. The
compressor went out, as we determined by diagnostic codes. The tech sent to
fix that ignored us, never checked diagnostic codes, didn't look at the
compressor, insisted that our problem was the ice maker (which was indeed
broken but not our complaint), charged us $75 for nothing, and fought us when
we did a credit card charge-back.

I cut that fridge up with a demolition saw to get it out of my house. This was
satisfying.

The replacement is a pair of smaller fridges that were about $400 each. One of
them even has old-style wire shelves that seem unlikely to shatter. We've only
had two broken shelves so far, in the other one.

Famously, there was a "lemons and cherries" paper on the economics of used
cars. I think it also somewhat applies to new goods. There is information
asymmetry here. I can't know that the hinges are fragile plastic and non-
stainless steel. The fridge looks nice, and it says "stainless steel". I've
learned my lesson: do not pay more in an attempt to get quality, because
you'll just pay more for the same old junk.

~~~
captainarab
How do you keep breaking so many refrigerator shelves..? I've never broken one
in my entire life..

~~~
rabboRubble
Heat.

If the shelf is glass, and the glass is not resistant against wide temperature
variations, the glass weakens and eventually will shatter.

~~~
burfog
I doubt it. I open the door of course, but I don't put hot things into the
fridge.

My shelves are generally packed with large jugs. For example, on a main shelf
I might have 4 gallons of milk and a half dozen half-gallon containers of
juice and then more stuff to fill out the remaining space. Door shelves are
similarly packed, with the ones in the Samsung being about 12x8 inches and
thus big enough for gallons of milk.

The fridge is constantly used by kids. It needs to be mostly restocked every
other day.

Glass shattered in one of the $400 fridges. The other $400 fridge is wire.
Glass shelves in the Samsung would break around the edge, leaving me with an
intact sheet of glass and some broken plastic. Door shelves are always
plastic. Samsung snapped white and clear plastic together to make the shelves,
with a fragile zig-zag at the joint. I got to wrapping the shelves with
string-embedded packing tape before installing them, which increased the
typical life from weeks to months.

Give me forged metal grates please, or at least something like rustproof storm
drain covers.

------
ilamont
_Amazon’s Kindle and other methods of online reading have revolutionized how
Americans consume text. Fifteen years ago, people typically owned the books
and magazines they were reading. Much less so now._

The statements about books are not accurate. Ebook sales are still just a
fraction of print sales in many genres - NPD data indicates ebooks are less
than 20% of total unit sales for nonfiction, children, and young adult titles
(self-published ebooks excluded). Total ebook unit sales were 162 million in
2017 from the 450 publishers tracked by NPD, down from 180 million units in
2016.

Source: Publishers Weekly, "Ebook sales fell 10% in 2017"
[https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-
topic/digital/content...](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-
topic/digital/content-and-e-books/article/76706-e-book-sales-
fell-10-in-2017.html)

~~~
seibelj
Anecdotal, but every reader I know (including me) flirted with ebooks and then
switched back to paper.

For me, it’s less strain on my eyes, it always works even without electricity,
I can lend it out to friends easily, and I like to expand the aesthetic of my
bookshelf. I’m also more likely to reread all or part of a physical book.
Ebooks are simply inferior.

~~~
Semaphor
Opposite for me (for fiction). I started reading ebooks with the original
Kindle keyboard and never looked back. I always felt that books were
cluttering everything up (I read 20-60 per year), I enjoy not having my arms
hurt from holding books in an awkward position and I feel that the eInk
display is just as good as books, but it's better for reading in some light
conditions.

I still buy books once in a while, but those are either non-fiction or I want
them for the pictures (e.g. a book by Brom whom I knew through his art on MtG
cards)

~~~
drivingmenuts
Same here - I tend toward military sci-fi (most of it is very bad) and so
disposability is key to not building up a huge collection of junk. The few
physical books I own now are tabletop RPG manuals, because they are needed as
reference during games when batteries running down would be inconvenient.

Certain reference manuals (The O'Reilly Zoo, for example) are more useful as
physical books, as well.

Besides, if I got hit by a bus tomorrow (not planning on it today), it's not
there's anyone to inherit my stuff.

~~~
rurounijones
> Same here - I tend toward military sci-fi (most of it is very bad)

As a reader of many many Kindle unlimited military sci-fi books I sympathize
and recommend the "Nameless War" (
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12356877-the-nameless-
wa...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12356877-the-nameless-war) )
trilogy as the rose in the manure of books I have read of this genre in the
last few years.

There are occasional spelling mistakes etc but the story itself is fantastic
and the military scenario believable.

------
qiqing
First point:

Excerpt: "The great American teenage dream used to be to own your own car.
That is dwindling in favor of urban living, greater reliance on mass transit,
cycling, walking and, of course, ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft."

The teenage dream is not to own the car but to get to where they want to go,
e.g., autonomy to see their friends, go to activities. When the consumer says
they want a quarter of an inch drill bit, what they actually want is a quarter
of an inch hole in a particular wall. The author doesn't seem to appreciate
the difference.

Second point:

The right to repair or alter devices you own, e.g., farmer hacking their own
tractors -- that part I agree with.

~~~
NathanCH
It was the teenage dream not long ago. Getting a cellphone then getting a car
were life goals in high school.

------
Someguywhatever
>We used to buy DVDs or video cassettes; now viewers stream movies or TV shows
with Netflix

This I don't care about really.

Although I remember Richard Stallman wrote a satirical article about there
being no libraries and having to pay to read anything (as in pay to read per
page or something kind of ridiculous) now his article doesn't feel so
ridiculous anymore.

[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-
read.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html)

The SCARY thing, the thing that he doesn't really predict is that nobody will
own anything and nobody will be allowed to read anything but also nobody will
care about it either. They'll all be too busy with their bread and circuses
and the 2 minutes hate or whatever.

~~~
jerf
"They'll all be too busy with their bread and circuses and the 2 minutes hate
or whatever."

Is that really it, though? I mean, that seems really weird on its face... "I'd
_like_ to own my own copy of this movie rather than just stream it, but I
really have to get back to hating Republicans." That doesn't seem all that
plausible.

Personally, I am happy streaming things I don't _care_ to own. At this point,
most of the things I watch, I want to watch once. The world is so abundantly
overflowing with good video content that I have little reason to return back
to something. Those few things, I frequently will buy. Some of my "season
DVDs" I'm quite glad I hung on to... some of them were on Netflix for a while,
but are no longer, and are still fairly expensive to buy.

If the stream services went away, ultimately I'd be slightly inconvenienced.

Music, by contrast, I tend to listen to a given track/album that I like quite
a bit, and I take possession of. YMMV. I'm very music oriented compared to
most people.

And Stallman's arguments about software are yet again something different;
there are reasons for having the source and using open source that have no
media equivalent, because software isn't just media, it's a machine.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Is that really it, though?

Largely.

> I mean, that seems really weird on its face... "I'd like to own my own copy
> of this movie rather than just stream it, but I really have to get back to
> hating Republicans."

That's beause you are assuming that, e.g., political identity fights are an
_alternative_ to economic concerns, rather than forces which shape the
cogntive filters that determine the perception of the nature, cause, blame,
and appropriate response to economic disappointment.

------
sailfast
I have to laugh a little bit here. Cowen is implying by his tone and his use
of "Americans" that people are making this choice willingly.

If you don't have the capital to own, or it becomes too difficult to manage
the things you own, it gets harder. I don't think ownership is a problem for
people with plenty of capital, it's just a lot more scarce than it used to be
for most of the population. Kindle books are cheaper and tinier, therefore I
sacrifice a bit of rights for practicality - otherwise Amazon may not put out
the books for fear of piracy, or the publisher wouldn't grant the rights. (mix
of convenience plus moving / inventory costs / cheaper purchase cost)

Additionally, companies that provide these services have no incentive to give
consumers additional rights to these devices and happily remove these rights -
sometimes without a reason at the time - and fight them in court.

I totally agree with him that a consumer rights movement needs to gain steam
ASAP to counter potentially misinformed abdication of consumer rights, and to
establish solid baselines that is better for consumers. This needs to happen
at a grass roots level and then wallets need to fix the behavior.

As for the lack of capital / buying things - much bigger question but I wish
Mr. Cowen would at least acknowledge it.

------
AdmiralAsshat
Oh goody, another article telling me why everything I do as a Millennial is
wrong.

Here's what we were told as children: "My gosh, you always want _more_ toys,
_more_ comics, _more_ videogames. Don't you ever get enough? What's wrong with
you!"

As teenagers/young adults: "Look at all this crap you've collected over the
years, taking up all this room, and you're barely an adult! You'll never have
space for all this when you move out into a tiny apartment. What's wrong with
you!"

As adults: "Why aren't you buying physical things and hoarding crap anymore?
What's wrong with you!"

~~~
chipotle_coyote
While I don't know that I agree with Tyler Cowen's original article, I don't
think this is a particularly fair reading of it. Should we _never_ question
whether a societal trend is good or bad, because doing so can never come from
any place other than "let's wave our canes at the younger generation?"

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
The point is certainly worth considering. I would personally consider myself
more interested in truly _owning_ the things I buy more than the average
person, insofar as I regularly purchase and rip my own CD's so that I control
the format, strip all of my Kindle books of DRM using Calibre, and contribute
to the development of free software and free/libre operating systems so that I
can be in _complete control_ of my PC's hardware.

With that said, this article does a number of things that I find obnoxious.
Namely:

1) The article gives Amazon a pass for implementing DRM into their books, and
instead blames the people who buy Amazon ebooks. I consider that victim
blaming. Amazon more or less has a monopoly on the ebook market, meaning if
you buy an ebook, you're likely buying from Amazon. If you own a Kindle (which
is, bar none, the best ebook reader on the market), you're buying from Amazon.
And if you buy from Amazon, your books don't truly belong to you.

2) The article seems very much targeted at the younger generation. Buying
digital books, digital music, and smartphones is a thing _everyone_ does, but
again, the older generation seems to get a pass on it. They own houses, after
all, so from the author's perspective they surely won't "los[e] their
connection to private ownership". But those poor naive youths simply can't buy
an album off iTunes without giving up their stake in the system.

3) Many of the author's (valid) concerns have _actionable_ ways to resist,
which the article fails to mention. You can strip the DRM off ebooks. You can
rip your own music and movies. You can load an after-market OS onto your
Android phone when the carrier decides to stop supporting it. Some of these
can be difficult and time-consuming, but that's the tradeoff for getting both
the digital convenience _and_ the freedom of true ownership.

To be clear, I very much dislike this trend of "licensing" everything for the
sake of having it streamed to you. But I would argue that this is a _business_
trend rather than a societal trend, as it has been implemented top-down by the
nation's most powerful tech companies. The vast majority of people simply
picked what was most easily available to them.

Put another way, I think it would be shameful to yell at a poor college
student about contributing to the elimination of individual property for
choosing to rent his college textbooks for the semester at 1/3rd of the price
it would've cost to buy them. And that's largely what this article does.

------
vcolano
I'd agree young Americans are less interested in owning their media and there
does seem to be a general trend away from materialism and towards spending any
extra income on experiences over objects. However, I reject the notion that
the younger generations are less interested in owning property. Young people
do want to have a stake in the system, but most places young people are living
(especially where they're moving to) it's nearly impossible for most of them
to get into the property/housing ownership game to begin with due to housing
price inflation and stagnant wages.

If you took millenials and plopped them in the economic context that the young
generations of the 50s (or even 70s/80s) had I think this would be a very
different story.

~~~
ashelmire
Yeah, this is a "blame the millenials" article in disguise. The problem is
that we're pretty broke compared to our parents, because the big purchases
(housing, education, cars) cost way more relative to our incomes. The elder
dev sitting across from me bought his house for 10k around 1989. Now every
house in that neighborhood costs ~350-400k (and it's one of the bigger and
better ones).

~~~
wilsonnb3
The average price of a house sold in the US in 1989 was around $145,000.

The average price of a house sold in the US in 2018 is around $375,000.

If we adjust the 1989 dollars for inflation, that $145,000 becomes about
$295,000.

That means, in 2018 dollars, the average house price has gone up around
$80,000 or 27% over the past 29 years.

That's a significant increase and we should be concerned about whether or not
Americans can afford to purchase houses, but framing the problem as "houses
are now 35-40 times as expensive as they were in the late 80's" is terribly
inaccurate as a general metric.

house price data:
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ASPUS](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ASPUS)

inflation calculator:
[https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/](https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/)

------
mud_dauber
It's simple. Less stuff equals more freedom.

Freedom to move. Freedom from debt. Freedom from "keeping up with the
Joneses". Freedom from soul-crushing jobs.

~~~
_ah
I think it's more subtle than that. _Needing_ less stuff gives freedom.
_Renting_ stuff instead gives less freedom... you have many of the same
expenses as ownership, but if you ever stop paying your useful stuff
disappears. Owned objects of utility provide insurance to ride out times with
limited income.

~~~
EADGBE
Agreed. As least there's an asset with owned items.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
But you had to buy them! It's not a fair comparison.

~~~
EADGBE
You're paying for them none-the-less.

In nearly every case over time, you'll pay more to rent it than own it.

------
torstenvl
The issue is that ownership used to constitute a form of wealth, but now it
constitutes a relentless financial drain.

When I got stationed in Northern Virginia, I thought about buying a condo. But
almost everywhere I looked, there were absurd HOA fees, some as much as
$400/mo. Considering I could rent a room for $750/mo, it didn't make sense to
buy. If RENT < HOAFEES + MTGINTEREST, you're better off investing the money
instead of pouring it into equity.

As for physical possessions, they all cost money (in rent!). Sure, I _could_
own my own kayak and ATV. But it'll cost me $150/mo for a storage unit to keep
them in. So until such time as I spend $1800/year on quad and kayak rentals
(not even counting the amortized purchase prices), its more financially sound
for me to rent them.

There are exceptions. I own my truck, which I bought used, and I know I'll
drive it for years and years until it's beyond fixing. In the long run, it's
cheaper than renting.

~~~
grogenaut
If how+mortgage is even slightly more than rent you still end up doing well as
soon as you are able to clear the agent and closing costs in recouping.
Renting is easier to move for sure. But stay there 3 years and the story may
be different. Stay there 8 years and you're making out well over rent. But
being statitioned I can see why you might not. Then again I have friends with
rentals in 5 cities for the same reason.

Still not as easy as a truck. I drive mine into the ground too. Not just to
figure out if selling a used one or getting the trade-in is the most effective
use. Buying new car way less effective than buying a good in shape 16 year old
accurately for $1700 currently. I value more varied vehicles over one nice
one. it's also nice to say well this one didn't start today oh well how bout
this one.

~~~
magduf
A 16-year-old car will kill you in a crash that a new one will let you walk
away from. That's one big, important factor in the new vs. used debate.

There's also the factor of how it's going to affect your job and life if your
car breaks down. A 2-decade-old car is going to break down at some inopportune
time, like it or not, even with the best maintenance.

~~~
eanzenberg
Fear monger. A 2002 car still has safety features such as airbags, seatbelts,
anti-lock brakes that a 2018 will also have.

~~~
minitoar
This is not fear mongering, it is actually true. NHTSA reports have shown
repeatedly that newer cars have fewer fatalities. Perhaps there is some other
reason for this correlation, e.g. maintenance.
[https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...](https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812528)

~~~
eanzenberg
There’s so many confounding variables that will affect fatality rate such as
age (in the link but not corrected for) income, education, etc.

~~~
minitoar
The age referred to in the link is the age of the vehicle, not the age of the
occupant(s).

------
DanAndersen
There's a strange conflation in the article between "owning things" and
"owning land." I think there is something fundamentally different about the
two, in that having a patch of ground for which you are responsible for can
help build a sense of self-reliance, investment in the future, skin in the
game. Accumulating a wall-full of VHS tapes doesn't do that.

I don't much mourn the lack of ownership of a lot of worthless junk that
doesn't bring fulfillment or human flourishing. The late 20th century West let
itself fill garages and storage units with consumerist nonsense.

But it's important to recognize that the corporate consumerist system is all
too willing to mutate, to adapt to people's changing tastes and to offer them
a product they feel is liberation. If you've heard "Don't buy things, buy
experiences," then you've heard this new advertising. Companies are all too
willing to make you think that an "authentic" vacation around the world will
bring happiness and meaning in the form of selfies. Restaurants play up the
'foodie' advertising to make consumption of their product seem like a life-
altering experience. The companies realize they can sell the same thing again
and again digitally to customers who binge-watch Netflix and pride themselves
on cutting the cord and not vegging in front of the TV like their parents did.
And at the end of the month you find yourself subscribed to so many services,
so many pseudo-addictions, you wonder where your money is going.

Rather than buying things or buying experiences, consider what you can make
yourself or find for free. There is already more than enough media content out
there to last many lifetimes; why not look for old material that has stood the
test of time? Why not build a skill and learn the value of becoming self-
reliant in some small way?

------
Karrot_Kream
This shouldn't be a surprise. Ownership comes with maintenance costs, and
maintenance requires time. Americans work more than most developed nations [1]
and work more than they used to. American commutes have also increased [2]
steadily over the last 30 years. Given that, is there any surprise that
Americans are less willing to own, and maintain, their things than they used
to be?

[1] [https://nypost.com/2017/09/03/americans-work-harder-than-
any...](https://nypost.com/2017/09/03/americans-work-harder-than-any-other-
countrys-citizens-study/)

[2]
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/02/22/the-a...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/02/22/the-
american-commute-is-worse-today-than-its-ever-been/)

~~~
TangoTrotFox
The first point is untrue. The OECD measures hours worked per member nation.
You can see the results here [1]. The United States is just about square in
the middle. We work 1,789 hours per year. The OECD average is 1,763. That's 26
hours less per year, or 30 minutes a week, or less than 5 minutes a day. These
hours are also way down from the past and contributing to income inequality.
In the 60s most men, regardless of education, worked about 50 hours a week
[2]. The article shows an informative graph on hours worked by income
quintile. The bottom 20% of society works, by far, the fewest hours in all of
society. The 20-40% quintile works substantially more than the bottom, but
less still than the rest of society.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Average_annual_ho...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Average_annual_hours_actually_worked_per_worker)

[2] - [https://qz.com/574693/americans-working-less-than-ever-
befor...](https://qz.com/574693/americans-working-less-than-ever-before/)
(media article, but based on study which is cited with relevant numbers and
figures shown)

~~~
Karrot_Kream
The US is one of the hardest working highly-developed countries.

According to [1] for 2015, the US #13/35 (in the top 37%, so not the middle)
on the list on the OECD ranking of average hours worked per worker. In 2015,
the US had a Human Development Index (HDI) of 0.920 tied for #10/188 in the
ranking of HDI [2]. The only 2 countries with a higher HDI than the US that
works more hours in 2015 than the US is Ireland and Iceland. Iceland in 2015
had a population of 329,425 [3] and Ireland in 2015 had a population of
4,688,464 [4], while the US had a population of 321,773,631 [5]. Given that
Iceland has an extremely low population compared to the US, Ireland is the
only country of comparable population and HDI where the workers work _more_
than US workers.

In contrast, Mexico works the longest hours according to the OECD ranking, but
is #77/188 on the HDI ranking list [2].

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Average_annual_ho...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Average_annual_hours_actually_worked_per_worker)

[2] -
[http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/HDI](http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/HDI)

[3] -
[https://www.populationpyramid.net/iceland/2015/](https://www.populationpyramid.net/iceland/2015/)

[4] -
[https://www.populationpyramid.net/ireland/2015/](https://www.populationpyramid.net/ireland/2015/)

[5] - [https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-
america/2...](https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-
america/2015/)

~~~
wilsonnb3
> the US #13/35 (in the top 37%, so not the middle)

At the very tail end of the top 37%, which makes it part of the middle third
and part of the middle two quarters.

------
paultopia
The classical notion that property is a kind of independence, which this
article implicitly draws on, has always felt wrong to me. Rather, property
feels to me like vulnerability. When you own things, they can be stolen, they
can be destroyed by extreme weather (a real consideration living in the
Midwest---for folks in CA, think of the fires), they can randomly stop
working, they can be devalued by market crashes. If you rent, all those risks
are someone else's problem, and the price premium is really just a form of
insurance against that.

~~~
nepeckman
The other side of this is when you rent, you're beholden to the company you're
renting from. If the car-as-a-service company says "Car service is now $10
more per month" you have to pay that. If the company says "We are no longer
offering $your_favorite_car as a renting option", you no longer have access to
your preferred vehicle. Given the overhead involved in setting up a car-as-a-
service company, I'm willing to bet that competition will be low, and company
leverage to hike prices will be high.

~~~
ryandrake
Also, if the car service says, “Our opaque machine learning algorithm
determined that you violated our terms of service. We cannot tell me ou how,
and your account is closed. You cannot appeal and this conversation is over.”
Well you’re out of luck. Hopefully it’s not the only car-as-a-service company
out there.

------
Teknoman117
I sometimes worry about how many Kindle books I own. eBooks are extremely
convienent (except maybe the need to consume power to view them), but as this
article points out, the ownership problem is concerning. All it takes is my
Amazon account getting stolen, or Amazon exercising some right they've given
themselves to take the book away.

What I'd really like to see is a push for "drm-less" books, so you wouldn't be
tied to Amazon's systems in order to read something you've bought rights to
access.

~~~
jonknee
FWIW it's fairly simple to make your own DRM-less version of Kindle books you
have purchased.

~~~
Teknoman117
I was avoiding mentioning this, not just because of the questionable legality
in some counties, but rather because it's more of a workaround. All Amazon has
to do is sufficiently alter the encryption mechanisms for new books.

Same thing goes with Spotify. Tools exist to strip the encryption from the
offline cache (they are either encrypted mp3 or vorbis, don't remember), but
it's a workaround. I suspect it's why they killed off libspotify, which sucked
because I used that to make a hackjob spotify client for RPi...

~~~
jonknee
Well my point is you can make that backup now for any books you already
purchased and if they change it in the future you can decide to not buy any
more books. Spotify doesn't let you buy any music so I have never wanted to
strip its DRM and haven't even looked into how to do it.

~~~
jpindar
Removing DRM from any kind of audio you can play on a PC is trivial.

------
dijit
I share the observation that we are living in a "rent economy" of the things
we pay for, especially intellectual property or creative works.

I've noticed it happening slowly over time, but there are dangers[0] even if
you believe you "own" your media.

There are no good solutions, people are willing to trade ownership for
convenience because /mostly/ you're getting the same value- why do you care if
you can't access that song you liked in 30 years?

Personally; I fight this notion as much as possible; if I buy digital media-
it's backed up. I do not give my custom to anyone who wishes to own my digital
rights (thus, I avoid DRM) and, where possible, I buy physical copies of
goods.

However, I work in an industry which is moving towards providing "service",
namely; I work in video games. And we have a new concept: "Game as a service",
the idea being that the game lives and grows and dies, rather than being a
static art which is subject to the non-decay or altering hand of time
immemorial. Thus, the games we played in 1995 can be played to day, but the
games we played in 2010 are much less possible, and the games we play in 2018
will be impossible to play 10 years on.

I don't have a particular point, I'm more frustrated with the state of
affairs. Also: Apple Music can sincerely fuck off.

[0]: [https://blog.dijit.sh/importance-of-self-hosted-
backups](https://blog.dijit.sh/importance-of-self-hosted-backups)

~~~
ModernMech
I'm exactly the opposite. I'm happy that all my media is digital. If it's gone
one day, I'll find new media to love and enjoy. If it's something I can't live
without, I might hang on to it for a while, but I've been around long enough
now that I know something I "can't live without" today is just another thing
that will be forgotten and replaced eventually.

I've found that every physical thing I own has an ongoing cost. Firs there is
the obvious cost of physically storing the thing. Then there is the labor cost
of cleaning it and keeping it nice. Then there is the mental cost of
remembering where it is. And finally there is a cost of worrying about it.
What if the house burns down? You spend a lot of time and money and effort
preventing and planning for such an event that may never occur at all. And for
those of us who _have_ lost everything that way, coming to the realization
that it's all just stuff feels like anti-gravity. It's like living on Jupiter
your entire life and then moving to the Moon.

~~~
dijit
You misunderstood my comment; I don't mind if it's Digital, but I want to
-own- the digital copy.

then, yes, there's the ongoing cost of storing it and backing up, but not
cleaning it, and most digital media is easy to sort and find..

------
drewmassey
I think there is a difference between “owning stuff” and “owning assets” that
this post is clouding. It is the owning of assets - that are worth more than
what you paid for them - that seems to form the backbone of American
entrepreneurship in the way that the author wants the owning of “stuff” to do
in his setup.

There is of course value (to me) in owning a library of books - but for
different reasons than, say, owning intellectual property or real estate.

~~~
User23
Owning a library is a fun example, since some books are assets by your
definition. I have several in my library that cost multiples of what I paid
for them. One was recently destroyed in a move and that was quite the bummer.

------
ryandvm
As someone who has given away a couple thousand dollars worth of crappy music
from the 80s and 90s, I can say for certain that I am glad I don't own it
anymore.

A Spotify subscription that allows me to listen to practically any song that
was ever recorded is of far more utility than a pathetically limited personal
music collection.

~~~
magduf
Why on earth would you pay $ per month to have access to music you like, when
you can just have it in MP3/Ogg form, stored on multiple devices (PC, phone,
backup HD) and be able to listen to it at any time you want for free?

~~~
jonknee
From my point of view, why on Earth would you bother to have music in MP3/Ogg
form where you have to manage it and plan what you want to listen to? Spotify
is a paradigm shift for music consumption and I would never want to go back to
collecting manually.

~~~
magduf
I guess if you have unlimited money and don't mind having an expensive
unlimited-bandwidth cellular plan, that'll work for you.

------
Finnucane
I don't know about you, but one of the reasons I am accumulating less stuff is
that I already have plenty of stuff, more than I can comfortably fit in my
house. I need to get rid of stuff before I can get more stuff.

~~~
l_camacho84
We are starting to recognize that we don't need alf the things we buy. We are
getting to the point that we don't own things, things own us. A sugestion, if
you want to get rid of stuff, do it because you don't need the oject, not to
get more stuff.

------
LUmBULtERA
I own very few _things_. No house. No Car. But I own a lot of equities. As to
why the author thinks I have no "stake in the system" because I don't own shit
is beyond me.

~~~
sailfast
This is an excellent point.

The only reason I could think of was a potential implied subtitle: "the reason
to be nervous is that if we stop buying things then those equity values go
down" (which is honestly what I first thought when reading the headline)

------
SamUK96
What this is about is the increasing financialisation of the world's economy,
in other worsds, consumers don't buy a "fridge" and own a fridge and have
dominion over it (classical unfinancialised markets), they instead subscribe
to a service that cools their food. This on HN and in other wealthy techno-
cratic circles is more-often known as "$something-as-a-service" (or just
"XaaS").

It's a trend that is in my honest opinion one of the more increasingly
troublesome and negative aspects of modern human civilisation. Xaas has a
nasty side-effect of concentrating wealth and power to fewer and fewer
individuals, it creates a much deeper power structure, since one finances
another who finances another who...and so on, and the more you financialise
the more you can financialise - an unstable equilibrium, or "positive feedback
loop". With classical unfinancialised markets, it is a more Slack(the
app)-like _flat_ structure, where products are _exchanged_ and _ownership_ is
transfered. Everyone becomes an owner. Power, wealth, and resources diffuse
similar to that of the heat equation.

We can see this nasty effect in the housing markets, for example. The current
situation where the law and society in general allows a growing number of
ownership-hoarders who buy up many houses in an area and lets them out to
their fellow underlings is a rather dangerous and volatile setup, and
historically does not end well for anyone, but especially those up top.

------
paulpauper
He makes a lot of generalizing, and his track record is pretty poor. He said
many years ago America is in a stagnation. hardly. The stagnation is in
countries such as Turkey. not America. The S&P 500 is at record highs, Tesla
and Facebook and AI technology..all sorts of cool stuff and innovation..quite
the opposite of stagnation. Consumer spending at record highs too, so
evidently people are still buying. Maybe instead of buying knick-knacks and
do-dads they are buying services and subscriptions instead.

------
mikestew
It seems to me the author does a lot of hand-wringing over the loss of
ownership of things I didn't particularly care if I own or not. I think back
to Thoreau's "don't own anything that eats or needs painting". I had DVDs
because I might want to watch the movie again. But if I were to never see
_Caddyshack_ ever again, I could live with that, so now I might just buy it on
iTunes. Apple has shown themselves worthy enough in my eyes to trust that I
will always have access to _Caddyshack_. But here's the kicker before some of
you get your dander up: if Apple were to somehow screw me Microsoft-style and
my movie just disappears, for the pittance I paid _I don 't care_. Because it
beats boxes of DVDs taking up space in the attic.

 _We’ll have ovens and thermostats that you set with your voice, and a toilet
and bathroom that periodically give you the equivalent of a medical check-up._

Until we are _required_ to have such things, I do not care that I have the
_option_. I have a Nest, I have Hue lights, I've gone to the trouble of
hacking together a HomeKit server that can talk to the cameras. You know what?
All of that shit could disappear tomorrow and I wouldn't care much. Oh, I was
all excited when I got the gear, it's handy, and I would be inconvenienced by
the disappearance. But the novelty of that stuff wore off _fast_ for me, and I
don't consider it a requirement in my life.

And I think that's key: as long as we can do without your subscription
whatever, the author's hand-wringing is a bit overdone.

------
elicash
> The nation was based on the notion that property ownership gives individuals
> a stake in the system.

Why is the fact that people without property were not given the right to vote
because they "didn't have a stake" as our nation was founded being lifted up
as a good thing? It's such a bizarre thing to say that this ideology was a
good one. The author can't really believe that renters have less a stake in
the system as property owners?

~~~
munificent
The author isn't talking about voting rights, they are talking about
incentives.

When you own property, you care more about the place where that property
exists because what affects the surroundings directly affects the value of
your possession. That incentivizes you to care about and invest in your
neighborhood, community, state, and country.

If you aren't tied to the place, it's easier to just jump ship and say "not my
problem" when something goes awry. You have fewer incentives to put effort
into long-term projects that improve the community since you're less likely to
be there to reap the benefits.

In other words, renters are less likely to plant trees, but a neighborhood
with trees is better for us all over the long term.

~~~
elicash
> The author isn't talking about voting rights, they are talking about
> incentives.

They're talking about the ways in which non-property-owners were viewed at
this country's founding, as not having a stake in the system. That argument
was absolutely made in regards to voting rights and is the reason so many were
denied this basic right. It's a very dangerous idea.

But let's explore it.

Renters have just as much a stake in the system as property-owners. They just
have DIFFERENT stakes and incentives. Let's use your tree example. Maybe you
are correct that renters are less likely to plant trees. That's not because
they have less a stake in a system, but because the stakes for renters is
different. For example, they may have to pay for the local government to plant
the tree as taxpayers. Or maybe they don't like the way the tree looks. Or
maybe they're worried wind will blow it over and onto their car. Or it
obstructs a view. There's absolutely a stake in the system. True, they might
oppose it because they may not get to ever enjoy the shade as it grows, if
they move. Or maybe they want the rent to stay as low as possible. But that's
still not an argument they have less of an interest -- just the opposite, it
shows they have DIFFERENT interests.

------
TuringNYC
I'll chime in with anecdata of 1: for our family it is purely about
convenience and the lack of space (due to increasing real estate costs.)

Books for us are about space. Growing up, having a full-wall bookshelf was one
of my favorite things. It had sentimental value, it was a family gathering
place, each ripped page or blemished cover had a story. We now dont have space
for a second full-wall bookshelf. We've completely stopped purchasing books
and just use Kindle or the library. It works, it just doesnt have the love of
a physical books. But we also dont have the space for physical books.

Living in Brooklyn, going from a 2BR to 3BR meant another $500,000 in cost. We
now living outside DC, which is less expensive, but still not enough to have
room.

So we rent.

Music and movies are for convenience. For me, most music and movie CDs/DVDs
never carried as much sentimental value. It is great not having to carry
around disks and having temporary access to a much larger library. We
subscribe to Apple Music and have never looked back.

------
mark_l_watson
While I get it that some people want to own and control things, I have made
peace with the idea of not really ‘owning’ digital media. I protect against
account loss and loosing everything my splitting ebook and audible book
purchases across Amazon, Google Play, and Apple. This is a little inconvenient
if I want to reference my notes in a book and have to remember which digital
library to look in.

I also favor getting digital media from my library. It cost $200/year to
belong to our local library in Illinois but the number of ebooks and audio
books available is fantastic.

I have also started buying my very favorite movies in Google Play. This
probably does not make much sense, but I like to ‘own’ my very favorite
movies.

The world of digital entertainment is fantastic and the cost is very low
compared to other costs of living.

------
jancsika
There's no mention of FLOSS philosophy. Those are philosophies that emphasize
control of the software and data on those devices by the users of the devices.

Even a cursory understanding of licensing of Wikipedia content is an anti-dote
to the loss of ownership the author describes. If you download the current
state of Wikipedia that data is yours under a very liberal license. No one can
call foul and remove it from your machine.

By ignoring these important concepts the author's piece makes it sound as if
digitization itself is somehow making people forget the importance of
ownership.

Anyone else find this odd and disappointing?

------
Animats
America is becoming poorer. It used to be that Beijing had bicycles and
motorbikes clogging the streets, and few cars. Now it's all late-model cars,
while the US moves to bicycles, motorbikes, and mini-apartments.

------
March_f6
1.) How does the market (in the most basic sense) make any meaningful
distinction between "owning" a rack of DVDs and "owning" a Netflix
subscription? Both are transactions where resources are being traded for
"goods".

2.)The idea of spending more resources on experiences rather than goods has
become more pervasive over the years so the trend of people owning less stuff
would make sense.

3.)This is a little more in the weeds but it's funny to think about how a
society's definition of wealth changes over time and how that might affect
consumer behavior.

~~~
michaelt

      Both are transactions where resources
      are being traded for "goods".
    

When people own a rack of DVDs, film industry revenue rises when more good
films are released, and falls when fewer good films are released - it's not a
fixed-sum competition.

When people own a netflix subscription the industry is in a fixed-sum
competition. The industry makes $X per subscriber per month, whether the
average movie is Citizen Kane or The Emoji Movie.

~~~
tyrust
Treating "the industry" as a single entity doesn't make sense.

Netflix takes that $X per subscriber per month and splits it up between all
its different licensing contracts with different publishers. From the
publishers' POV it's not all that different. In the past if they released good
movies more people would buy more tickets, tapes, DVDs, etc. to view them;
today, Netflix is willing to pay more to host better movies. I don't think
that Netflix would pay the same for Citizen Kane and The Emoji Movie (now,
which one they would pay more for I can't answer, but their analytics probably
can make a guess :)).

------
temp-dude-87844
It's amusing and/or alarming, depending on your mood, that someone like Cowen,
a believer in the market's solutions, can sound so similar to Stallman on this
issue. Stallman pounds the same talking points over and over, but he founded a
movement and released products that espoused the change he wanted to see in
this world. Yet despite the tangibility of his works, the market and field is
flooded with clickwraps, SaaS, and mandatory arbitration. And this extends
beyond infotech, where as the article notes, rentier things are proliferating.

In many cases in the real world, the economics of the rent-based solutions are
the only ones that make sense for the consumer, because alternatives require
steep barriers to entry that are hard to surmount. This is the case when
prices on land and houses require loans and money down, or when comparable
services don't exist due to requirements in capital, expertise, and IP.
Sometimes this price is artificially low (Google, Facebook, Uber) or
artificially high (mobile data), but it's hard to compete with free, and hard
to start a cellphone network. In one case, giant corporations are dumping at a
fictitious price to encourage an ecosystem, while in the other, giant
corporations are buying into a moat of intellectual property while paying
large bills on the immense infrastructure that enables their service model.

When fewer people can afford to become meaningful shareholders, or band
together to start alternatives, the more likely they are to be on the passive
end of this transition. This is what we're seeing now.

------
nemo44x
It's only a single example but vinyl record ownership has continuously
increased dramatically over the last few years and continues to do so. Maybe
if you make an object worth possessing against the digital version, they'll be
an audience for it?

The important discussion should be not about American's losing their idea of
private ownership but about American's learning the idea of owning their
information and data about them. I don't care that I stream media, use SaaS
for email or don't own a car but rather rely on ride share and public transit.
But what I do care about is the companies that provide these services are
brokerages for data about me.

I'm not aware of a single American politician who has as a prime issue the
idea of private data ownership. That we can make laws that ensure that any
data gathered about you belong to you and that companies are privileged to use
it and do not get to dictate terms around it. That if you want to do business
in a way that includes personal data of any kind then there are laws you have
to follow that greatly restrict what you can do with that data. That upon
request every single data point about a person can be disclosed to that person
and how you've used that data and an audit trail with regards to that
information.

Civil Rights for private data could be a thing.

------
AndrewKemendo
_The nation was based on the notion that property ownership gives individuals
a stake in the system._

The conclusion that you have a "stake in the system" if you are a property
owner is 180 degrees backward and that is apparent in his own logic.

If you don't physically own something you are using, like in his examples of
music, or books, then you are relying on "the system" to ensure it will be
there and are heavily bought in. Such a reliance is not necessary if you own
it outright.

Consider that, if you want to ensure without question that you won't lose
access to something, then you buy it outright. How this contradiction isn't
clear is baffling.

Owning something removes you from the group/system that could support it. For
example, shared real estate vs owned real estate. If I own a piece of land
that I live on, I can do whatever I want on it and there is nobody to tell me
I can't and I don't have to consider anyone else. If I instead share ownership
of the land I live on, then I have to take consideration for the others on the
property.

I think if there is a complaint here, it should be that there is a power
imbalance between leasees and owners in today's world. As a user of spotify,
uber etc... you're beholden to the owners of the content and platform to allow
your paid access to it, which they can revoke at any time for any reason, with
little recourse from the user.

That is actually what America was built on and is simply an extension of
hundreds of years of rent seeking. We should be moving to more intentional
distributed ownership (I'm not invoking blockchain here) of capital and
property. Not, simply becoming renters to the capital class.

------
daxfohl
This seems to be the antithesis of the lesson taught in Rich Dad Poor Dad.
Stuff is a liability. Even in "owning" it you're still beholden to it. You
have to maintain it, store it, protect it, make sure nobody injures themselves
with it and sues you. You don't own it, it owns you. Rental, in many areas, is
an improvement. Own the couple things that matter to you, rent the rest.

Perhaps it's not so much that Americans own less stuff, but rather the supply
of stuff has grown so much that we became overwhelmed with too much ownership
and have resorted to rents on more and more of those items by percentage.

Cellphones are an interesting side point, as they don't fully fit into either
classification (own or rent). They kind of take on the worst of both. In fact,
perhaps there's a market for a phone that's more purely "rent". Given the
state of technology and the speed of change, I don't know if there's any real
market for a purely "own" phone, unless it's like an ultra-secure dumb phone,
in which case yeah there's probably a market for that too.

~~~
jpindar
I own the hardware of my phone, and it would still be useful to me if I
decided not to pay for cell service. I suppose Google could force push an
Android update that would brick it, but is it likely that they'd do that? And
would that keep me from flashing new firmware?

------
imgabe
Well, it's trivial to strip the DRM from Kindle books and and back them up.

~~~
emodendroket
So what? How many people know that, and of the people who do, how many bother
to do it? Even among those who do, the legality of what they're doing is
unclear. I don't see how it changes anything the article says.

~~~
imgabe
The point is you don't have to leave it up to Amazon whether or not you own
something.

~~~
emodendroket
The author is talking about a societal shift whose consequences are difficult
to foresee; one person electing to only use CDs, DVDs, flip-phones, and the
like makes little difference to the broader trend.

~~~
imgabe
I didn't say anything about exclusively using CDs, DVDs, etc. I'm talking
about removing DRM. Amazon et al do not get to unilaterally enforce their
notions of ownership. Consumers can take control of the things they buy if
they choose to.

~~~
emodendroket
The author is talking about a societal shift whose consequences are difficult
to foresee; one person electing to [strip DRM from media they purchase in
violation of US law] makes little difference to the broader trend.

------
justinrstout
This article makes a lot of unsubstantiated claims and is very light on actual
data. For example a blatant assertion like "Amazon’s Kindle and other methods
of online reading have revolutionized how Americans consume text." has no
support in the article itself. For what it's worth I know only a few people
that use e-books; the majority purchases and reads plain old paper books.
Likewise, "...now viewers stream movies or TV shows with Netflix...now Spotify
and YouTube are more commonly used to hear our favorite tunes....". This is
unsubstantiated. Nearly all of the video content I want to watch is not
available on Netflix; and anything that is is liable to disappear at any time.
Just last month I purchased VHS tapes, DVDs, and Blu-rays to get content I
wanted, so if the writer isn't going to go to the effort of researching and
presenting information, then my anecdotal experience completely contradicts
this thinkpiece.

------
ModernMech
> The nation was based on the notion that property ownership gives individuals
> a stake in the system. It set Americans apart from feudal peasants, taught
> us how property rights and incentives operate, and was a kind of training
> for future entrepreneurship.

Then rents went up, education became more expensive, wages went stagnant, the
rich got richer, and suddenly owning property and buying "stuff" to fuel the
insatiable furnace of capitalism doesn't seem like such a great life goal. If
that means we're not participating in "the system", well... maybe it's time to
change the system.

Also, I think it strange the author questions what the death of property
ownership means for capitalism, and then cites various examples of capitalism
in action that are working to corrode property ownership -- e.g. Apple,
Amazon, etc. The rise of subscription services over shrink wrapped software or
hardware to which you own the rights arose directly from capitalism.

~~~
claydavisss
But society has willfully embraced living "in the present"...who here would
give up their SF rental in exchange for a property in Gilroy they will
eventually own? How many here would give up their leased 2018 BMW for a used
Toyota Yaris?

~~~
TaylorAlexander
I mean this is all what I’m considering. I hate working day in and day out in
the Bay Area. I grew up in the Santa Cruz mountains in the forest and now I
commute through an asphalt jungle to a concrete building where I’m pampered
every day like a fragile snowflake. I’m constantly working to figure out how I
could afford a home in the outskirts of this region. I’ve already moved from
an Audi to a Honda although it’s kind of an expensive Honda, so I’m
considering switching to something cheaper. And I’m dreaming of finding land
in pescadero.

So to answer your question... some of us?

~~~
ModernMech
I did _exactly_ this. I gave up my $3500 apartment in SF and moved to the
central valley. People in SF and the Bay shit all over the central valley, but
I've never been happier.

------
mnm1
This article confuses the issue of preferring walking, biking, and mass
transit to owning a car with the issue of software freedom. The former is
still based on ownership of sneakers and bikes. More importantly, it's not the
same issue as proprietary software licenses that prevent users from running
software as they see fit. I think RMS would be happy to see such a piece about
the importance of software freedom in such a mainstream publication. It's too
bad that they didn't fully research it and tie these issues back to the
disappearance of general computing from our lives, but it's great to see this
issue getting wider exposure in the mainstream media even if it is slightly
dumbed down for the masses. RMS has been writing about this issue for decades
(1) and it most certainly is one of the biggest issues of our time.

(1) [https://www.fsf.org/](https://www.fsf.org/)

------
cryptozeus
I see tge point here. When I was renting apartment, I was not really involved
with what was happening in the area or local housing community but now that i
own a house, I regularly take part in local development meetings. We all have
say in what gets build and what does not. Same can be applied to car rental vs
owning a car.

------
plaidfuji
I wanted to watch Fellowship of the Ring recently. Would've been happy renting
it, but the cheapest streaming option available to me was to "buy" it from
Amazon for $10. This infuriated me so much that it almost drove me back to
piracy, but I eventually caved and paid the $10. It's LOTR, of course I'll
want to watch it again.

I immediately felt a deep shame, like I was the biggest sucker on the planet.
But I thought to myself, what was the alternative? Buy the friggin BluRay? I
don't want a pile of plastic boxes like it's the 00s and I don't have a player
anyway. I just want THE FILE . IN FULL HD. Not the right to stream the file
from Amazon's servers when I happen to have a good connection and a device
with their App. Just the video file please. This article is spot on.

------
jacinabox
Keynesians want to encourage spending in order to keep wages high. That's
because an increase in spending causes an increase in aggregate output.
However, it's unlikely that the employee will benefit. In the first place, if
the marginal propensity to consume is less than 50%, and therefore the
Keynesian multiplier less than two, then an increase in consumer spending will
not pay for itself in wage growth. Further, the gap between spending and wage
growth is increased because wages form a small component of the unit cost of
any good. If spending on a good increases by some amount, then the wages
increase derived from that spending will be much less. As usual it might be
concluded that people are better off saving their money than spending it on
things they don't need or want.

------
mywittyname
A lot of this "stuff" are one-time-use items for the majority of people. I
very rarely read a book for a second time nor do I rewatch television shows.
When I do, reread a book or rewatch a movie, I usually end up paying for it
again because I lost the original or I saw the movie in a theater.

The good thing about the digitization of this content is the fact that it will
be more likely to be preserved in the long term. There are tons of books that
are out of print and movies that were produced before DVDs that will never be
released. This is going to be much less of an issue going forward. So, while
you may need to pay for access again if you haven't watched a movie in 20
years, at least you'll be able to obtain it like you would any other movie.

~~~
CuriousSkeptic
I fear it will be the complete opposite. Once Netflix decides something is no
longer worth streaming to your country there is no way to get at it again.
Compared to the possibility of going to a second hand market looking for a
dvd-set I’d say the situation will be worse for old movies.

~~~
mywittyname
Your fears are completely unfounded. Digital content is so much easier to
maintain than older methods of archiving.

The stuff you "buy" from services like Amazon or Steam is going to be around
for a very long time. I have digital content that's almost 20 years old now
and I still have access to all of it.

~~~
CuriousSkeptic
I was thinking more of the content you don’t “buy”. Have had plenty of
experience with things being gone when I wanted to see it. I also don’t “buy”
things from these vendors because they keep popping up and going away, being
bought and closed or merged. Have no interest having my “owned” stuff being
tied to a particular company keeping in existence.

I actually ended my Apple Music subscription thinking I would be better if
buying things from iTunes I listen to over and over. But they tried their very
best to make that a non-option and now I actually don’t know what to do. At
this point Murfie Music seems like the only option that makes sense, but I’m
assuming the music industry will manage to make them illegal sooner or later
so not to keen on that either.

------
_iyig
I've been nervous about "owning" cloud-based media since Amazon deleted
Kindle-purchased copies of 1984 [0].

Even today, media you "own" on services like Amazon can disappear when the
cloud provider's license for this content expires. In my opinion, it is far
better to purchase a Blu-Ray or CD copy of media titles you wish to retain,
rip them to disk, and stream them to the device of your choice via Plex or
Kodi.

[0]
[https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18am...](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html)

------
mehrdadn
This is insightful. I want to also mention that it's not just ownership of
property that's disappearing, though: the concept of owning _wealth_ also
seems to be disappearing. So much -- including the nation's foundation now --
is based on loans, credit, and in general paying with money that you don't
actually have. It seems like an entirely different financial/economic model
from the one we mentally have in mind, and that seems like another reason to
be nervous -- I don't know enough to know if it can be sustainable.

------
owly
Before Amazon Kindle, Netflix, Spotify, etc; I always was puzzled by people’s
need to own things. Why? I used, and still do, this thing called... The
Library! Why pile up stacks of books requiring many bookshelves when you can
borrow anything your heart desires. Libraries are better than Amazon or
Netflix actually. There have been several instances when I’ve borrowed
European TV series which are not easily available on any streaming service.
Seriously, how many of your DVDs have you watched more than twice? You can
always borrow it again anyway.

~~~
jumelles
I too adore libraries, but not everyone has access to one, much less a library
with a large collection.

------
apo
Stuff is cheap. Attention is dear. This trend will continue for a long time.

------
jopsen
Extreme consumerism trends downwards in a few obscure commodities and someone
proclaims the end of private property.

Give me break, collections of books, DVDs and CDs have always been largely
worthless. Cars was never an investment tool.

Real estate, stocks, bonds is property with at least some value. Put stats on
that before arguing that private ownership is in decline. (I'm not saying it
isn't)

I'm merely saying consumerism was never about private ownership, or am I
missing something?

------
systematical
This 30-something year old couldn't be happier owning little. I sold my house
and nearly everything I own with the exception of clothes, car and a few other
miscellaneous items. That stuff is just weight. I rent furnished rooms now,
pay less, and can move around easier. Sure I sacrificed some, but I'm debt
free and can always buy again.

This author sounds reactionary. The sky isn't failing, its just a different
hue of blue today.

------
bunderbunder
> The nation was based on the notion that property ownership gives individuals
> a stake in the system.

That notion presumably had something to do with why, in a nation with a
population of well over 5 million, fewer than 40,000 people participated in
the first US Presidential election.

 _Everyone_ who lives in the country has a stake in the system, by virtue of
the fact that they are subject to its laws and their lives are impacted by its
policies.

------
partycoder
There is an overlap between ownership and access.

Reduced access is bad.

Reduced ownership is bad only if it leads to reduced access.

-

I have a lot of books here at home that I haven't read in a long time. If I
didn't own them that would not affect me in any way, since their resell value
is very low. My exclusive ownership of these books makes them highly
inefficient.

Same goes for a lot of stuff that people own but hardly ever use. Owning fewer
things is not necessarily bad.

------
tootie
> Perhaps we are becoming more communal and caring in positive ways

I think I this is a big one. There's a very degree of trust that public
services and even private ones will be there whenever we need. Not just things
like reliable hospitals and electrical grid, but also one-day shipping on
whatever we need. There is no longer a need to keep things on hand.

------
brandonmenc
Back in the 90s, I used to spend a sizable chunk of my high school and college
income on physical media - music CDs in particular. And I couldn't even return
them if they sucked.

I'm now able to own more other, actually useful stuff because I pay just a
couple dollars a month to stream literally everything ever recorded. This is
so much better.

------
desireco42
If true, this is great news, for americans and for the environment.

Life is easier when you don't have too many things. Now people go to extremes,
like they always will, but overall, this is very good trend. I think people
will lead healthier lives when they are not oppresed with owning stuff and
paying credit cards.

------
RickJWagner
IMHO, the smart phone has a lot to do with this.

The phone acts as a communication device, a GPS, a flashlight, a camera, a
music player, a library, etc. etc. It's also the end-all entertainment device.

It's natural to own less stuff. There's too much interesting stuff right there
in your palm.

------
bluishgreen
Recently I gave away my linux compute machine and use AWS instead. I can dial
up to 400GB of RAM/100 cores when I need to run a major compute job, and dial
down to a machine which is 10 cents an hour for 99.0% of my compute time. I
get the benefit of owning a 10,000$ machine for a fraction of the cost, approx
80$ a month.

"The erosion of personal ownership and what that will mean for our loyalties
to traditional American concepts of capitalism and private property"

If the lament here is for the mountain of garbage that each individual
generates in the name of private property, color me not-amused. Think of those
broken old DVDs that were used at most once or twice. Think of those cars that
sit on parking lots and garages 99% of their lives. Wounding the earth to
extract all that resource and burying our future in a carbon cloud. And for
what! To hold on to some vague notion of private property like a comfort
blanket.

The future is one we have not seen before, of all powerful trillion dollar
companies. But the recent past is a hell scape which led to global warming and
other atrocities. We should be willing to walk boldly into this unknown future
if only for the promise of reducing waste and possibly a better climate
future.

------
vt100
It's because the value of intellectual property and financial assets has
displaced direct physical ownership of assets like farmland and livestock. We
own S&P500 tracker ETFs instead and spend our dividends at Whole Foods or
Amazon Fresh etc.

------
anovikov
The 'idea of private property' is about private ownership of means of
production, which is what definition of capitalism is. Basically it is about
idea of owning capital privately and start your own business employing that
capital, with a goal to increase that capital. It is not about owning 'stuff'.
And in that sense, it is not going anywhere. So i think it is an empty reason
to worry.

------
vt100
The value of intellectual property and financial assets has replaced more
physical ownership of assets like farmland and livestock. We invest in the
S&P500 and spend our dividends at the supermarket instead.

------
mmagin
Ironic that Tyler Cowan's book The Great Stagnation was the first book I read
on Kindle.

------
zurn
Nervous because we might wreck the planet with overconsumptiona little later
than thought?

------
safgasCVS
"The main culprits for the change are software and the internet"

Stopped reading after that. This guy has a very loose understanding of what
real people's lives are like. Throw Occam's razor out the window - the reason
people own less stuff is not because they might have less money - no its
because "society" has changed its "values" or some other air-headed notion ppl
who live in airconditioned offices dream up.

The reason Americans own less stuff is because for 80%+ of the population
wages haven't seen an increase in 3 decades and are up to their eyeballs in
debt. "But GDP is so high!" \- but nothing. What matters is the money that
average people take home and for that they havent seen their income rise but
they have seen the cost of education and healthcare go through the roof. If
you're the kind of person who thinks like this guy you're probably in the camp
who thinks Trump got elected because "Far-Right Racists/Russian Hacking /The
Patriarchy"

Sorry for the rant. I get an Inspector Dreyfus twitch when I read this sort of
stuff by supposed 'smart' people

------
metalliqaz
This piece failed to provide the conclusion that was promised in the title.

------
coldtea
> _Some social problems are blatantly obvious in daily life, while others are
> longer-term, more corrosive and perhaps mostly invisible. Lately I’ve been
> worrying about a problem of the latter kind: the erosion of personal
> ownership and what that will mean for our loyalties to traditional American
> concepts of capitalism and private property._

The "traditional American concepts" where the pioneering spirit and
individualism (and of course various forms of protestantism and religious
nuttery and so on).

Not consumer capitalism. It took a lot of advertising and nudging to turn the
more independent 1920s and 30s American into a consumer, and even more to turn
him into a consumer of today's proportions.

------
dfxm12
>the erosion of personal ownership and what that will mean for our loyalties
to traditional American concepts of capitalism and private property.

I don't understand the author's premise. The author is largely lamenting that
people are buying services over goods, but that doesn't show a dwindling
loyalty towards capitalism in the slightest. I might think it strengthens
loyalty to capitalism, as many of these services require an ongoing
relationship with the market.

I'm also unsure about how "private property" is a traditional American concept
and the author does a poor job explaining why changing loyality to it is a
reason to be nervous...

------
superkuh
Here is a non-computational paywall (ie, you run untrusted code on your
computer or you don't get to see) mirror of the article text:
[https://via.hypothes.is/https://www.bloomberg.com/view/artic...](https://via.hypothes.is/https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-08-12/american-
ownership-society-is-changing-thanks-to-technology)

And here's a mirror of just the article raw text:
[https://pastebin.com/bqBWgDPk](https://pastebin.com/bqBWgDPk)

------
scrumption
I love how this blatant neoliberal propaganda piece attempts to brand the gig
economy and perpetual licensing of streaming content in lieu of CDs and other
physical media ownership as "communal" (certainly they didn't mean anything by
that wording?) when it's clearly a natural progression of the rent-seeking
motive that capitalism is literally based on. "All the bad parts of %ideology%
aren't _real_ %ideology%!" Gee, where have we heard that before.

Also great to see them deliberately misuse "private property" when discussing
ownership of personal property.

------
hyperpallium
Serfing the internet.

------
hello_error
Headlines now tell us how to feel, and that’s a bad thing.

~~~
mcphage
Well now I’m feeling doubly bad.

~~~
hello_error
Well you should, mr McPhage; you’re a virus after all.

~~~
mcphage
Just a virus of the mind

