
The Post-Ownership Society - nkurz
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/junejulyaugust_2015/features/the_postownership_society055896.php?page=all
======
netfire
There didn't seem to be a lot of strong arguments for the points made in this
article. Most of the situation the author finds herself in seems to be due to
a poor economy in general (lower pay, rising housing, education and health
care costs) and bad financial decisions (not saving up money, buying expensive
food, etc), then having anything to do with the sharing economy and not owning
something.

The author seems to be under the impression that prior to the sharing economy,
there weren't middle men still taking a cut for providing vehicles, leasing
(or subletting) apartments or providing other services/assets that were needed
to do a business. The question would be whether Uber, Zipcar, Etsy, etc are
taking any more of a cut than a a more traditional taxi medallion, a car
dealership, an art gallery, etc. I suspect they are taking less, since they
are transferring a lot of the risk of owning the property and running a
business to their contractors.

I don't think owning things in general creates wealth. Making smart financial
decisions does. If you own a car and are paying a good amount of money to
park, insure, maintain and purchase/lease that vehicle and don't drive it
enough to justify that expense., it may make a lot more financial sense to use
Zipcar, Uber and other public transportation. Similarly it may make sense to
invest in owning enough kitchen supplies to prepare your own food instead of
eating out all the time (or it may not, it just depends on your situation)

~~~
Silhouette
_I don 't think owning things in general creates wealth. Making smart
financial decisions does._

It's difficult to defend that kind of position when the only viable choices
available range from bad to worse. By any rational standard, as someone a
little older than the Millenials described in this article, I should be well
off -- degree from a good university, work in tech industry, run my own small
business these days, etc. -- and yet I have essentially no chance of buying a
viable long-term family home in the city where I live.

It doesn't make a lot of difference how carefully I save or how hard I work to
grow the company revenues, because we simply don't have enough houses to go
around. That means the property bubble just keeps on growing, and those of my
parents' generation who bought their first home multiple decades ago are now
buying up the new ones as well, to use as investments and let out as rentals.
They can make more money doing that than all but the most successful and fast-
growing business can generate or the very highest paid jobs will pay, and it's
effectively passive income most of the time, so the cycle continues with the
gap widening by the day.

The next generation are even worse off, with pressure to have a degree to get
just about any kind of job these days leaving them with tens of thousands in
student debts before they even start their first job and in most cases doomed
to spend much of their 20s just trying to keep up.

~~~
netfire
That's a fair statement. I should have stated my original position being that
making smart financial decisions creates wealth _more_ than simply owning
things. Obviously access to education, capital, laws that favor certain
classes of people, and just plain luck all influence one's ability to create
wealth.

That being said, the smart financial decision, in your position, might be to
relocate to a different city with significantly cheaper housing, education,
food, etc. That has the social/emotional downside of not being as near to
friends, family or the things that you like in your city, which may not be it
worth it to you.

If a lot of people want to live in a certain area, and there is limited space
to construct housing (or laws that prohibit new construction) its hard to see
how prices would be able to stay low.

What do you think the best solution to this problem would be? In my mind, the
biggest problem is that we have laws that favor bigger companies and richer
people and provider an unfair advantage to those people. (some big companies
pay no income tax for example, where that's not an option for a smaller
businesses, or small businesses or poorer people can't defend themselves in
civil cases due to excessive legal costs)

~~~
Silhouette
_That being said, the smart financial decision, in your position, might be to
relocate to a different city with significantly cheaper housing, education,
food, etc. That has the social /emotional downside of not being as near to
friends, family or the things that you like in your city, which may not be it
worth it to you._

One difficulty with this is that moving somewhere cheaper often also means
moving somewhere that work is harder to find and/or doesn't pay as well, so
you can easily find that your gains are mostly cancelled out and you're just
saving up even more slowly relative to more expensive areas with better paid
work.

In any case, as you say, it's just not worth it to me to move somewhere far
from the region where most of my family and friends live, my hobbies are well
catered for, and work/schools/other practical facilities are readily
available.

 _What do you think the best solution to this problem would be?_

Build more houses -- _lots and lots_ more houses. It's really as simple as
that.

Here in the UK at present, we build very roughly half as many houses per year
as most credible commentators reckon we need to support demand, and we have
been underdeveloping for decades now. There is no need for artificial "help to
buy" schemes, punitive taxes on landlords or holiday home owners or people
with large homes, or any of that other complicated economic stuff the great
and powerful keep talking about. Just build enough houses for everyone to find
somewhere to live and the rest will take care of itself.

In reality, this means fixing our horrendously broken and onerous planning
system. Right now, private individuals are up against a barrage of complexity
and ambiguity if they want to build/extend themselves, so most new homes are
built as part of large-scale commercial developments. Those developments
typically receive planning consent on the basis of having a certain proportion
of so-called affordable housing -- itself something of a joke in a city like
mine, because no teacher or nurse or office junior can actually afford even an
entry-level place -- but then the developers have a whole box of tricks for
managing to build/sell the high-end, expensive, more profitable homes first
and somehow a lot of the affordable ones never quite seem to get built.

------
lkrubner
Any time you read words like this:

"We’re a generation in which children were empowered by promises that they
could grow up to be anything they wanted to be."

You should remember that, since 1973, wages have been declining for the
majority of men in the USA:

[http://www.smashcompany.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/03/Scree...](http://www.smashcompany.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/03/Screen-Shot-2014-03-31-at-12.13.58-PM.png)

Women have seen some modest improvement in wages, but for the most part, the
era since 1973 has been a very bad one for American workers.

For young men, the problems started as early as the recession of 1958. That
was the year that the ratio of average wage to average rent hit its all time
best, making it easy for a young couple to set themselves up with their own
place. For that reason, this was also the peak of the Baby Boom.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Wages being flat/declining is solely because compensation has shifted from
wages to non-wage compensation.

[https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/COMPRNFB](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/COMPRNFB)

Things have been fine for workers.

~~~
anigbrowl
Simply holding a ruler up to the graph you cited reveals your conclusion to be
complete bullshit. If the straight-line trend that obtained up the early 1970s
had continued then the indexed compensation would be closer to 130 than the
110 it currently is. What sort of idiots do you take us for?

Don't even get me started on all the rent-seeking and tax acrobatics
surrounding non-wage compensation. I would much rather just get paid cash and
pay a somewhat higher rate of income tax than waste time trying to optimize
some endless menu of benefit packages that require the skills of a CPA to
analyze properly.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I didn't claim a specific linear trend was followed, I claimed that comp went
up.

------
imgabe
> Achieving those things was always in the future, at some relatively well-
> moneyed point that I was expecting would roll around— until I realized the
> future had dawned and the financial stability hadn’t appeared

Well gosh, maybe you have to actually _do something_ to make financial
stability happen instead of just expecting that it will magically materialize
one day when you hit a certain age.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
There is an element of truth in what you say, and yet it is not completely
true.

It used to be that, if you wanted to make it as a writer, you got a job at a
factory or a restaurant or something to pay the bills while you tried to make
it as a writer. (It was called a "day job".) You wrote before or after work,
or on the subway to or from work - all the time you could find, in fact. You
didn't have much of a social life, because all your spare time went into
writing.

And, reading the article, the author shows a lot of evidence of "not doing
something". She expects to be able to make a living as a writer right out of
the gate. (In fairness, she did have an actual magazine job at one time.)
She's buying wine at bars and $8 coffees, and then she doesn't have enough
money for renting an apartment. It's like she's paying _no attention at all_
to what she's doing financially, and then she's surprised that she doesn't hit
that well-moneyed point when she expects financial stability to appear.

So that's the element of truth in what you say. The not-completely-true part
is this: An awful lot of good-paying, long-term-stable jobs have disappeared,
and they aren't coming back. This makes it considerably harder for large
chunks of the population to make it to that relatively-well-moneyed point of
stability.

~~~
anigbrowl
You're both ignoring an important contextual clue.

 _We’d have $8 drip coffee in the mornings with a rosemary or lavender scone,
or something else ridiculously fancy, rubbing shoulders with the people our
age and older who actually made money._

Pick up any guide on how to get ahead in business or sales, and it will
include advice to project an air of success and engage heavily in networking
activities. Now I'm personally pretty frugal, but that in itself can be a
limitation. You're not likely to meet your next hot netowrking prospect
standing in line at Dunkin' Donuts, even less so making coffee in your kitchen
and hunching over your computer at the library.

I'm _not_ saying the way to success is to go out and spend yourself down on
fancy coffee. but look at how so many startups operate; they set up very very
nice work environments and then burn through their runway cash hoping they can
innovate enough to attract another funding round while also attracting talent
by creating a great team with a great place to work. This writer is just
trying to leverage the same approach that is promoted all over the place. I
don't think she's doing a very good job of it, but if you want to meet people
who can advance your career then you need to put yourself out there and
putting yourself out there costs money.

~~~
imgabe
I can concede that most startups operate as you describe. However, most
startups also fail. If you fail in a startup, you can dust yourself off and
try again. If you fail in _your life_ , you're going to have a harder time of
it.

Maybe it's not best to follow the all-or-nothing strategy that works for
startups (or, should I say, that works for the VCs that fund them because they
can spread their risk over many investments).

------
cko
> How the “sharing economy” allows Millennials to cope with downward mobility,
> and also makes them poorer.

In the author's case, the cause of being poor is high expenses (student loan
debt, mainly) and low income.

I dislike the burden of ownership. Sharing can decrease expenses - for
example, living with a roommate. Change driving habits and suddenly you're not
as dependent on a car. (I do both these things BTW - the 90% of after tax
income I don't spend I invest.)

It seems like the author's perception of poor is "not owning her own primary
residence." Perhaps that is a common perspective.

But redefine wealth to mean "controlling cash flowing assets" and I can see
how the sharing economy, combined with creativity and planning, actually helps
in wealth-building.

~~~
breischl
>>redefine wealth to mean "controlling cash flowing assets"

That's what any sane definition would be. A lot of people seem to use the
bizarro-world definition of wealth as "owning cash-gobbling, depreciating
assets", such as cars, clothes or (in many cases) houses. Basically they've
mistaken the _trappings_ of wealth with the _causes_ of wealth, and then
become confused as to why they're not wealthy.

------
alpsgolden
_In reality, though, these are the same types of services that have always
been around—private drivers and taxis, hotels, rental car companies—but their
services are sliced up into tiny bits and provided by underpaid contingent
workers, which is what we are ourselves._

The "sharing economy" has always just been a PR term. I like Airbnb and Uber
as services, but it's not a reinvention of human economic interaction. How
does a "sharing economy" differ from a rental economy? How does a "sharing
economy" differ from any market where people produce services for each other
based on reciprocated exchange?

------
beatpanda
So at what point do we as software engineers start paying attention to the
outcomes of what we build for society?

A lot of people working in software are building things that, in the
aggregate, disempower people and transfer even more power into the hands of
the owners of capital.

I know someone who, fully aware of the consequences, is helping build
something to replace many food service industry workers with robots. It's a
direct transfer of wealth from workers to the owners of capital. I won't work
with him, on anything, because of this.

Why are we building this world? What are we thinking?

~~~
netfire
Why? Because people can do something more meaningful with their lives if they
are are currently doing something that can replaced by a robot. (There will be
other jobs that are created to fill the replaced jobs). Arguing that we should
not innovate and progress as a society because it will take away jobs is like
arguing that we shouldn't have toilets because it will create less jobs for
sanitation workers.

I don't think your notion of transferring wealth from workers to the owners of
capital holds much weight in the context of a sharing economy either. It seems
to me that a sharing economy is simply a more decentralized way of doing
business, in which individuals are leasing their property or providing their
services more directly to consumers than before. A centralized economy still
provides wealth from workers to the owners of capital (rental car companies,
hotels, taxi medallions, etc), perhaps more so than a sharing economy does.

~~~
beatpanda
Right, but _can_ people actually do anything more meaningful? I work in
software not because I like it but because the things I actually like to do,
like playing music, writing, or cooking, will never enable me to have a
financial safety net. I would be no more "able" to do these things if my job
disappeared tomorrow than I am today. What people are more able to "do
something more meaningful" because their jobs no longer exist thanks to
automation?

I basically agree with you, that automation _could be_ profoundly empowering.
But right now it isn't, unless you happen to control the automation
technology.

~~~
netfire
The question would be, what comes next after these jobs are automated. I think
that's largely unknown.

You could have made the same argument before the industrial revolution, or
massive improvements in communications and the internet, but I think we've
been better off as a result. of those improvements. People have much better
access to information/education and have a wider platform for free speech, as
well as being able to live longer.

Hopefully you find writing software more meaningful and enjoyable than the
much harder labor jobs that was more common 100 years ago. It could be that an
automation revolution, could better enable you to better financially support
yourself in those things that you really like to do, and that are harder to
automate, since those may become much more valuable in a more automated
economy. (Just as music, writing and cooking are arguably more financially
viable occupations for more people today than it was 100 years ago)

------
cyphunk
Not owning assets is the entire idea of the sharing economy. Provided one
doesn't get upset about someone else having more than themselves the
conclusion of the article could sound just fine:

 _" But in fact we’re enriching the owners of whatever app or platform we’re
using, becoming just a data point on the path to their payday while we age
without assets. It’s their world, and we’re just renting it."_

The argument against sharing economy isn't that we don't own any more. This
was what many wanted from the start. It's that some models destroy other
important economic frabrics (such as phantom scarcity created through empty
airbnb flats). The argument about reducing workers rights and provisions is
also valid. But one effect of decentralized digital labour is that
unionisation becomes a more effective form of protection. So on this point, it
will get interesting.

------
beat
In a highly competitive market, profits for production are driven to zero. The
only thing that remains profitable is rent, for ownership of otherwise
unshareable resources like land.

We are seeing a shift toward a more idealized, libertarian market. The problem
is, in such a market, the only people getting richer are the owner class.

------
g8oz
_" a lot of us are “entrepreneurial” as we swing from one grapevine to the
next as freelancers, but very few of us are building equity in a real
business. "_

Indeed many of the people participating in the gig economy are essentially in
the same position as a day laborer. Across time and space this class of people
has always been the most vulnerable to socio-economic tumult.

The image of rural landless laborers in India and Ethiopia comes to mind. They
were always the first to die in a famine.

------
acconrad
> I don’t see the path that would get me from where I am to where they are.

Of course you don't. You _just_ told us about how you have $8 coffee. Our
grandparents ate canned vegetables and raised two kids in a 1500 sq ft home
and you're complaining that you can't keep up with the Jones' while you sip on
$8 coffee on a freelancer writer's budget. This isn't a generational problem,
this is a complete lack of understanding of personal finance.

Look, I, as a Millennial, am aware that the average wage has decreased since
the 70s. I'm also aware that being a software developer and making software
puts other people out of work because we are automating the things that used
to be done by hand. I'm further aware that I've had a stable enough upbringing
from a middle-class family to teach me a few things on frugality, saving, and
making the most of your education. Things definitely seem to be harder than
they were, but whatever thesis the author was trying to defend completely went
out the window when I read the quoted statement.

------
benihana
"We’re a generation in which children were empowered by promises that they
could grow up to be anything they wanted to be."

I'm part of this generation and I think this sentiment is the the thing I
dislike most about my cohort. Nobody ever promised us anything like that. The
story was you have the opportunity to be what you want to be, provided you
work for it. For some reason, the kids I grew up with took that to mean they
deserved whatever they wanted and that there would be no sacrifices involved.
It's cliche, but entitled is the most appropriate word for millenials.

It's a moot point though; we were also empowered to question authority and
think for ourselves. Anyone who did that realized that we can't all be rock
stars.

