Slashdot Mirror
'Americans Own Less Stuff, and That's Reason To Be Nervous' (bloomberg.com)
Bloomberg's Tyler Cowen writes about "the erosion of personal ownership and what that will mean for our loyalties to traditional American concepts of capitalism and private property." An anonymous Slashdot reader shares the report: The main culprits for the change are software and the internet. For instance, 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. If you look at the fine print, it turns out that you do not own the books on your Kindle. Amazon.com Inc. does. I do not consider this much of a practical problem. Although Amazon could obliterate the books on my Kindle, this has happened only in a very small number of cases, typically involving account abuse. Still, this licensing of e-books, instead of stacking books on a shelf, has altered our psychological sense of how we connect to what we read -- it is no longer truly "ours."
The change in our relationship with physical objects does not stop there. We used to buy DVDs or video cassettes; now viewers stream movies or TV shows with Netflix. Even the company's disc-mailing service is falling out of favor. Music lovers used to buy compact discs; now Spotify and YouTube are more commonly used to hear our favorite tunes. 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. We're hardly at a point where American property has been abolished, but I am still nervous that we are finding ownership to be so inconvenient.
The change in our relationship with physical objects does not stop there. We used to buy DVDs or video cassettes; now viewers stream movies or TV shows with Netflix. Even the company's disc-mailing service is falling out of favor. Music lovers used to buy compact discs; now Spotify and YouTube are more commonly used to hear our favorite tunes. 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. We're hardly at a point where American property has been abolished, but I am still nervous that we are finding ownership to be so inconvenient.
There’s this place called a “library” which let’s you take out books for weeks at a time. Apparently the author never heard of it.
I do have a Kindle. But I don’t often buy books, since that “library” place actually lets me check out Kindle books same as printed ones. Plus there are programs like “Kindle Unlimited” which will let you borrow lots of stuff too.
There are very few books I want to read more than once... but those I do buy - and, when I buy a Kindle book, the first thing I do is strip the DRM off of it and save a backup copy.
Same thing with movies... there aren’t that many I want to ever see more than once. Those few that I do, I purchase (and rip a DRM-free copy so I can stream them from my media box).
Besides, the DVD/videocassette argument doesn’t really support the author’s premise. For most of the time movies have been around, people did not own them... that’s only the past few decades.
#DeleteChrome
Also be aware of the attempts to turn computers into locked-down content rental/consumption devices. Support open hardware and software platforms where available, if you want to continue to own your own computing devices and software. The idea of ownership doesn't have to give way to rental, but too many people are ignorant and willingly chaining themselves within the walled gardens of large corporations. These entities desire to rent all works in perpetuity, and will continue to strip your rights until none remain. If you haven't already, please spend a few minutes to absorb The Right to Read.
We have choices. Support creators that use a donation model, or at least sell their works in DRM-free formats. Paying for works that strip or violate your rights should be avoided if possible. Violating copyright is the moral option in these cases, or avoiding such works entirely. Publisher's including Disney have effectively stolen the public domain, and people should resist, or it will only get much worse. Copyright should be reformed or preferably abolished, as "intellectual property" is a highly regressive concept. See Everything Is a Remix and Against Intellectual Monopoly.
Dunno about that - being a pretty ready rural dweller, owning extra tools and even vacuum tube stuff, with solar power and so on - All EMP proof for example..and having good neighbors also well equipped - and who farm "stuff" to eat, might be the very most valuable things you could "own" in a pinch. /s
Depends on the pinch. Doubt there'll be any much better place to live than where I do already if climate change kicks in, but then as an old fart, I'm not going to be able to hold my breath too long either. If you think you're going to have to move, do it now when it's easier...fewer zombies in the way.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
The type of property that this refers to, is real property. The clothes on your back don't give you a stake, the ground beneath your feet does. This is why some feel those that only rent their home should not have the right to vote.
As the plane worshiping tribes of the south pacific once said of us westerners
What is the name of this religion and how do I convert?
Cargo cult Their understanding of the people on the airplanes is that the planes are just protecting them from harm because they rely upon far too much cargo. The people on the planes are in danger of killing each other if the planes do not protect them and all their cargo. So they worship the airplanes for this reason in their eyes airplanes have a been given a divine spirit regardless of how or who made them. They believe that all material things including that which we modify and create have spirit. And if you fight over cargo or the ownership of any material thing you will become a mad evil spirit after death that needs to be exorcised.
Cargo in their language is simply anything that you must carry around with you as you travel through life. Their lives rely on not having to carry cargo because cargo is shared by all. Materialism is beyond their understanding, the ownership of any material thing of the earth and sky is not a good thing in their eyes.
The beginnings of same type of belief was still present in most of North America until we fucked the natives over, in British Columbia and elsewhere there are still echoes of the potlatch economy. Would that an economy and laws based on potlatch become more advanced. Any economy that is based upon ever cheaper labour, the overconsumption and hording of material things will eventually fall as did Rome. Economic growth has limits that are defined by the availability of food and materials and we are quickly using everything up and are doomed as a civilization for this very reason.
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
You are talking out your ass. Most of us cannot afford to start buying anything at any size, and for those of us who could, the interest alone on the cheapest available purchase would exceed the cheapest available rent, so we'd be even more fucking paying money-rent (interest) to the bank then we are paying land-rent to our landlords now. We desperately want to own, and have been trying desperately to get on that ladder our entire lives, but it keeps getting pulled even further up out of reach.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Adam Smith wrote about free markets, not about capitalism. The term capitalism as originally coined did not refer to the same thing as a free market. It is a redefinition of terms to equate the two.
Market socialism predates Shaw. It predates even Marx. Marx is the one who first claimed that free markets entail capitalism and that socialism therefore required a command economy, but many of his socialist contemporaries disagreed with him, only to be largely forgotten by history now. So clearly "market socialism" is not a contradiction in terms in their original sense, and "socialism" therefore cannot simply mean the opposite of "free market".
"It doesn't matter what words you use" as in I'm not trying to defend the purity of language for its own sake here, but to be able to distinguish between concepts, however you want to label them. If by "capitalism" you mean only the opposite of a command economy, a free market, then you now have no word to describe the opposite of widely distributed ownership, unless you'd like to coin one, but then nobody's going to understand what you mean until you explain you new word.
Likewise if by "socialism" you mean only the opposite of a free market, a command economy, then you now have no word to describe widely distributed ownership. You're using the word "distributivism" here, but that means specfically a market-based kind of distributed ownership, and not just the concept of distributed ownership agnostic to the market or command nature of the economy. So, again, do you want to have to coin a new word?
The earliest free market thinkers like Adam Smith did not favor concentrations of wealth and did not call themselves capitalists. The earliest socialists did not favor command economies, but they opposed concentrated ownership of capital and systems that favored it, which they called "capitalism". Back then we had these four clear terms -- free market, command economy, capitalism, socialism -- and could discuss things coherently.
Then Marx and his followers and their opponents over the past century or so heavily conflated free markets with capitalism and socialism with command economies to the point that now people cannot even think about the two different issues at play there. I am simply informing people of the older, undistorted meanings of the words, and opening up the possibility of discussing things more clearly with them.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Did you know that with the *government granted monopoly* that imaginary property provides 'the market' doesn't get a choice in price because the publisher can set the price for everyone or refuse to allow the reseller to distribute if they choose a lower price without permission?
Or how about how publishers can claim that low sales are just the work of pirates and illegal downloaders and not because their latest "gem" isn't considered by society to be worth the price / quality they say it is? They also say that about boycotts too, did you know that?
Did you also know that many publishers try desperately to destroy secondhand sales any way they can so they can maintain their control over distribution? Did you know that's why they love digital distribution so much because they can prohibit secondhand sales outright or take a cut of the procceds with various DRM schemes that way?
Your 'market' isn't as 'free' as you think it is bub. It hasn't been in a long time.