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'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.
" 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. "
Hardly. It made us into a bunch of hoarders.
I know I don't own my kindle books, I'm using Kindleunlimited for a couple of bucks a month and I read a book almost every day. (I'm retired) Much cheaper than buying them.
After my first kindle (I'm on my 6th) I donated almost 5000 books to a local library and now I got a full new room I can use.
I also got rid of my music tapes, my music cassettes, my music vinyl, my music CDs, my super8 films, my betamax, Video2000 and VHS tapes, my Laser-disks, DVDs and blurays,Ditto for my photo albums.
A small server does all that now.
Good riddance.
If I don't burn fossil fuels acquire a book made of murdered trees processed with toxic chemicals, and instead transfer some bytes down a wire, I'm a bad American?
Yeah, right.
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The notion of "ownership" makes perfect sense for things like houses and cars. For books, DVDs, and other IP-based materials? Not so much.
I have a much smaller physical library than I used to, true.
I dumped almost all of my old magazines.
But I have a LOT more of the sort of gadgets that I used to have one of, at most. Multiple desktop computers, a couple of laptops, several tablets, a phone, and an array of VR gear.
Smaller number of things overall, but much more concentrated value, in general.
Americans haven’t “owned” anything in 2-3 generations. This trend is bad news for creditors and other bloodsuckers.
I read more books and listen to more music than 10, 20 or 30 years ago. I call that an improvement, not a problem.
I still have boxes of old paper books and CDs. They don’t give me an iota of an extra stake in some high ideal of ownership in America.
... and that is capitalism’s fault, not an attack on capitalism. Capitalism wants most people owning nothing and being beholden to the property-owning elites.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
My ebooks are epubs stored on two RAID hard disks. I do not bother with kindles, my ereader is a cybook muse HD. They cannot erase my stuff. My music and videos are also files on my hard disc. I still have some classical books on real shelves. I took the habit of favouring digital books while growing up in Europe's tiny apartments.
My steam library is licensed stuff that could disappear, though. My GOG games are "mine" but i could end up with incompatibilities with a too recent Linux distro and have my stuff unplayable. Although with all those emulators and retro computing stuff you never know.
To each his own. I like my way of managing my digital assets. If you prefer other methods, more power for you. :)
Property ownership becomes a burden when you buy things that don't last as long as they should.
Their parants overconsumed is all.
100 years you didnt have all of these entertainment options to waste your money on and probably felt it was more important to save for a rainy day
Middle class folks who own house and decent cars and have nice furniture in their homes probably can't relate to this, but a few books, records and some cheap Jewelry is pretty much the extent of the property most poor folks can accumulate. Having a large chunk of that become ephemeral may very well have consequences. Imagine having 20-30% of your populace feeling like they don't own anything. Conservative ideology generally comes from having something to lose. Lower income people are often very conservative as a result. Taking that away could change that political dynamic...
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Capitalism doesn't "want" anything.
Assholes who claim to be capitalists (but are mostly crony-capitalists) want this.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Reading books is much more important than owning them. EBooks eliminates waste.
Owning DVDs doesn't strike me as an important thing in life.
Still, despite these two things, I own a crapload of stuff.
Better still, reading ebooks you actually own.
A simple look at government spending and the size of federal regulations says otherwise.
More specifically, the stagnation of middle-class incomes and the sluggish growth are clearly the result of more regulations (labor, environmental, health care, etc.) and more public spending.
Though Reagan paid lip service to the problems of big government and the need to return to a liberal democracy, Reagan little to actually rein in progressivism.
Americans own less information, be it books, music or software. Heck, Americans have given up rights to their own information, tacitly trading it for services, like use of email and social media. Or to companies like Equifax, which our politicians allowed to happen.
But physical objects? Kitchen knives, cars, houses, desks - that non-information stuff I think is harder to force a lease on. But if companies can figure out a way to force consumers to lease physical objects, that will happen too.
Adam Smith wrote nothing about capitalism he wrote about free markets. Try actually reading him.
The term “capitalism” was coined by a socialist. Its conflation with “free market” (and “socialism”’s conflation with “command economy”) is the propagandist redefinition.
The particular words you use don’t matter so long as you use enough of them to distinguish four different things:
-a market where ownership is widely distributed among many people
-the opposite of that, a market where it is concentrated in a few hands who can use that to exploit others
- the orthogonal matter of a market where trades are dictated by a central authority
- and the opposite of that, a market where trades are made freely between equals
If you only use one word (“socialism”) for 1 and 3, and another word (“capitalism”) for 2 and 4, or worse still only talk about 3 and 4 using those words while others are talking about 1 and 2 using the same words, then it’s impossible to even have a meaningful discussion about any of this.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Normally, anything that reduces the average citizen's complicity in their own oppression by the powers that be(*) is a good thing....but replacing ownership of personal property with rental and/or licensing does not achieve that. it's worse. It removes even the choice to "opt-out" if/when you decide your life would be much better without wage-slavery (not uncommon if you manage to pay off your house mortgage or otherwise own it outright).
(*) i.e. the actual capitalists (not the working and middle-classes who have been deluded into thinking that THEY are capitalists), the 0.001%, those who actually own & control everything of significant value - including the "means of production".
no place on earth? of course there is. it's called "outside the concentration camp walls" - because a concentration camp is where the outraged pensioners will end up if they don't shut the fuck up to avoid getting labelled "terrorist".
what, you thought all those fascist "anti-terror" laws were about suicide bombers and angry white men with guns? get real! it's preparation for when the general public finally realise how badly we're all being fucked over by the corporate kleptocrats and their servant politicians.
The SSI trust is backed by the full faith and power of the US Federal government, if it goes bust, then we're going to have much bigger problems than the loss of our entire retirement savings. We likely won't have a functioning military or law enforcement either.
And yes, I mean entire retirement savings as those stocks and bonds, assuming that one is lucky enough to have any, will also lost nearly their entire value.
The real issue is that the government, especially under GOP administrations, likes to borrow from the trust with no particular intention of paying the money back and when those tax bills come due, it's going to result in significant inflation as you know damn well that neither party is committed to doing the things that are necessary to make it work, namely increasing the ceiling on social security tax collection and taxing the wealthiest individuals and corporations, the ones that got rich in part by stiffing employees on pay and retirement benefits.
The nation was based on the notion that property ownership gives individuals a stake in the system. It set Americans apart from feudal peasants
Nothing set that apart from the feudal system. If you consider property ownership as the base of political participation, you basically have the feudal system back with the guys at the end of the food chain being the poor peasants and the guys with money who run the country.
bickerdyke
Retaining access to books in a form that :
1) Can't later be withdrawn by the owner.
2) Guarantees the contents can't later be revised after publication.
3) It's possible to give to or share with others in future.
4) Reading can't be monitored or controlled by others.
These things are not often important, but sometimes they can be _very_ important.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz