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.
" 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.
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
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.
A lot of the new Millennial hipster types don't even own their house or car.
I feel like that has more to do with the ballooning price of new cars and homes verses the stagnant growth in wages the last few decades than anything.
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.
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