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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.
What have Millennials killed this time?
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" 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."
NOTICE: ACTION REQUIRED
Americans aren't filling their homes with crappy books they might have read once and will never read again. This is a warning that capitalism and freedom are at risk of disappearing!
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. :)
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
Property ownership becomes a burden when you buy things that don't last as long as they should.
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!
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!
Where's the actual article? The link in the headline has nothing to do with the quoted text. All the articles listed are just about Chinese economic activity.
If you scroll down, the article under discussion is linked to here.
How about some actual moderation, slashdot...?
"Crony capitalism" is a misnomer. Nobody has to give favorable treatment to their cronies for property-owners to exploit non-property-owners. That's just capitalism. That's what capitalism is: a market distorted in favor of those who own capital.
What you call "crony capitalism" is just capitalism. What you call "capitalism" is just a free market. A free market where capital is widely distributed in a decentralized way, not held by one class of people to the exploitation of another, is market socialism. "Socialism" doesn't mean everything is controlled by the state, it means capital is owned by the people. Widespread individual ownership by many people still counts; it doesn't have to (and shouldn't) be collective ownership through the state.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
I'll keep my shelves full of books and my AR-15 to protect them.
Thank you, and drive through.
I wish that I could mod you crazy but you do have a bit of a point here. Read Robert Heinlein's take on the future at his most cynical level of red neck inspired madness in Farnham's Freehold. For instance in the plot he has the son of the hero redneck book hording evangelist castrated.
I know guns don't kill people etcetera on and on until they all go bang for real and end our propensity for hording as well as the insanity of consumerism run amok. Faults which causes in the primitive species Homo sapiens the penchant for partaking in wars of acquisition rather than the potlatches we were once commanded to have. As the plane worshiping tribes of the south pacific once said of us westerners "the airplane people carry too much cargo and that is why they are crazy and kill each other"
However everything is going to be fine, our species replacements are all safe and sound under area 51 waiting for the storm to pass. The reliable and humane gray aliens are completely in control and in charge of the operation to rid the planet of the plague of primitive Homo sapiens. FYI our replacements are a very hairy peaceful race of vegetarians that have life spans measured in the of thousands of years. They were seen infrequently in the mountains and wooded places all over this planet until very recently. So rest assured your AR-15 might come in useful very soon.
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
You seem to be the first commenter to notice that. Guess no-one prior wanted to read the article?
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.
Go out and buy books, buy CDs and DVDs, buy the very things the author complains you no longer own.
Yes, your OS isn't yours, and your phone is welded shut (as are Macs in general), but there is nothing stopping someone from going out and buying a physical product.
But instead of doing this there will be those who will whine about the loss ownership.
Americans, in particular, younger Americans, own less stuff because they are poorer. And they are poorer because half a century of progressive politics has transferred the wealth they should have been earning into the hands of crony capitalists, political elites, and government employees.
Unfortunately, many younger Americans still believe that the answer to the government destroying their futures is to vote for more government and more taxes. Fortunately, more and more seem to be figuring out what's actually going on.
It probably reflects just more of a transition of one sector of capitalism to another.
But in the long run, I'm thinking owning less stuff per capita can only be good for the planet. Though less so for the people trying to sell that stuff.
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.
As the other commenter said, your definitions have nothing to do with any standard use of these terms and everything to do with your personal screed.
What they're calling "crony capitalism" is not just capitalism; indeed it may be said not to be capitalist at all. The entire point of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, which launched capitalism as an economic policy, was to oppose mercantilism - the system where the government granted special rights and benefits to particular companies to attempt to increase the government's power - by pointing out that such favors were not only unethical but also tended to impoverish the nation. From every problem with IP law (Eldred v Ashcroft, the patent mess, etc) to the closed-door 'tax incentive' discussions between cities and large corporations, there are a thousand ways in which people who sit on corporate boards or Chambers of Commerce or legislative bodies purport to support capitalism but actually work against a legally level playing field.
Rent is not a market distortion. Your ideal of socialism and your notions of class are a century out of date as well as far removed from reality.
The closest thing to what you're calling "market socialism" is called distributivism. Many bright people have thought about the problems of centralization but no one has found a practicable or just way to put real correctives into practice.
I have a friend who had a massive DVD collection and a really nice home theater setup. When he bought a DVD that he would plan on watching again in a short time span, he would rip it losslessly to another DVD (this was before massive, cheap hard drives.) He would set up the new DVD to only have the movie with the best soundtrack, and *nothing* else. You pop the DVD in and the movie starts immediately. No trailers, no menus, no ads, no warnings.
The sad thing is he had to technically break the law to get something he owned into a format he wanted it in. He wasn't stealing anything or infringing on anyone's IP, he just wanted to watch what he payed for without wasting time.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
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."
Yawn. Someone with an agenda at Bloomberg "News" wants us to be scared of something, specifically, the allegedly increasing tendency of people to share shit. Gee, I wonder why people whose bread & butter is encouraging people to work their asses off for next to nothing, and then to squander as much of a portion as possible of that next-to-nothing they somehow have to scrape by on, buying shit that the people who own Bloomberg "News" profit from the most whenever they're bought. Could there be a relationship there? Oh, and this isn't a new thing. Lending or sharing of books, etc., predates libraries, and libraries predate this country's existence. Any upward tick in this should be viewed of as a bad thing only inasmuch as people who would rather own their own copy CAN'T because they can't AFFORD to after paying through the nose for everything they NEED, and losing an arm and a leg as the cost of anything they want afterwards.
The real thing Bloomberg's readers should be afraid of is when people start buying Amazon Kindle books and Barnes & Noble Nook books, etc., on how to improvise pitchforks and torches, and how to construct GUILLOTINES.
There is an upper bound on the amount of economic inequality people are capable, on the whole, of tolerating before saying "fuck it" and then the lights go out, and you'll wish SOMEONE had stepped the fuck up and FDR'ed America again. Or I guess rolled the fuck up in a wheelchair and FDR'ed this motherfucker again. When the system is so rigged that you can't get by no matter how hard you work, you really don't have anything to lose. One more good housing crisis, credit bubble popping, flash crash, or episode of runaway inflation and you're going to start to see rich people running for the airports, only to learn that the people already know where they are, and it's hard to take off when there's overturned cars burning all over the runways, and people have shot their getaway planes full of holes.
"Don't worry. They can't do shit to me, I'm a fucking queen!" ~ Marie Antoinette, being famously, hilariously, and extremely goddamned wrong.
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Meanwhile, in Washington DC, your politicians continue to have been bought and paid for, and plot to give even more money to people so rich they have no real idea how much fucking money they already have, and to take away your ability to vote, organize at work, or get healthcare after their jackbooted government thug cops shoot you, break your arms, crack your skull, sear your lungs and eyes with tear gas, etc., and then the corporate-owned-and-controlled-puppet-media manages to find something else to talk about because they're owned by the same fucking people the cops are actually serving when they're locking you up for having the temerity to exercise your first amendment and other rights, just like they did at Standing Rock. Film at 11... just not on any broadcast TV channel you can pick up because... did I mention they're all owned by the same cabal of too-rich slimy assholes?
disable rant mode RANT MODE TERMINATED
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
With respect to "this shift is no big deal"...
Ironically, one of the first times a book was revoked from kindle owners was Orwell's *1984*, due to a contract dispute between Amazon and the publisher. It was quickly resolved (a few weeks? I don't remember).
The ideas of mass re-editing (mentioned upthread) and revocation is a very very big deal. These capabilities give someone whose priorities are theirs alone a greater degree of control over information flow than we are accustomed to, and I do not think the implications have been fully understood.
Similar in concept to the "cashless society": Dramatically improved tracking of individual choices, and dramatically easier revocation of one's privilege to participate in society doing things like buying food, etc. Those who do the tracking have already established the idea that records of our activities (accurately recorded or not) are not for us to see, validate, or argue about in any meaningful way.
"Free marketeers love the term "crony capitalism" No we don't, we prefer it didn't exist. " because whenever the worst excesses of their bankrupt amoral philosophy rears it's ugly head they have a scapegoat to point at." Hat has never ever happened. You are simply lying because you don't have the facts on your side. If you think otherwise please give me an example so I can prove you wrong. "They loudly claim that all the evil results of encouraging control of an economy" And provide proof that it is the result of such, stange that you miss that out. " (and thus, inevitably a society)" No such thing as society. " to flow to people with the most stuff is a result of some unanticipated, impossible-to-account for factor" The regulations that make it so are the factors we are talking about. We are very specific about what causes the problem. "rather than the obvious result of applying a theoretical model to a world it does not match." We aren't Socialists. "Capitalism works perfectly, if only the world and human beings could just changed to accommodate it" It works perfectly with people as they are.
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.
Did you know that there has been a trend to reduce or even eliminate the savings that you, as a consumer, could realize by buying the electronic book as opposed to the physical one, despite how much more waste making and selling physical books creates?
When I asked a customer service rep at a company that shall remain namelesz, why in some cases the phsycial book is CHEAPER, NEW than the ebook when this retailer sells both, the response I got was that people are still buying physical books. (Inasmuch as that's not really an explanation why something that by rights SHOULD be cheaper ISN'T,) I replied with something like, "but... don't you have to pay the same royalties on both, based on intellectual property, but NOT have to pay to print the book itself, nor pay for the physical storage space of each in warehouses, on trucks, and ultimately on bookshelves in actual, brick-and-mortar stores whenever you start opening those for books, for the electronic books you DO sell? Why not make it easer to buy THOSE?"
The response I got basically was that they make more money pricing them this way, so this is the way they price them. (Sigh.)
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
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".
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
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
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."
This becomes most clear when we try to discuss anarchism. Not to argue for or against it, but just to talk about what it is and how it relates to other ideas.
Most anarchists would say that anarchism is inherently socialist, and that capitalism is wholly incompatible with anarchism. What they mean by that is that in an anarchic society, ownership would necessarily be widespread, because if it was concentrated in just a few hands then those few owners would effectively rule everyone else so it couldn't be anarchy.
Anarcho-capitalists on the other hand would say that anarcho-socialism is a contradiction in terms because by "socialism" they mean "command economy" which you can't have without a state obviously. Instead they would insist that anarchy must inherently be "capitalist", by which they means "free market", because with no state there's obviously nobody to control the market.
Thing is, the anarcho-socialists were there first. (Before the anarcho-capitalists, and before Marxist style socialists too). And in their use of the words, they can and do say that market capitalism is possible, state socialism is possible, and state capitalism is possible, and they are against all of them, especially the last one. Anarcho-capitalists on the other hand, like the state socialists they oppose and everyone on the line in between them, cannot even comprehend what "anarcho-socialism" or "state capitalism" would mean, because their use of language has become so degraded that they don't even have adequate words for ideas.
It's the same reason that the modern "right" think fascism is "left". Fascism is state capitalism, but they think statism = socialism and so cannot even see that they are as close to fascism as the state socialists they oppose, and the true opposite of it is anarcho-socialism, libertarian socialism, market socialism, which is an idea they're not even capable of thinking thanks to this Orwellian newspeak that can't distinguish between things anymore.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Crashes are a sin of governments and fiscal policy, which turn moderate market fluctuations into disasters.
As for the very wealthy, they come in two varieties: the robber barons, who enrich themselves through government, and the entrepreneurs, who enrich themselves through creating stuff other people want to pay money for. Government creates robber barons (that's what the term originally comes from: the railroad and stell magnates who enriched themselves through government).
That's why free market capitalism rewards creativity richly: if you are creative in a way that helps your fellow human beings, as determined by the votes of your fellow human beings, you get richer. We call those votes "dollars".
If you are "creative" in ways that don't help your fellow human beings, nobody votes for you, and you don't get rich.
The percentage of desperately poor people in the US and the OECD is nearly zero, one of the great achievements of even moderately free markets.
These are all issues within the control of individuals and individual choices. Socializing the costs of such choices makes those problems worse over time.
No, not really: it's pretty well understood.
Great you realize it. And what is the absence of ideology? Letting individuals make their own choices, respecting their private property, and respecting their right to self-determination.
My wife and I have a use it or lose it policy with most things in our house. We regularly toss stuff we don't need into a bin and either donate it to goodwill, scrap it, or throw it out. Digital storage of media is great for saving space. I don't have to deal with a wall full of DVD's, and my wife can check out books for free from the local library on her Kindle. It makes cleaning easier and opens up space.