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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.