Re:Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous
by marcosdumay on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @06:35PM
(#17762509)
Depending on those handful of corporations may be a problem, but it also may not be. You depend on a handful of corporations for many important services, and I'd bet you mostly doesn't even notice that. It depends mostly on regulations and competitiveness of the market (and more on the quality of those than their existence).
Besides, a for profit service can create a community just as well as a communal repartition of it. It adds another risk to the community, of the service provider going bad, but it's not some overwhelming factor that makes all other irrelevant. Like it or not, you are sharing stuff when you rent them, the resource pooling is present (more or less present, depending on the renting modality), people are coming together (or not, depending on how it's shared), and there is social development just like with a communal resource.
The problem of Uber|etc and Netflix|etc is much more on how they do the renting than on they actually renting things.
There is some related problem you didn't point, in that once people start pooling some resource they didn't use fully, they should become more wealthy. We are not seeing this, so is it that the pooling isn't efficient or is it because people are being forced into pooling them by poverty? Either way, it's a problem.
Besides, a for profit service can create a community just as well as a communal repartition of it. It adds another risk to the community, of the service provider going bad, but it's not some overwhelming factor that makes all other irrelevant. Like it or not, you are sharing stuff when you rent them, the resource pooling is present (more or less present, depending on the renting modality), people are coming together (or not, depending on how it's shared), and there is social development just like with a communal resource.
The problem of Uber|etc and Netflix|etc is much more on how they do the renting than on they actually renting things.
There is some related problem you didn't point, in that once people start pooling some resource they didn't use fully, they should become more wealthy. We are not seeing this, so is it that the pooling isn't efficient or is it because people are being forced into pooling them by poverty? Either way, it's a problem.