Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous

Re:Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous by TulliusCicero on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @07:44PM (#17762830)

That's only true if Kindle has monopoly power over books as a whole, which is obviously not the case.

Now, services like Kindle or Steam deciding to revoke access to prior purchases is a potential Big Problem...but as of yet, it remains just that: potential. And at least in theory, there are government agencies that are charged with protecting against abusive behavior towards consumers (obviously actual results there are somewhat mixed).

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Re:Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous by xg15 on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @08:30PM (#17763034)

Well, the whole point of the article is to observe a trend. None of this is a big problem right now.

But economic incentives might push the renting model to become the main - or even only - model to use many goods and services in the future. Similarly, trends about the number of service providers seem to point towards consolidation as well.

So if those trends hold true, we might at some point have Megacorp Inc. offering Living-As-A-Service. And then we would have a problem.

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Re:Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous by wristmittens on Wednesday August 15, 2018 @05:41PM (#17770025)

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-santa-monica-sco...

"Bird and Lime deactivate scooter services in Santa Monica for a day in protest"

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