Those meaningful edge cases can still happen. You don't need to own, store, and maintain the equipment for them year-round for this.

In fact, I would argue that the edge cases feel even more special when you rent. For instance, my family rented a large passenger van for a road trip. The van itself became a sort of icon of that trip, and the source of distinct memories.

Yes, but it often depends more on specific social dynamics, rather than a cost-benefit analysis.

"Hey, you have a car, let's go do XYZ" doesn't happen to people who don't have a car. Replace 'car' with whatever else as appropriate. These social factors drive human decision making to a large degree. People might care about what others think, they might care about spontaneity, they might be influenced by their own desires and the desires of people around them.

Or consider the dinner party example. Sure, I've had dinner parties in rented spaces. It can be done, but they're not the same as being in someone's private space.

> It can be done, but they're not the same as being in someone's private space.

Yeah. Let's put the kids to bed while we continue our meal. Oops, forgot to rent a crèche. Want to stay over and continue chatting? Oops, forgot to rent a hotel and the space closes at 11:00.

Do this enough - like I did renting cars for roadtrips - and you Will have both good and bad memories. I have been doing this for 5 years and for every "that was such a fun drive for us" there is a "we needed something spacious and we got a compact city Suv because they screwed up our booking and there were no alternatives" kind of stories. Or "we got an X5 with a steering wheel making funny noises" or "we ended up getting a hybrid with a very small trunk" or "the car started smelling funny a few hours into the ride" or "they got us a car with a slow leak in a tire". And when that happens, its sometimes enough to suck all the fun from your rare vacation and it costs a lot of time to get a new rental, in relation to the time you have at your disposal. Its also not really cheap. I owned a range rover before deciding on switching to EV plus rentals combo and my total costs of using a car stayed at the same level.